Tag: lynching

All Stories, General Fiction

A Thousand Vultures by Christopher Ananias

literallystories2014

The sun is sunny—not thoroughly unpleasant—but not a sun for picnics with Mary Lou down on the Potomac. Mary Lou is dead and buried by some Godless creek in Kansas. Her cross will rot away. A weak hastily made thing of silver birch branches and binder twine. In a year, a month, a week? She will have no marker unless I can find it again. Find her under the creeks torrents of land-grabbing muddy currents and sulking floods. Find her under the black silt and plants rotting white and stinking. Carp flopping on her grave. Then the water washes over again- recedes- and pulls the entire bank and her into it. Best to leave the past in the past.

Continue reading “A Thousand Vultures by Christopher Ananias” →
All Stories, General Fiction

Unity by Phil Temples

literallystories2014

I’m drawn again to this little spit in the road about six miles outside of Tupelo, Mississippi on Road 1233 in the Town of Plantersville. I stand near a pasture across the road. Two hundred feet to the north, there’s an abandoned structure that’s falling in on itself.  A weathered sign with faded lettering in the front reads “Unity Church.”  It hangs awkwardly from a broken chain banging in the wind against a post. The roadside is littered with beer bottles and fast food wrappers. A car hubcap lies nearby.

Continue reading “Unity by Phil Temples” →