The key to a good night’s sleep was a cold room and a lot of blankets.
It was 61 degrees inside and there were four on his bed at the moment, but none of them were in the right spots, yet.
Continue reading “Two is the loneliest number by Aaron Kaplan”
Breslin was dead now. Undeniably so. All you had to do was go back and read some of the old columns to see the talent and anger and originality. He was just another one who had made his mark and moved on.
Continue reading “What would Breslin have thought? by Adam Kluger”
I was feeling nostalgic this week due to one of our new writer’s story. I’ve also been listening to a lot of 70’s music. I took this a bit further and had some Horlicks. I remembered with fondness just how disgusting it was.
Continue reading “Week 122 – Decades, Deprivation And Pubic Hair”
One sunny morning, Pete Adcock and his seven year old son Nicky came out of the side door to their house and climbed in to Pete’s old Ford Popular. It was a rare sight to see – a car on a council estate – but if you wanted to split hairs you might point out that Pete’s house wasn’t actually on the estate, it was right next door to it and Pete owned his house – unlike many of his neighbours.
Renfield and Ethan Stoker-Belle are the proud owners of a “Spirit-enhanced house.” This used to mean “haunted house,” and the bump-in-the-night types within were known as “ghosts.” Whether you think it political correctness run amok, or simply a verbal showing of respect for the departed, a plurality of the individuals on the Otherside have a strong antipathy for the word “ghost.” You must call them Spirits. Nearly all Spirits find the G-word offensive, for it implies a state of existence inferior to that of the original item. This hoary old stereotype is going to be hard to dislodge from the human psyche; and not helping matters that much is the haughty attitude of some Spirits, who seem to deny that the only thing they had to do to become what they are is die. Still, the dead outnumber the quick by a ratio of nearly thirty to one. Nowadays this vast once silent majority refuses to rest in peace.
Continue reading “In Through the Wow-Signal Emoji By Leila Allison”
By the time Slap Happy was born, his parents, Jacob and Evelyn Happerson, had abandoned the circus life and were running a successful dry cleaning business in Canton, Ohio. Gone was the excitement of The Big Top, replaced by hard work and the strong desire to provide their only child with nothing but the best. Jacob held out hope that maybe one day he and Evelyn would return to the circus so his son could follow in his old man’s clown shoes, but Evelyn was quick to put the kibosh on any such idea.
At sixteen, Thommy Lemolo broke her leg while playing high school softball. She’d been tracking a pop-up in the outfield and had stepped in a small hole, which did big damage to both her right tibia and fibula. “Never break a bone before, kid? By the look of that leg I’d say you got two for the price of one,” said the vaguely cute X-ray tech as he prepared to take images of her injury at the hospital. A good thick shot of morphine had knocked back her pain, and it also made people funnier and vaguely cuter than they were prior to the drug’s administration.
Continue reading “It Varies From Fool to Fool by JC Freeman”
His black containment suit stood out stark against the all-encompassing white and gray of the forest about him. Specks of white swirled through the chilly air, both whipping and wafting against the thick outer padding of the Level A gear; still, he could feel the cold seeping through the protective layers and across his skin. He shivered as he huffed his way through shin-thick drifts of white, his thick boots awkward to trek in, his breather working overtime in the closed hood about his head, and his gloved hands grasping his rifle with determination.
Every day Luisa left a new piece of art at the foot of his bed. They were washcloths shaped like animals, a different one each day. She was very talented.
He knew it was Luisa because she signed her work. She left a card that said Your Room Was Cleaned By ____________. It’s my pleasure, and Luisa wrote her name on the line. He suspected she left those cards in all the rooms she cleaned, but maybe she was reaching out. She’d written her name there, by hand, just for him. She dotted the i with a circle.
The delivery guy from Arturo’s Italian Restaurant had a sixth finger. It waved about like a little pink antenna. Horace always gave him a big tip and tried not to stare at it. They would link eyes and smile at each other. There was a tacit agreement not to stare at the unusual little digit —and to tip big…and move on. Every time that Horace ordered from Arturo’s he forgot about the delivery guy. The chicken parmesan was so outstanding that the gross-out factor at the door was but a minor inconvenience.
literally stories 