As regular visitors will know, we sometimes receive submissions that don’t fit into the usual scheme of things but we want to publish because of the quality of the writing, or the message, or sometimes something special about the author. This is one of those. We thought this deserved a moment in the sun:
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Him Her Them Us by Victor Kreuiter”
The Introduction
This is my first wrap of 2026. A few weeks away have made me flabby because I am unnaturally lazy. Therefore, like an athlete gone to seed, I will pull on the sweats and attempt to get in shape by writing about small pointless items and work my way into good enough form to intelligently write about this week’s group of stories. All within a few paragraphs. I aim to put a point on pointless, to sharpen its, well, pointy, or at least pointier end, then use it to etch profound wisdom on the corbomite* walls of public inanity. (*Extremely hard and potentially explosive fictional mass invented by Captain James T. Kirk, known associate of Hardcourt Fenton Mudd, a suspected interstellar Jeffrey Epstein of the 23rd Century.)
Continue reading “Week 567- Superfluous Quotation Marks”
It’s nighttime, and- look, I won’t get into what’s gone on. I won’t get into Jenny or into what’s happening with the kids or any of it. I think it’s simpler than all that. And- it’s terrible. I don’t mean to say it isn’t. I’m just focusing on what I can change. There are people in terrible trouble and something’s gotta be done. Nothing can be done about Jenny. And the kids, I don’t know. I just don’t know. Anyway. It’s nighttime, which isn’t unusual. I am having dinner at the diner again. I sit in the booth across from the windows into the St. Pat’s rec hall. I watch him. This is the third night in a row after a few weeks waiting. I know something is coming because I’ve spent good time with thinking about it. I can feel it as if it were mine.
Continue reading “Pennsylvania Man by Tony Godino”
According to the man at the agency, half a meter’s rainfall over two days was all it took to so loosen the soil the local cemetery gave up its coffins. Dozens of them, he said, dozens of coffins bobbing along half submerged amid the general flow of debris – tables, wardrobes, phone boxes, and so on . . .
Continue reading “Installation, by Geraint Jonathan”
As Molly pushed her dolls’ faces together and danced them around her bedroom window sill, she could see Mr. and Mrs. Green in their house next door. Molly named her favorite boy doll Bill and her prettiest girl doll Jill – last name Green, but no one else knew that.
Continue reading “Missing by Kayla Cain”
“Keep your eyes on the road, your hand upon the wheel…”
– The Doors
“This land is your land…” – Woody Guthrie
“Superman never made any money / savin’ the world from Solomon
Grundy / and sometimes I despair / the world will never see another
man like him.” – “Superman’s Song,” Crash Test Dummies, from
The Ghosts that Haunt Me
I used to leave in the middle of the night, solo, mostly.
It was the 1990s. I was in my 20s. My procedure for road trips in those days was simple.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Roadhouse Blues an Essay by Dale Williams Barrigar”
Here we are at the first of the New Year with Week 566
Well, that’s the festivities over for another year. I hope you all have had a restful or mad time or a bit of both. I had some beautifully wrapped presents this year. I received a life size Dalek, a lucky horse shoe, an inflated beach ball and an anchor. I was grateful but not one of them was a surprise.
Continue reading “Week 566 -Obvious Prezzies, Paul Newman Was Brilliant And A Nod To Johnny Kidd And The Pirates.”
Content that some readers may find upsetting – refer to the tags on the bottom of the page
Small towns are quiet places at night, especially the town of Hush. That’s what made it the ideal place for eight-year-old Sammy Keen to live in. The skinny boy with piercing dark eyes, a towering forehead, and large, floppy ears looked forward to bedtime every night, unlike his friends at school, who cherished the day and its fun activities under the bright sun. Changing into his pajamas, he’d jump into bed and turn off the lights. A smile would form on his face as he gazed at the open window and began to listen to the sounds outside, for Sammy was a gifted child with a wholly unique talent and the intelligence to utilize it.
Continue reading “Night Sounds by Tom Koperwas”
Weekends are for my brother. I try to see him on Saturdays, but sometimes it’s Sunday. He doesn’t know one day from the next, so I don’t guess it matters. They limit his time with the other patients. I wish they wouldn’t. Even if he doesn’t talk, he might like listening.
Continue reading “It Happened on Wednesday by Foster Trecost”
“Hey there pretty lady, lookin’ good!”
“Hi Chris, didn’t expect to see you here. Alone and on a school night!!”
“What the fuck, I needed a drink! And I really don’t give a shit about the job, so, so what if I go in half-mangled…What about you? Waiting for someone?”
Continue reading “Market Place by Hugh Cron – Adult Content”
literally stories 