In a house in the woods, smoke churned and twined through the red bricks and out into the cold autumn air. A very pale girl sat on a sloping hill and watched the smoke huff and puff and disappear.
She remembers now. It does not always stay with her, like a word on the tip of your tongue. She can almost taste it but in the end it evades her, staying silent and unknowable. Today is different.
Continue reading “Friendship by Brooklyn Peters”
Here we are at Week 475…Man that’s a big number…Not as big as three squillion but what can you do?
We receive so many stories that are cliches and stereotypical. Now these all have to be considered. There is a reason that they are cliches and stereotypical and that is that they are there. We’ve mentioned this many times before.
Continue reading “Week 475 – Are You One? An Oscar Winner And Three Times Tainted.”
She was the craggy-faced, big-boned, broken-nose blonde on the ripe side of 50 working the night shift at the front desk at the small New Hampshire Hotel.
Continue reading “Checking In by Frederick K Foote”
Tonight, there was a man in my room. He appeared when I turned out the lights. He wasn’t there before. And then he was. Crouched at the foot of my bed. Smiling
It’s just his white eyes. His dark pupils. Always looking at me. His teeth are glowing in a big smile as he stares at me. The whites of his eyes pronouncing the void of his pupils as their darkness looks unblinkingly at me. Ready to welcome me into bed.
Continue reading “The Smiling Man at the Foot of My Bed by Noah Love”
I walk in; he’s watching Andrei Rublev walk through a shoddy doorway into the rain and disrobe.
“That’s an oldie,” I say. “Are you finding it any good?”
“Hmm,” My son hems. “It’s a lotta doorways. And he’s not very nuanced.” Done thinking, his face flashes. “Don’t spoil anything if you’ve seen it.” Still hung up on the Citizen Kane snafu…
Continue reading “The Trip by Dillon Cranston”
I knew I wanted her for a model when I saw the portrait selection at the Portland Art Museum. She was painted hanging out of the passenger seat of a car waving at something unseen by the museum visitors. I don’t know if I’m right, but I thought of early Marilyn Monroe.
Continue reading “Twin Sisters by Doug Hawley”
And what is a sin if God himself didn’t see it?
That is one of the finest lines in our archives. And it appears in The Hive by Rania Hellal. I usually like to lay some time between a tale’s first appearance then as a rerun. But it doesn’t feel needed here. I think that it will be a fine thing to bring it back and urge those who missed it the first time to have a look.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Hive by Rania Hellal”
Quest
No one calls in requests to radio stations anymore. No one there to answer the phone if they did. Even if you could, I really doubt that “I dunno what it is called, but I saw a Lexus shaking to it at a stop sign this morning” would jog many happy memories. Besides, no need. It’s all there for the picking and would have to be awfully damn obscure if it isn’t found someplace online. I miss doing my own detective work. I miss it the same way I miss the death of off seasons and the way nothing used to happen on Sunday–before the world acquired a similarity to supermax prison cells, in which the lights are on 24 hours a day.
Continue reading “Week 474: The Quest; Five Stars; Little Lists”
The other week I encountered a most unusual sport. You may know him. Wilson Mizner is a Broadway playwright, fine art forger, fixer of boxing matches, California hotel manager, and above all a professional gambler in all games concerning chance. His God-given talent of seduction enticed me into one game of cards I will never forget. The evening prior, the quick-witted 47-year-old traded a pistol fired by Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral for a mint condition 1922 ‘green pea’ Aston Martin, which he swapped for a remote ice-fishing shack on Devil’s Lake. He bet the icehouse on a game of war.
Continue reading “An Overnight Train to Minnesota by A.R. Carrasco”
literally stories 