Tag: relationships

All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Andytown by David Louden

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Tonight, a strong man died in Belfast.

We had been on the site for three days.  Day one, up went the big tent.  The rigging, lights, safety nets and everything else that goes into putting on ‘the show’.  Day two, the dress rehearsal and an opportunity for those of us who needed it, to get clean.  A chance for those of us who needed it, to score.  Day three was opening night.  We were set up on the outskirts of Andersonstown.  Out of the way, on a plot of land that had been raised to the ground under the promise of social philanthropy only for the plans to cool and the memories to fade.  Now it’s little more than uneven concrete and free parking.  That’s how Mal got it for the week for so cheap.  It should have been a risk this far out, but people are the same everywhere.  You put enough curiosities in one place and they’ll come out of wherever they’re held up to look at them.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Horror

After Lloyd by Christopher J. Ananias

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Disturbing content – see tags at the bottom of the page.

Gil doesn’t talk, just sits there drawing demons. Mr. Ny clapped his erasers together and called Gil to the blackboard for one of his impossible Geometry theorems. Gil snatched up the chalk, like a pissed-off Picasso, and made quick hard chalk-chalk marks, and it was solved. The last bell rang and the mad dash.

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All Stories, Editor Picks, General Fiction, Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 514: Happy New Year; Honesty; Six Honest Writers and Confessions

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Welcome to 2025

In the technical sense, last week, at the conclusion of the Hellworld Hellweek run (by our six lovely writers),  was Week 513. So, as we open this brave year of 2025, we will keep pace with ever fleet time the best we can. Thus, here we are at the end of week 514. A Happy New Year to All–and now on with the usual show.

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All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

The Promise by Russell Fee

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The lake breeze chilled the back of his neck as he bent over the boulder to inspect the patterns of lichen spreading on its surface like an ink spill. This was the one he was to find. As the receding waves sucked the water from the sand around it, the rock sputtered and gurgled as if it were alive, a nursing infant or a dying soul. He had trekked almost three miles from his cottage to reach this point on the beach, the farthest out on this side of the island. From here it was fifty miles to the mainland over the surface of an inland sea. He removed his clothes, tossing them into the water. He was to carry nothing. Standing nude, he waited, facing the dunes that rose to the stretch of trees above the beach.

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All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Nora in Five Acts by Leila Allison

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Act One

Nora Lynn Manning was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 6 December 1941. Her parents, Arlene and Jay, were high school sweethearts who realized too late that they did not like each other all that much. Still, they chose to marry before Arlene began to show. Like so many hideously bad ideas, it was considered the “right thing” to do.

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All Stories, sunday whatever

Sunday Whatever – Adam Kluger

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Adam is one of our more unusual writers. Since very early in the history of LS, November 2015 he has sent us quirky pieces often accompanied by his very individual art. He is a delight to interact with and is obviously a shoo in for an author interview and that treat is to come. However, one of the questions has also spawned this memoir, which was too good to turn down. And so please enjoy a bonus, Adam Kluger.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, General Fiction

Personal Growth by Ben Fitton

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The hole was definitely growing. 

Jonty could tell, having just woken from a nap, face tingling with grass imprints and a half-crushed flailing ladybird stuck on his eyelashes, to find the hole bigger and nearer.

Jonty was seen as a shabby, acceptable kind of aristo who loitered in gardens on dewy mornings, drunk or whimsical, misquoting Homer and asking for a crustless sandwich while he sat, as squat as a stone rounded by a forgiving sea, marvelling at the stains on his tie. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

Ghost by Margaret Wells

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Text 9:40 pm “It’s not the same without you [shrug emoji].”

Text 9:41 pm, Spotify link, “Tu Orgullo” [Your pride]

Text 9:42 pm, Spotify link, “Estoy Aquí” [I’m here]

Part of me wanted to type, are you fucking kidding me, after four years, still with this bullshit? What part of “we’re divorced” is not resonating with you? The other half of me knew that there was no possible way to reply. Every reply would be the wrong reply. To respond to the substance—really, my pride was the problem, you cheating bastard?—would be to invite more back and forth. (That our split was all about my pride was one of his constant refrains.) To remind him that I’d asked him to stop sending texts like these would bring the rejoinder that he knew that already, but couldn’t I see his true and beautiful love, a true and beautiful love that existed in and around the totally incidental cheating that went on sporadically ever since we got together when we were twenty-two? Couldn’t I see that he had given me every reason over decades to fight for him and for our relationship? What was wrong with me?

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