Tag: Short Fiction

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

Notion by Chris Klassen

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“It’s a lovely day,” my friend, a small sweet person, said to me as we stood on the lawn next to the sidewalk on a warm morning, “and I want to take you to my favourite place, a place I frequent for peace and calm and gentle thinking.” I had never heard of this penchant of hers before, even though we had known each other for a long time. She began walking, meditation-like, with soft quiet steps, and I followed more clumsily. The sidewalk was dust-swept and the grass on each side was manicured meticulously like it had been treated with scissors, like a hair stylist had trimmed it instead of a landscaper. We walked silently for a minute or two.

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All Stories, auld author, Writers Reading

Writers Reading – Review by Dale Willliams Barrigar 

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Kafkaesque

Franz Kafka has a sixty-something-word story called “The Watchman” in the translation from German. In this piece, the narrator keeps running back and forth in front of the watchman in order to taunt him, while also being terrified that he might be arrested at any moment, but unable to desist. In sixty or so words, Kafka encapsulates the outcast outsider, the paranoid underdog known as the modern human being: the contemporary everyman.

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Latest News, Short Fiction

Week 511 – Don’t Let Them kid You, Go Out For A Regular Beer and Inappropriate Ink.

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Here we are at Week 511.

I hate this time of year.

I hate the greed of the supermarkets – Just look at any dangling clip-strips, dump bins and every piece of space that is occupied by some shite or another.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller, Fantasy

Baby Blues by Jack Powers

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Cass had been on the Cold Case Time Travel squad eight years when I replaced her partner, Hoss. We’d done things differently in Present-Day Homicide so I shut up and listened. Cass was a pro, by the book mostly–she could even fix the damn machine! And since no other towns could afford the traveler fees, we’d be in ’60s Harlem one day and ’30s Greenwich the next. I’m guessing they brought me in for the Harlem cases. Brothers don’t tend to open up to two pale folks from the future. Of course, they weren’t supposed to know we were from the future, but occasionally our Era Lingo implants malfunctioned.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Horrible Relocation by Marco & Liam Etheridge

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A cross-country move is a big change, I get that, but no way I deserve this nightmare I’ve landed in. The relocation wasn’t even my idea. Doctor’s orders, right? The doc said I needed a drier climate and less stress. And the move did lower my stress level, at least initially. Putting three thousand miles between me and the cops, that’s a hidden bonus. Needless to say, I didn’t mention that to the good doctor.

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All Stories, General Fiction

War Games by Alan Rice

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Sammy was often mistaken for being younger than he actually was. He was short for his age, and skinny, and wore black-rimmed glasses and white shirts buttoned up to the very top. He had a high, broad forehead and his face narrowed down to a pointed chin; his big, dark eyes were set very far apart, halfway between the brow line and his chin, and his mouth often appeared little more than a dot beneath a small, sharp nose. His hair was black, long, and unstyled; it just hung from his crown like a toupee that had been put on wrong. With a pair of pointy ears, he would have made the perfect cartoon space alien.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Jesu-Vape by Robin Dennis

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Reader Alert – Please refer to tabs

So I’m yankin’ this thing out the drainpipe, getting’ blood up me cuffs, while those little twats are creasin’ up in the car park. They’ve proper mashed it up, n’all: it’s comin’ out in handfuls; I can feel its guts through me rubber gloves.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Orville Baumgardner and the Morning Glories byJames Hanna

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Author’s Note

Orville Baumgardner is the chattiest of men. He grew up in an Indiana farm town, graduated from a small rural college with gentlemen’s Cs, and used his gift of gab to get elected to the Indiana House of Representatives. Orville prides himself on having read over two hundred books, including most of the classics, yet sustained a career as a populist politician by promoting deep state conspiracy theories to his constituents. After twenty years, Orville gave up politics because he had a crisis of conscience. He has since lectured on numerous topics, including abortion, book banning, and corporate corruption, and his spiels have appeared in many literary journals. Although he has recently left this world, he continues to lecture in the afterlife.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Charlotte by Jeremy Akel

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Birdie was the strongest, bravest, most determined girl in her neighborhood. Everyone knew it; her big sister Charlotte said so. Birdie loved her home. She loved the way the honeysuckle perfumed the sidewalk outside her apartment. She loved the plant’s delicate flowers, the tiny explosions of pink and red. She even loved the cooler months, when flowers lose their bloom and fall, and paint the ground in Technicolor. Most of all she loved her sister. Charlotte was so beautiful. Her hair curled and zig-zagged, and her eyes reminded Birdie of Momma’s homemade caramel.

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