His wife smiles as she looks over at him, slipping her hand over top of his. They sit in rented beach chairs not far from where their three small children are playing in the sand. Digging up ‘rivers’ for the sea to flow into and filter out of. Sand castles that are hastily built and quickly moved on from. Splashes in the cool surf washing far enough inland to get their ankles wet.
Continue reading “The Wave by D J Roosh”
Time for another delve into the darkest secrets of one of our favourite writers. Alexander Sinclair first joined the Literally Stories family back in 2020 and has built up quite a list of shorts. It is a fascinating mix of work, well written, intriguing, and entertaining rather like his answers to our writer’s interview questions. Here is what he told us. p.s. This editor is fascinated by his answer to question 16!?
Continue reading “Sunday Whoever”
I sat in Clarice’s office every week. My bedroom closet was bigger. A black leather couch with holes in it took up half the room. White stuffing like cottage cheese spilled out of it. Her pine desk overflowed with files. Clarice had more books on her wall than a library. They were in boxes on the floor. All that knowledge. Nowhere to put it.
Continue reading “Fractured by Lisa Lahey”
It’s been almost a month now since she first became acquainted with pain.
When she’d first glanced at him, half dazed under the strong pull of morphine, she knew straight away, even then, that she would never forget that face.
It was the face of a young man; Plump at the cheeks and lips and sharp at the jaws. Round and soft where one would expect it to be, yet angular in all the right places.
A perfectly balanced face, she thought.
However, it was the eyes –or rather the lack of them- that grabbed her attention, almost by the throat.
Continue reading “When Pain Grew a Beard by Rania Hellal”
Okay. I’m being serious now. Not that I haven’t been serious all along. But this I gotta say. If there’s anything…anything at all that’s important to me, it concerns this matter—this matter of the heart.
So…
Continue reading “Initiation by Fiver”
Ghosts of the old world make their presence still known upon the moors. Known by their ancient stone walls and standing stones that still litter the landscape. The walkers, incongruous in their primary colours, garish symbols of the twenty first century.
Continue reading “Threshold by Amy Tryphena”
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”
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