Tag: short story

All Stories, Science Fiction

Living La Vida Extraterrestrial by Douglas Hawley

literallystories2014

I was chosen to write the history of the survivors of the destruction of earth that happened hundreds of years ago.  First, a few of us escaped by rocket to the planet of the Azari people for what seemed like three earth years based on the amount that we aged, but we may have been aging faster on a planet that does not match our biological cycles.  We can’t be certain.  Our atomic clock either broke or was sabotaged, so we could not judge the passage of time.  It didn’t help that Azari was illuminated somehow so it was never dark and the temperature was generated internally and remained consistent.  I might not have survived it if I didn’t have Sapphire Hendrix, the companion that I had met during the planning for escape from a doomed earth.

Continue reading “Living La Vida Extraterrestrial by Douglas Hawley” →

All Stories, General Fiction, Humour, Short Fiction

My Hero by Hugh Cron – Adult Content

gwencron

…I always wanted to have a shot at some of that inner dialogue speaking to me.

You know the shit that I’m talking about; the ‘Sex In The City’ voice, ‘True Romance’ and me hearing Alabama, or even I suppose, John-Boy from The ‘Waltons’. Any of them would have done and I wanted it to be from me for me.

It nearly happened. Once.

Continue reading “My Hero by Hugh Cron – Adult Content” →

All Stories, Science Fiction

Gleipnok Wakes by Steve Chatterton

literallystories2014

Gleipnok wakes to discover that sometime while sleeping she transformed into a big, hairy Earthling. Legs already hanging from the end of her once roomy sleep pod, she wriggles out and reaches with her mind for her crewmates. Thinking things like, “Ah!” and “Help!” and “I’m a big, hairy Earthling! How did that happen?”

Continue reading “Gleipnok Wakes by Steve Chatterton” →

All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Everything Nice by M J Spurr

literallystories2014

I first saw the sculpture about a month ago, walking to the Cumberland Farms with Matt to get beer and some papers. It was shimmering under the late day’s sun in the back of a fenced-in yard. Even from a distance, I could see the long spindly legs of the black metal spider clinging to the delicate netting of its web, waiting for prey. I was mesmerized.

Continue reading “Everything Nice by M J Spurr” →

All Stories, Fantasy, Short Fiction

Black Bear on White Paper by Desmond White

literallystories2014

In the Archial, what some call the Little Light Library, it is always night. The distant ceiling is a night’s sky held by pillars, and connecting those pillars are shelves of books coated in leather and dust. The only light comes from lanterns. Inside steel cages, white fires flicker eternally, generated by a lost art. The lanterns are stars if anything. The lower one travels, the bluer those stars. Deep enough and there are no lights at all.

Continue reading “Black Bear on White Paper by Desmond White” →

All Stories, General Fiction, Short Fiction

Ghosts By Desmond Kelly

literallystories2014

I see ghosts. I hear their voices. Watch them move across my vision. Sometimes they talk to me, but it isn’t them. It’s people from the past. They’re frozen in my memory. A word, a touch, a phrase. The what if’s and what might have been.

Continue reading “Ghosts By Desmond Kelly” →

All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

The Night of the Haunted by Michael McCarthy

literallystories2014

It´s a balmy evening, there´s a couple leaning out of a dimly lit window at the side of a house overlooking an alley. They´re both naked and their heads are wreathed in smoke from their cigarettes, its effect heightened by the intermittent blinking of a faulty street light. You can´t even see the moon or stars.

Let´s call her Kate and him Daniel.

Continue reading “The Night of the Haunted by Michael McCarthy” →

All Stories, Horror

The Nail in the Coffin by Maédeiva Myre

literallystories2014

I hear everything: the soft cry of my mother, the beep of the heart monitor, the whispers of the nurses, and the subtle hum of the air conditioner. I feel the rough texture of my hospital gown against my skin, the cold hand of the doctor every morning when he visits, and the warm hand of my mother every time she touches my cheek. I am awake. Wide awake.

Continue reading “The Nail in the Coffin by Maédeiva Myre” →

All Stories, General Fiction

Oh, the Wounds He Wore, Death His Neighbor (Jimmy the Meterman) by Tom Sheehan

literallystories2014

Small-eyed, small-eared, a mole perched like an ace of spades on one eyelid, a mastoid-depressed void behind one of those ears, pale of complexion, shoulders it seemed worn down by weights almost too ponderous for life, Jimmy Griffith was the essence of obscurity as he leaned on the bar of the Vets Club. All members knew Jimmy by name and by sight, but few had ever heard him say much more than a good morning or a goodnight, or “I’ll have my second beer now, Al,” or “Brownie,” if Brownie Latefox was on duty. This was the two-a-day ritual at the end of walking his route about town, measuring water consumption, reading the meters down in fieldstone cellars or the utility rooms of newer bungalows. Read the meters, jot the numbers, cheat a bit for a friendly face, or go a step further, like disconnecting a meter for six months at a time, not a soul at the water department or in the confines of Town Hall ever the wiser. Nobody knew how happy Jimmy was to have the job, nobody in God’s creation. Or why.

Continue reading “Oh, the Wounds He Wore, Death His Neighbor (Jimmy the Meterman) by Tom Sheehan” →