Isla liked to play a little game while driving on Highway 4 to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Christmas. She zigzagged her eyes between telephone poles and farm fence posts until her head hurt. The car window was an endless stream of canola fields blanketed with snow and open skies.
Continue reading “Black and White Christmas by T.L. Tomljanovic”
It was a very steep slope. Even the hunters felt unsure of their steps. The thick creepers and grasses made every tread a threat since there was no way of knowing what the escapees were disturbing on the untrodden path. The deerstalkers amongst them could have been expected to feel less unsettled, but it felt strange for them to be carrying babies or half-carrying the elderly. Noi insisted on clinging to Sai. In the Asia of so long ago, much before any contact with Westerners or Christianity, ‘till death do us part’ was her own inborn resolve. Sai had no choice.
Continue reading “In the Right Spirit? by Nidhi Srivastava Asthana”
Five minutes, twenty-nine seconds for milk, bread and a few other items? Ridiculous. The clerk transfers the time from my corporate God Assurance card to the store’s account. “Here you are, Mr. Spencer.” He gives me a rattler.
I pass the diamondback between my hands a few times then raise it to eye level to complete the required time. As I give the snake back to the clerk, I hear a woman in the next booth gasp.
Continue reading “A Currency of Serpents by David Henson”
“Fuck me, you’re looking rough!”
“Thanks very much! Pour us a hauf and get me a can of lager.”
Continue reading “Affinity by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content”
Every Sunday morning for the past nine years and one month, my mother-in-law has made her dauntless progress up the centre aisle of Holy Family Church on the arm of my husband. This, she believed, was ample evidence that despite his marriage to an ex-nun—holy women all of them, although those who leave their vocation perhaps not holy enough—her Danny’s primary devotion was still to his mother, not to this drab failure of a Grade Three teacher who got her claws into the school principal, no less, the gentle, much-loved Mr. Lynch. Sweet and kind and considerate with his staff and with the children, but away from school, the embodiment of an ineffectual man. But I didn’t know that then.
Continue reading “The Bride of Christ by Mary J Breen”
Abbess Wang was the first to discover the baby at the doorstep of the temple, bundled up in thick layers of blankets, protecting it from the chilly night. She checked its sex. Instantly, she developed a deep dislike for the boy. This was the first time someone had left an infant at the temple, and Abbess Wang did not want it to acquire a reputation for being an orphanage.
Continue reading “Temple Dog by Richard Yu”
The Rapture came to pass on an Easter Sunday and the irony was lost on no one, except perhaps the two and a half billion people who were vacuumed off the face of the earth. What exactly the departed experienced, ironical or literal, remained a mystery. None of them ever returned.
Continue reading “Rapturous by Marco Etheridge”
Foreword:
This is one of two stories that I’ve been given free gratis with. I really do appreciate that and that is why I wanted to explain why I chose this one.
I was playing around, for so many reasons, with changed perceptions and this is what I came up with.
My fellow editors felt the content was too strong but it had to be for what I was going for. I wanted to see if I could alter a reader’s sympathies and to do that I needed the situation to be so abhorrent that they would need a real change of heart.
I wondered if we always fall down on one side or another with our sympathies or were there situations where, until all was revealed, our initial gut feelings may not be relied on and would be changed not just dramatically but more than once.
Continue reading “Julia’s End by Hugh Cron – Warning – Strong Adult Content Of A Sexual Nature”
“Right Israelites…Where are they?”
“Only me boss. Do you like my frock?”
“It’s very fetching. And who are you?”
“I’m Charlton, the rest of them seen the smoke in the distance and thought there was a fire heading this way. I mean they’ve just got dried from the sea thingy, miracle, whatever the fuck.”
“The sea parted, it never touched them.”
“I know but they’d all pissed themselves. They’re not very brave. Anyway they fucked off home, wherever that is.”
Continue reading “The Ten Commandments by Hugh Cron – Warning – Adult Content”
Television News Items:
“Disturbing news out of South America. Columbian authorities are investigating reports of multiple public stonings. An unknown amount of ‘seer-children’ have allegedly been stoned to death at outlying villages in the Columbian countryside…These events are similar to those alleged to have occurred throughout the world in this past year–including one such occurrence in the United States…”
“NASA confirms that a six-kilometer wide asteroid named Tourmorlaine B will indeed pass between the Earth and Moon in 2027. However, NASA officials repudiate the findings of a group of independent astronomers who claim that the planetoid has a high probability of striking Earth on its return pass in 2029…”
“A panel of psychiatrists will gather next week at NYU to discuss the phenomena of ‘Animisitic Empathy’ as well as possible telepathy in autistic persons… This is seen as an abrupt about face on a subject which has been steadily gaining traction on social media…”
literally stories 