Let’s make one thing clear: I’m not a necrophiliac.
But I am in love with a three-thousand-eight-hundred-year-old corpse.
There.
I said it.
Ethics committee be damned.
Continue reading “Tilda the Ice Maiden and her life in the tundra circa 1785 BCE by Lincoln Hayes”
On Wednesdays, I take my trash down to the curb. You have to wait until 3 pm to bring it down. It gets picked up on Thursday mornings at around 8 am. Our setup is a lot like other New England towns. There’s a blue bin for recyclables, a black bin for regular trash and a brown bin for yard waste.
Continue reading “What We Discard by Gil Hoy”
Rain in Richmond was like no other, on that Wednesday in June.
David, the cab driver had parked close to the gate as I made my escape from the endless rain. As a regular, I recognised the art enthusiasts who frequented the gallery, but I had never seen him before. I had always believed art was to be publicly admired and privately dissected, in the comfort of one’s walls, an intimate ceremony, but the intrigue his face portrayed felt inviting. I was deep in thought when his gaze startled me.
Continue reading “Yellow by Jessica Aike”
I’m struggling with my formula to solve the Delta Zero enigma when my girlfriend, Jane, calls. I apologize for being late and tell her I’ll join her at Alice’s Restaurant soon as I can.
Continue reading “Delta Zero by David Henson“
She shouldn’t have red hair. Also, it shouldn’t be the red that it is. It is a dye job, a bad dye job. She should act her age, but it’s not clear what that age might be. She has too much energy for her skin. Her skin has the pale of age, old age, too many years, is the phrase I would use. Her skin had too many years on it for the energy she had. Her thin pale epidermis indicated she should be slow moving, if not immobile, bed ridden maybe, but not walking faster than all the other employees. People so much younger, so much stronger, should have so much more life than she had. Her energy and her fire engine red hair, they just weren’t right.
Continue reading “Anne: Office Monster by Michael W. Clark”
The night of the infamous Thursday writing group, it was storming. Rain pounded the roof of Shanahan’s Bar, where we’d met the past three months. I was about to discuss a Richard Ford story. The jukebox was blasting Kenny Rogers, “Just Dropped In.” I glanced at my watch once, twice. The second hand clicked, clicks reverberating in my ears.
Continue reading “Time Enough by Yash Seyedbagheri”
Maisie wished Goodwill had an anonymous nighttime drop-off. She didn’t want to be judged for her donations or the frequency with which she gave them. In all things, Maisie preferred to be anonymous. She didn’t like to be seen. She was 262lbs and 5’2″. Most of her life, Maisie was petite, her adolescent frame offered her two options: one to keep shopping in the children’s department or two to find a good tailor. Thankfully, her grandma could sew. Grandma Betty made a lot of Maisie’s clothes. Eventually, Maisie hit 100 lbs. Now, the only thing she was lacking was much in the way of boobs. Push-up bras now had something, a little something, to work with even if the ballooned bras were problematic with spontaneous combustion while dancing or laughing.
Continue reading “Food Cowboy by Leah Sackett”
Jason Bendix had finished writing his new novella the evening before. It was the first mature work that he had written. For nearly three years he had been trying to find his voice and to whet all artifice from his sentences. Thirteen, fourteen stories had been his apprentice work. First, he had written stories of two or three thousand words each. Then, he had managed a few five-thousand-word beasts of burden. The three ten-thousand worders had been monstrosities which cost him dearly.
Continue reading “The Novella of Jason Bendix by Penny Faircloth”
I see ghosts. I hear their voices. Watch them move across my vision. Sometimes they talk to me, but it isn’t them. It’s people from the past. They’re frozen in my memory. A word, a touch, a phrase. The what if’s and what might have been.
literally stories 