Tag: relationship

All Stories, General Fiction

Borrowed Fragments by Vince Barry

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typewriter

“. . . ?”

How can you help? Hmm, how can you—

“. . . ?”

My mother? . . . Okay, we can start there. . . . My mother—my mother  came from a large family, a very large Irish Catholic family. Do they make them any more? I think not. . . . At any rate, as a boy, a young boy, no more than eight or nine, I would employ the template of the Baltimore Catechism to sort them out and keep them straight—the Faheys I mean . . .The catechism’s set formula, y’see, helped me convey the essential and fundamental content of the Fahey family. Beginning—

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All Stories, Horror

You’ll Let the Storm In by Nicholas Siegel

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typewriterA gust of wind blew around the outside of the house as Mike pried the bottle cap off his fourth beer with his teeth. It was a trick one of his old classmates had taught him—a trick he used to use to impress women in bars, but now, domesticated, he only used when he couldn’t find the bottle opener.

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All Stories, Horror

Crimson Memory By Marie McCloskey

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typewriterHer legs began to go numb as they tingled from her weight. She was on her knees again, scrubbing. Always scrubbing. The chill of the linoleum floor made goosebumps run over her thighs under her pants.

This home didn’t belong to her. She wouldn’t enjoy the benefits of her labors. Mrs. McCormick, or Mrs. Glenn, or Mrs. Whomever Ella worked for that day would come home after she left. All part of the job, you show up, clean, and leave.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Nowheresville by Craig Terlson

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typewriterI pinned the latest of my twin brother’s postcards on the corkboard above the desk our father never used. This one showed the famous bridge that I’d seen in books and on TV. Finally made it. Wayne used the same blotchy pen to scribble Mom and Dad’s address. It was my address too, but I rarely got mail.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Eleanor by Steve Carr

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typewriter There near the edge of a cliff overlooking a broad open area of grassland outside the town of Wall, South Dakota stands Eleanor’s house. It is a huge wooden structure built in the 1940s and one of the few houses built along the ridge looking toward the Badlands and along the road leading from Wall to the Badlands National Park. It is a weather beaten house, with the remnants of the bright white paint that covered it peeling from the weather-worn wood, and a single slightly tilted chimney of red brick sticking up at mid-roof. There is a wrap around porch, the back of which I was told offers an amazing view of the pink, the beige and purple layers of the Badlands formations miles away, and the ability to see antelope, coyotes and even a few buffalo that roam freely through the tall prairie grass below in summer and a blanket of drifting snow in winter. In the front of the house, leading from the porch to the gravel path that leads from the driveway to the house is a ramp that was built to accommodate Eleanor’s husband who had, later in his years, become unable to navigate the stairs.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

Crawfish Prayers by G.A. Shepard

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typewriterTommy lay in the middle of the train tracks looking down between the railroad ties.  It was fifty-feet to the shallow river that ran underneath the trestle.  A low growl made the wood and metal shudder.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Reflections Aft by Tom Sheehan

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typewriterEight years locked in bed by an accident, his wife’s life an obscene penalty, Peirce Keating was left with only imagination. And little hope, though today might prove different. He loved his wife May, the sea, and bright company. Old pal Gary Mitman was this day’s gift, this day where hope might gain one foothold. That and viewing mirrors he controlled by head movements.

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All Stories, General Fiction

God’s Secret Name By Leila Allison

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typewriter“Fran,” Beth says, “do you know that tall people do not live as long as short people? It’s a scientific fact, and most likely why basketball has never caught on in Okinawa.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

A Thin Blue Line by Anne M Weyer

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typewriterHave you ever read the future in a thin blue line, as you wait in the handicapped stall in the fourth floor bathroom? Your stretched out knees have made a run in your pantyhose, which are cheap and rough and aggressively tight, so you slide out of your worn kitten heels and tug them off to pass the time. Balling them up and stuffing them into the little maxi-pad trashcan uses up about twenty seconds. Pregnancy test seconds, as any woman in the know will tell you, pass even more slowly than microwave seconds. Whether you are bound to be relieved or disappointed or tremulously hopeful and filled with joy, the waiting is the hardest part. Once you know, you know. You can confront that emphatic little mark and all its implications head on. When you know, you have options. “Options,” you whisper to yourself, hoisting up your skirt with the grooved thumb-grip clamped between your teeth.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Lift by Paul Thompson

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typewriterThey recognise each other immediately. At least they think they do – greeting each other with the kind of embrace usually reserved for a reunion, which in many ways this feels like. A few nervous moments pass as they silently try to categorise the person opposite. They both wear name badges and so have no need for formal introductions. They look each other up and down – something normally considered impolite but here it feels acceptable, as though they are merely old acquaintances catching up after a long absence. They share a few jokes about their current predicament, serving as pleasantries before concluding what the other has already concluded.

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