STEP 1 – When the undead thing scratches at your window and asks if it can come in, say no.
STEP 2 – When the thing says something that stirs your soul and awakens your senses, and when it promises that it doesn’t want to hurt you, it just wants to be with you, and when it asks to come in so you can have a really good talk about it, say no again.
Continue reading “How to not keep a Vampire out of Your House (in Eight Easy Steps) by Bob DeRosa”
The pedestrian crossing ticked slowly as the little man flashed red.
Emma sat alfresco in her favourite café watching from across the road.
She knew it was her by the perfect silhouette. Tall. Slender. Dark hair pulled back into a low bun. Chunky gold earrings catching the morning sun and the approval of fellow pedestrians.
Continue reading “Kinda Blindsided by Karen Uttien”
James put another piece of birch on the fire, the stove hinges creaking with hot dryness as he closed and latched the door. The papery bark crackled immediately to life, curling black and sending smoke and flame up the stovepipe. On days this cold, the single-paned glass in the old cottage windows looked triple thick owing to the rime coating the inner surfaces. He reached out to touch the slick, silvery skein, feeling his fingertips numbing and a rivulet of meltwater running down and then along the underside of his hand. The bottom panes were frost jacketed, those higher less so, the hot, rising air from the stove keeping them clear.
Continue reading “James and Pruina by Mitchell Toews”
I’ve kept this screensaver because it connects me with my dad. Every morning, he gets up, opens his flaps (of his tent) and is greeted by a sunrise. Wildlife and country air, instead of a phone alarm, wake him. I’ve never been camping, but I would like to; I’d love to camp with Dad, but the social says I’m not supposed to see him without supervision, and I doubt his tent would fit three of us. Still, one more year, they won’t be able to stop me.
Continue reading “My Dad the Dragonfly by James Staynings”
Last Day by JD Strunk
MODEL #392748: “GLENN”:Run program:// tap dance
Glenn glided through the factory door doing an impromptu tap dance. “Last day of work!” he said, shimmying up to Larry.
Continue reading “Last Day by JD Strunk”
(Adapted from the prose-poem, Mademoiselle Bistouri, by Charles Baudelaire)
I knew him for a doctor right away. He wasn’t tall, and he was dressed in black, from top to toe. A gentleman and a doctor. On a night visit, I shouldn’t wonder. Come with me, I said, even though he’d said he wasn’t a doctor. Not a doctor? Haha . . . Just like a doctor, that. It’s the humour. I’ll treat you, I said. I only live round the corner. You just call me Miss.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Doctor Everywhere by Geraint Jonathan”
Another week to round-up, Week 586 to be exact. (I’m sure I’ve asked before but, how many of our American friends are familiar with the episode of Bilko that had the song, ‘The Last Round-up in it??)
Anyhow, I’d like to start with a song. This is one of those weird songs as in I forget how much I love it until I hear it! I am listening to it as I write this, hence this beginning!!
The locals call it The Warp: the confusing intersection of roads named Past, Present and Future. It’s where travel signs, traffic lights, arrows and alerts, create a blurry sense of time and direction. Cross-eyed motorists take wrong turns or stop suddenly, like Tim in his sage-green hatchback.
Continue reading “Inside The Warp by Philip Matcovsky”
The moan of miller Beale’s crude bell is nearly swallowed by the third week of February cold. Gray stirs in his haybunk, clinging to Leith. There the marshlands stretch toward the North Sea, and Elspeth—his bride—walks the rain-dark fields beneath a graphite sky. Their daughters run in widening circles through the grass: Isobel serious beyond her years, Alisone all wild curls and laughter, and wee Violet stumbling after them, gap-toothed and breathless. Pregnant clouds drag their swollen white bellies across the Lowlands. The wind tastes of salt.
The bell tolls again.
Once.
Gray sits upright.
Continue reading “The Fields of Leith Christopher Kostyn Passante”
Tim Frank has published a number of stories with us and each and every one of them requires the reader to consider questions that the works create but do not answer.
This story, The Last Cigarette is a perfect example of addiction and social attitudes. Smoking is the Devil, even though I would like anyone to point out someone who drove the wrong way up a freeway exit and killed a family due to cigarettes. And what about doobie? Ultra popular in both poetry and prose, but I doubt that the smoke is special health smoke.
I’ve been smoking for over a half century and when it is clear that it will kill me I will not complain. Consequence for action is the soul of life, and death. I associate some of the finest moments in my life with smoking and I will never give any of those back. In this piece Tim shows our strange needs with subtlety; not necessarily addiction but in our requirement for Devils and others to blame our own faults on (sometimes that appears to be the only reason why we have parents, in art anyway).
It is always a pleasure to introduce work by Tim Frank and we invite him to add his thoughts about this story.
Comments on the Last Cigarette:
I was inspired by my realisation that I had to stop smoking, because the smoker’s cough and fear of death caused by the dreaded cigarette warnings finally got to me. But the ending, with the main character’s mother being a smoker and creating a cycle of addiction from childhood is completely fictional. I wanted to create a world where addiction is inescapable and deeply personal. The main character didn’t really stand a chance because of society and family ties, showing just how difficult the situation can be.
literally stories 