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Week 201: Graves, Literature and Almost Certainly Some Other Stuff

Almost sort of exactly 201 years ago, Jane Austen died. I must confess I haven’t read much (any) of her work despite Pride and Prejudice and Zombies being on my reading list for some time. Never being one to allow a lack of knowledge to get in the way of a good opinion however, I’m prepared to wager that her collective works didn’t contain many references to the humble kilogram.

Young Jane would have been almost sort of exactly 18 when the French said pas plus to the grain related measurements of the time and invented the kilogram. She would have been far too busy working on her short novel Lady Susan to bother with such new-fangled frippery. She no doubt noted however that the initial name for this kilogram was a grave and as such the literary seed for her zombie based works was sown.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Glooning the Chartreuse Lemon by Leila Allison

A Few Rings of Hell’s Bell Ago

The little god of unfounded happiness at an unlikely place seemed to be smiling on me. I was up 500,000 bit-pesos at the online Uruguayan poker site, and someone had finally restocked the Snax Machine in the lobby with chili-cheese Fritos. Yes, the good guys were winning, and no one was supervising my activities. I fondly recall whistling “Dance Ten; Looks Three” from A Chorus Line, prior to carb-loading for that long elevator ride back to my office, deep in the bowels of the Smiling Face of Darkness.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Lemondrop by Meghan Louise Wagner

I sat a long time before going up to the house. Vanessa lived on the left side of a duplex behind the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge. There was a pink beauty salon chair on the white paint chipped front porch. Weathered cardboard boxes filled with National Geographic magazines and empty Marlboro 100 packs were stacked in the corner. After I knocked at the door, it opened and I saw Vanessa standing there before me. I knew her as the regular who always asked for extra soymilk in her reusable coffee mugs but my manager called her Fat Madonna. I didn’t get the joke until he showed me a picture on his phone one day.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Elon by Olivia Parkinson

The day she left me, she left the fish. The gloopy, dead-brained goldfish sitting in our room. My room now, fuck her. I don’t miss her. She used to ask her if I missed her when she went away in the summer- not really I’d say, she’d come back in three weeks. That made her cry. Why do people cry when you tell the truth?

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All Stories, General Fiction

Mushrooms and Trolley Cars (Amanita Colyptraderma and Electric Street Cars) by Tom Sheehan

A friend of mine for many years, Eric Peavy, lived on the third floor of a tenement house right near the center of the town square graced by a circular green holding two huge elm trees with grand columns and huge umbrella limbs that spread for the season at hand. He was apt to break into an on-going conversation with a connecting remark based on his third–floor view of the square and what had come into his mind.

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All Stories, Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Simple Pleasures by Fred Vogel

Muffy had a feeling her relationship with her boyfriend was on rocky ground when he professed he loved her with most of his heart.

“Come on now, darlin’. I gotta keep a little of myself in reserve. Who knows when the next Dolly Parton might show up looking for a guy like me? There’s not a single red-blooded American man worth his salt who wouldn’t want a piece of that action.”

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All Stories, General Fiction

Tempest by Frederick K Foote

It is horrendous out here! like God’s troubling the waters. I’m by my lonesome in my eight-foot Jon boat with my ancient, three-horsepower motor. I don’t have time to worry before the storm’s crushing me. I have handled rough water on this lake before with the same setup. At worst I would just pull ashore anywhere I could and seek shelter until the storm passed. But not this time. The storm erupts so suddenly, the clouds overwhelm the sky so quickly and pervasively that my visibility drops from twenty miles to about three hundred feet – like God switched off the lights.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Last Words by Dawid Juraszek

Henry’s knuckles turned white as he clutched the scarred armrests, listening. The time has come, he thought. The oakwood throne suddenly seemed little more than a pile of firewood.

But the sound died in the halls.

Henry eyed the heavy old door. It looked forbidding, yet it let everyone come and go. Everyone but him, and him only.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Standing-to at Denby’s Creek by Tom Sheehan

Willard Joseph Lord Pufferton, late colonel of the 1st Regiment of Hodson’s Horse and later 10th Regiment of Bengal Cavalry (Lancers), India-released, Asia-departed, separated from the British Army in 1870, reined in his horse at the head of Denby’s Creek as it flowed from the heart of Earth in America’s Rockies foothills.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

A Dream Lover by Frederick K Foote

You’re alone hurrying by under cloudy night skies.

I’m lost in the shadows on the lips of the fetid alley. I’m feverish, near fainting, fading, fading away. You catch a glimpse of me, spy me, eye me, wonder, imagine me. You race away to lock your doors, check your windows.

In your simple underwear you slip between smooth, clean, cotton sheets and dream me, dream me tall, slender, strong.

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