Tag: magic

Short Fiction

The Magician of Sixth Avenue by Sam Mueller

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There are two types of nurses: the ones who believe in ghosts, and the ones who are lying.

We don’t talk about it much, especially now that the war is over. You can feel it more than see it when we’re together—a collective haunting, invisible guests at the dinner table. The conversations lulls and our gazes drift and we stare at strangers we’ve seen somewhere before. Was it the operating table? A hospital bed? The morgue?

You do this kind of thing for years and eventually everyone becomes a ghost of someone, somewhere. We don’t talk about it much.

But sometimes we get drunk.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Emil’s Magic by James Bates

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He was standing off to the side of the city Greenway looking at the sky when he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Hey buddy. What are you doing?”

Emil turned. It was a policeman on bicycle patrol. “I’m just looking at the clouds, officer,” he said, politely. “That one over there reminds me of a bunny rabbit.”

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Sawbones by Edward N McConnell

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Tom Kenner sat looking out the window of a waiting room at the Columbus Orthopedic Hospital. He had been through the magazines but, dog-eared and dated, they couldn’t hold his attention. “Maybe staring out the window will make the time go more quickly,” he thought. It didn’t.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Fang-Liu House by S.Y. Chen

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Fang-Liu House is an old hotel near the entertainment district. Sitting in the middle of the row, its dilapidated plaster crumbling out of hairline cracks caused by creeping vines.

On the front of the house hangs a plastic banner, secured to the balcony, the red faded to salmon, and the yellow lettering almost white, “CRIMINAL CUSTOMERS NOT WELCOME. SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY WILL BE REPORTED TO THE AUTHORITIES.”

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All Stories, Fantasy

It’s our 7th Birthday. Thank you all for your support. More to follow. Come back on Saturday!!

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A Given by Aishwarya Srivastava

The winter always belonged to the writers but the writers never belonged to anyone. That is why a 60-year-old Mr. Shaw sat in his two-story bungalow all alone eating flatbread with a new jar of ‘grandma’s homemade pickle’ that he had bought from the grocery store seven kilometers away. He lead a life of passion and compassion. Passion for his hobbies and compassion for… himself. But Mr. Shaw’s life, contrary to the belief of all the forest rangers who passed his ‘haunted’ house, was not empty. A murder of porcelain and granite along with the ominous howling of distant hungry wolves filled his nights like winds filled windmills. He just loved buying sculptures.

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All Stories, General Fiction

An Audience of One by Hugh Todd

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First stop was the bins by the pond. He parked the buggy and blew on his hands with little effect, except to bring on a coughing fit. He bent down to pick up a ketchup-stained PFC take away box, fumbling for a moment, edging the carton along the frosted path towards the pond railings. As he picked it up something caught his eye behind the railings; sunlight glinting off a shiny surface. For a minute his heart raced and he wondered if this was the knife from the attack outside the school last week. He instinctively looked around, but at 7:30am on a February morning Clissold Park was desolate. Lloyd was the only soul in there, with just wildlife for company.

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All Stories, General Fiction

He Walked Where It Ended by Liam Randles

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He often walked in the place where it ended. Thoughtlessly. Invariably without point or purpose. He felt like a ghost reflecting on a past life each time he retraced his steps, divorced from all sense of who he was.

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All Stories, Fantasy

This Death by Margaret LaFleur

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He found her sitting in a tree. Her legs dangled over the edge, her dusty feet kicking back and forth. It had taken him a while to find her. It wasn’t as simple as it usually was. Each hourglass of life came with coordinates, of course. The tiny numbers ascribed on the bottom gave approximate locations. It wasn’t a perfect system. Humans weren’t as predictable as, say, ants. Things had gotten tricky when they domesticated the horse, for example. It had gotten worse with the engine. Obviously airplanes had kicked things into gear. But the hourglass makers, those bright-eyed creatures, were quick to adjust. They usually got it in the ballpark.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Conversation with Jeep Who Said the Moon Loved His Father (RIP Timothy) by Tom Sheehan

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“The moon loves you, Dad,” said Jeep, one of my grandsons who lived in Maine and who was practically born in the seat of an old ’56 Jeep relegated to the farm. You can imagine very easily that is how Jasper got his nickname. The Jeep was an old army surplus vehicle left over from the Korean War that I was in during all of 1951. From the first, Jeep was a mover, hardly slowing down, except for cows, goats, sheep, hens and ducks, sometimes a pig as big as a mountain, at least big as your house. He roamed the whole farm and knew all its secrets, including the secret visitors that came onto the farm in the night time when most animals and people were sound asleep.

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