Crazy Ed Mahoney went out the back door on Monday to urinate in his garden. He believed, incorrectly, that he was saving on his water bill. His neighbors had given up on changing his ways. After seeing him in the act a few times, they learned not to look in the direction of his backyard at 7am, 1pm and 4pm when Ed would urinate like clockwork. Whatever else was wrong with Ed, he had an excellent prostate.
It was my wife, Esme, who suggested we get a pet for our children. “It will teach them responsibility,” she said.
“Sounds good,” I replied. However, I was not actually paying attention when she brought up the subject because I was going over my notes for a lecture on string theory. So, it came as a complete surprise when Esme and the twins arrived home from the pet store with a ferret.
Continue reading “Quantum Hamsters and Other Pet Anomalies by Hermine Robinson”
Day #16
The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook—Rule #1: Once you have arrived at your assigned location, hunker down and wait for ancillary instructions from your Assignment Coach.
4 a.m.
The crows quarrel over dead rat scraps in the gutter.
CNN, I haven’t turned it off for two weeks. Images of desert proxy-wars, percolate through the cable; ISIS driving US Iraq-abandoned Humvees and armoured vehicles; teenage recruits firing AK-47s into the Mosul sky; American Republican Party candidates debating penis size.
The assignment is to instigate a shakeup, by diverting the ginger haired sociopath’s motorcade down the street below my window. I have his picture taped to the wall, a smug man orbiting himself. He’s been granted Secret Service protection. That may complicate things. There’ll probably be revolution if I accomplish my assignment. A master class in failed democracy, for all those who care to attend.
Continue reading “The Little Rules of Engagement Handbook by dm gillis”
It was a day he learned too much about himself when the judges announced his drawing, 1st Place, and he heard the applause, and that night at the party, drank whisky for the first time, and loved how it made him feel. He was eighteen, and in a few more years, he flunked out of community college, and kept drinking anyway, until his wife, a local girl who gave him a son, left him after tolerating more humiliation than most women, but oh, he wasn’t done yet; it took until he lost his job as a used car salesman even though if he’d been sober til noon it would have been overlooked. He had nothing left, and sat in the common, and told passerby’s that life was unfair, and the townspeople knew who he was, and his story was nothing new.
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be a newt? To reside peaceably in an aquarium, rising every so often for a gulp of air, catching a worm in your thin amphibious mouth and being generally content? I often think about that. This is about a time when I thought about it a lot. It was the summer when I worked as a student intern at a senior center near Brighton Beach. I was pursuing a social work degree at Hunter College, and sharing an apartment in downtown Brooklyn with two other graduate students. It was a lonely time for me, and I kept several spotted newts in a terrarium for company, and a five disc CD player that I had on continuously when I was home to ward off the isolating silence.
Aleppo, Syria (AP) — Prior to joining the Tawheed Brigade in opposition to the Syrian government, Anwar Addat was a computer technician who never gave much thought to politics or religion. That was before a barrel bomb delivered by a government helicopter ignited a fire that killed his wife and two children. These days he goes nowhere without his AK-47 and body armor, and looks every bit the insurgent warrior he has reluctantly become.
That morning, a May Saturday, when Fernando “Fred” Norstrand first put on the police uniform, solid blue deep as a line of defense, bright buttons shining gold-like running down the front straight as ideas cemented in his mind, his wife stood in the bathroom doorway in open admiration of the new spectacle. He had only recently taken off a Navy uniform, discharged from service because of injury. They loved each other that morning with a new and silent abandon, their baby son still asleep, the day already lopsided in their favor, and the man of the house about to start a new job. He had been appointed as a special policeman of the town, assigned to the lone local theater to keep the kids in line, Saturday being the toughest start of all; popcorn, noise, kids away from parental control, let loose from their homes, very different from the few homes he’d visited during Pacific duty and the home he had grown up in.
Michael the orderly, before it had all come down to the most private of acts, remembered his wondering if Marty and Valerie, in their lives beforehand, before the catastrophic crashes, before cement and machines and phone poles adjusted to flames around the piles of their motorcycles, he was a bull in bed, she was the puma come down to drink. Images loomed early on, lively, kicking images on how they must have cut a path to the heart of their appetites, their excitements, from what he heard up and down the entire east coast. Even pinned now to lives in rolling chairs, they evoked a fierce amount of energy, fire and brimstone, taste and distaste. Even then he thought the world of them, wanted to be god on the hill for them, Thor or Odin or a damned good magician with a damned good wand. Hell, he had the black skin; all he needed was the black hat with a few secret compartments.
