Tag: relationship

All Stories, General Fiction

Forked Tongue by James McEwan

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My expectations and excitement were dampened by the cold coffee and replaced by a creeping realisation of an inevitable disappointment. I kept glancing around as people rushed along the pavement, but it was late – she wasn’t coming. We agreed to meet at the Café at half past six and in my jacket pocket I had an envelope with five hundred Euros in fifties, which I promised for the final payment for her painting. A piece of art that I found hypnotic, it was a scene depicting a battle of female sexuality and a vision of erotic conjecture. I couldn’t help myself, I had to have it. Last night, I paid her a deposit of three hundred Euros.

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Short Fiction

Rearmed by Frederick K Foote

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The pain jerks me up from the dark, spills bright red across my memory, shakes me in time to the artillery shells exploding around us.

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Voices, mumbling medical jargon, the hum, and clicking of some electronics, antiseptic smell. Bright, bright too bright, I close my eyes tight.

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My arm. They amputated my left arm below the elbow. Shit. I reach across my body and touch my new left forearm and hand. A prosthetic, but it feels, feels flesh like, like dead meat.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Squirrel by David Henson

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typewriterSquirrel was a little under average tall and railly. Mostly crooked teeth. Reddish hair, oily. Everbody started calling him Squirrel back in high school. He didn’t mind so much. Better’n Twerp from earlier on. One night Squirrel goes to the Tap Bar, and Big Ed’s wife, Ellie Lynn, is there without Big Ed. Ellie Lynn looks like she’s had a few so Squirrel goes an sits by her. Ellie Lynn seems real happy for Squirrel to buy her a few, and he has a few himself. Well, to cut to it, Squirrel and Ellie Lynn end up closin the place and goin to his truck to get at it. After finishin, Squirrel says to Ellie Lynn “Let’s do this again sometime, wanna?” Ellie Lynn don’t say nothin. She just gets outta Squirrel’s truck and walks off laughin and pullin up her pants.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Cave by Diane M Dickson

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It was darker now, he wouldn’t have believed it possible.  It was, deep, impenetrable and velvet.  For the first time Tom was afraid.  When the others had suggested the trip it sounded like fun.  A chance to explore the newly discovered pothole, to be the first and so have their names in the journals as the original team opening up a new cavern, shining light on the newly opened place.  He wasn’t very experienced and found the roping complicated, he had done it wrong and it had stuck twice on the trial run, the rope catching in the pulley but they told him it would be fine.  He knew that they were finding him irritating, they were all so much more experienced but hey, that wasn’t his fault.  Anyway in the end it hadn’t been fine, it had let him down and as he began to slide into the smaller cavern, pushing and slithering on the loose gravel at the head the damned thing had failed tossing him end over end into this pit.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Beau Geste Murtaugh, Veteran of Wars by Tom Sheehan

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typewriter“Here I am,” says his imperative argument in an undertone, “eighty-seven frigging years old, my knees gone to hell and back, my gut talking about all the beer I’ve sailed my life across, barrels of it talking to me all at once, and this little kid out in front of my house crying his head off. This little kid, this little shaver, one of the ones we did our thing for, our future.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Brake Lights by C. W. Bigelow

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“He’d been a philanderer for years.”

Those words spilling out slowly from my mother’s mouth, chin firm, lips straight, not a tear in her eye, about my father who had just died – came as a total surprise – especially when there was no chance to verify her accusation.  He was gone, unable to defend himself.  So as his son, I wasn’t sure to take the announcement as total truth or as someone’s bruised opinion?

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Discovery of Death by Fred Skolnik

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typewriterDick and Jane and Bob and Sally lived in a pretty little town with grass and trees. One day Bob was gone, leaving his body behind. Dick said to Sally, “Where is Bob?” Sally said to Dick, “Bob is gone.” They looked at Bob’s body, poking it with a stick. It did not move. He was not there.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Meanwhile, Back at the UPIFFC… by Leila Allison

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Prologue: A case of the heebie-jeebies.

In a determined effort to spread inefficiency and uselessness throughout all possible universes, the Amalgamated Union of Pennames and Imaginary Friends(of which I am a reluctant member) has expanded like a toxic spill, and now includes the clientele of the recently defunct Guild of Fictional Characters. The mess has been “rebranded” the UPIFFC.

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Life, Passed On by Louis Hunter

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Every house has this book tucked away somewhere, father tells me. Some keep it locked in the attic, while others hide it in the depths of bookcases or submerged under dusty bowls in forgotten boxes. My father, however, makes a point of reading it to us. Just as he has read it to my brothers and sisters, so he will read it to me. It’s an old leather bound book and inside is written my whole life.

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