For this week we have a wee change. Apparently it’s as good as a rest. So I will get on with the review and take it from there.
Continue reading “Week 107 – Fledglings, Success And Rhino Skin”
Tag: short stories
What Grows in the Garden by Kathryn Lord
The tiny clearing off to the side was cooler than the obscenely voluminous garden with its organized cacophony of colors – massed vermilions and oranges alongside indigos, violets, and fuchsias, eye-popping yellows and the occasional calm of white or cream. Cedars bent over an exquisite pool, granite lined, with water more crystalline than glass. Almost lost between moss-padded banks that nearly met, a miniscule stream fed the pool, dribbling over mammoth slate slabs stacked like pricey leather-bound books resting on deep emerald velvet.
After the Party by Andrew Miller
Her chiming phone, the ring tone meant to be soothing, shattered their sleep. Alice sat straight up. “Yes-yes, what is it?”
It was Mrs. Johnson, two doors away. Her daughter had not returned from last night’s party at the beach. Did Keith know what beach? Could he go down there? It was almost light.
Profiteers of the Second Chance Saloon By Titus Green
I shiver in the darkness and clasp my precious cigarette in my fingers. It is the last of a carton bartered the hard, humiliating way and purchased with filthy favours given to foreign men with sweaty skin and dark complexions in the twilight shadows of the prison latrines. I dropped my self-respect into a volcano long ago, where it burnt to cinders. I have no possessions, and no assets to bequeath the wife and children I don’t have. Time is the only property I have left, and it is soon to be foreclosed. Days are the only currency I hold, and they are wasting away like the British pound. Time is just an empty word, drained of its relevance. Getting to the end of each day is my raison d’etre now, because I am a death row prisoner waiting for my summons.
Continue reading “Profiteers of the Second Chance Saloon By Titus Green”
Week 105 – Stories, From Us And Happy Holidays
First and foremost, we send all our thoughts and sympathies to Adam and his family at this sad and difficult time.
As much as he can, we wish him and his family a peaceful Christmas.
Continue reading “Week 105 – Stories, From Us And Happy Holidays”
This is the End by Adam Kluger
When it came it was sudden.
There had been a bunch of false alarms and near misses.
Paul Buckington had avoided the inevitable for as long as he could and at some points he thought perhaps, Providence played a part, and at others he credited himself with simply persevering against daunting odds.
The Inescapable Touch of Sunset By Leila Allison
The atavistic avatar dropped from space:
“I did it only to see the look on our face.”
1
On his way across the short overpass that unofficially connects Corson Street to Torqwamni Hill, Holly glances down at a small house below. It’s an ugly little fist-like rental that had gone up during the Second World War—as had countless others of its kind in Charleston. Like the caw of a crow or a bit of dandelion fluff getting stuck to your cheek, this house exists only in the moment you share with it. Yet nearly thirty years gone by, the same house had once unclenched and gave Holly a touch of honesty; thus it had it had earned in his mind its own small history.
Continue reading “The Inescapable Touch of Sunset By Leila Allison”
A Silent Playground by Sean Crouch
The world stops. Lincoln no longer hears the sounds of recess through the open kitchen window facing the grade school playground. In the living room, his wife holds fast, motionless, her words clipped as quickly as shears snip a stem. The silence rushes over him the way water envelops a diver. It’s startling and complete.
Watan By Matthew Richardson
Ah sir, you come upon me just as I am closing for the night. No no, it is not a problem to remain open whilst you make your purchase. Come in, I insist! I would not have you come out all this way on a night such as this and leave empty handed. Commutes are soulless enough endeavours, without being denied sustenance for the sake of an old man closing his establishment five minutes early.
Leaving for Viviers by Tom Sheehan
The boy slipped from a hole in the remnants of a stone wall that marked one section of his grandfather’s farm, crawled behind a small tree, and stared down into the valley. At least a week before, shells from distant cannon and mortar had severed the wall in dozens of places, and a crater sat where the chicken house used to be. The pig pen, from the dead of winter, was a new abomination, with the small fence heaved asunder and unknown body parts strewn every which way.
literally stories 