It’s been a good run by anyone’s standards. My dealers can attest to it. I lived for months upon months in a altered state of mind. Climbed mountains with no problem. Maintained self control when other times I would’ve lashed out. A chemically induced transcendence. The phone calls I made were always answered. It was a mutual gain for us all. They desired finance, I desired freedom. In the end we both came out on top. Well, all that’s come to an end now.
Continue reading “Living Life on the Other Side by Michael Marrotti”
Hi folks, a load of nonsense before I get to a tip that I think most of us need reminding of (and I REALLY have to include myself in this!)
I was just thinking on some of the comments that I have read from my fellow Editors over the last week and one was the word ‘Underwhelmed’… Don’t panic.. .It wasn’t about a submission, honestly, it wasn’t. I don’t lie. I haven’t got the memory, intelligence or energy but I thought on this word. I am underwhelmed by so many things. Space travel, I don’t give a monkeys! Confirming that time ripples; well whatever a monkey doesn’t give, that’s my thoughts on that! An up-to-date phone… Ditto… In fact any phone! I haven’t got one. I hate them. Gwen once asked me if I wouldn’t feel guilty if someone had died and I hadn’t a phone? My answer was quite simple; ‘Answering the phone wouldn’t have helped.’ I am underwhelmed about the attributes (another word I read this week) of a phone! Argue all you want! Do we really need a camera, the ability to turn on the heating or being able to go online to order a curry with a thing that we could have used to call and ordered a curry with? I am forty nine in a few months and I have gotten here without a phone so as far as I am concerned, Nokia, Samsung, IPhone and Sony are about as useful to me as male make-up. I wonder about that also! It is beyond me. Live and let live is what I say, as long as I don’t have to moisturise before I do it. That brings me to another word I heard this week and that was ‘Dinosaur.’ And again before anyone starts to think back to what they have called me, it was me who called myself that! You’ll all probably agree, especially after reading these first few paragraphs that my self-analysis is pretty close.
Now back to ‘underwhelmed’ – (My links are getting worse! I think I will try to get a job as a local DJ) George Martin, who we were all sad to learn of his passing, took on a group that underwhelmed every other producer and they were ‘The Beatles’… I felt I had to explain that ‘just in case’ we have any Justin Bieber fans as readers. I don’t think so, as much as my understanding is, they will all be on their phones and putting on their make-up. Don’t know what the girls will be doing! (I know – You saw that coming a mile away!) Anyway, he saw something and heard something that he knew was special and that is a huge talent in itself. Marilyn Monroe was getting nowhere until a photographer suggested that she change her hair colour. Now the point of all this is that it is other people who see beyond our own ideas. Sometimes we go down the wrong road. We are so blinkered by our understanding of a story that we don’t consider how it comes across to the reader. Everyone who has picked up a pen will have had this problem at one time.
So – tip for today – try to separate your knowledge of your story when reading it back. Look at it and question if it is the finished article. If not, mould like Martin or at the very least, change your hair colour!
Now to this weeks stories! We had a strangeness about them all. So all good then!!!
On Monday we had Jonathan Payne with his story Surrounded. This was a strange tale that makes you think about the self.
Our fellow editor Nik had his story published on Tuesday. The Water’s Edge is an atmospheric, unsettling and beautiful piece of writing.
Wednesday had us publishing another multi-contributer. The talented Mr Fred Foote gave us a story that had his Author truly living his plot.
Another old friend and supporter of the site is James McEwan. On Thursday he showed how good weird can be with his tale Table By The Window.
And Friday, a story that touches on a horror that many live with, Bruce Costello’s thought provoking One Dick, Two Sheryls.
There is so much emotion and question throughout all these superb stories. They have been a joy to read. And unlike all you poor souls who are reading this, we have not been ‘underwhelmed’ by any of them! (Ayr’s West Sound Radio Station is getting ma CV!!)
Hugh
literally stories 