I wish you wouldn’t go with him tonight. If you get caught…” Judith’s voice bounced off the yellowed porcelain tiles as she leaned closer to her sister at the counter in the ladies’ room. Judith stared at her own thin, chapped lips as Leda bared her teeth at her reflection in the chipped mirror and painted her lips a bright scarlet.
In my quest to find something interesting to say in Hugh’s absence this week I did a quick Google search for the significance of the number 179.
As you can imagine the results were thrilling.
I can confirm 179 is a prime number – an Eisenstein Prime no less as it is indivisible even by complex Gaussian integers, and Chen Prime because it is 2 less than the next prime number.
Continue reading “Week 179 – Borders, gateways and tales to tell our children”
Every four years the world holds its collective breath as teams from across the globe battle it out to be crowned the champions of the world.
Skill. Power. Precision.
It’s got the lot.
Sadly the Rugby World Cup is another 15 months away and so for the next month we’ve got to put up with a bunch of overpaid whiners kicking a round ball across Russia.
Continue reading “Week 178 – Wordplay, Stories and a Post of Two Halves”
Robert got up as he did every school day morning to his six-fifty alarm. Liz, his wife, was still asleep. She didn’t get up until seven. He woke his son Jonathan to begin the process of supervising him for getting ready for school. As the boy reluctantly dressed, Robert went to the kitchen and took his blood sugar. It was high, so he cursed under his breath and thought about all the bad things he’d eaten the night before.
Sally didn’t think much of the Lyft driver. He wore his hat at a sideways slant. When he turned the wheel of the hybrid, he made fight noises like Sally used hear in those Shaw brother’s movies she watched with her dad.
It was amazing to him that at a time like this, he should feel so completely and utterly alive.
Continue reading “Cornwallis Surrenders by A. Elizabeth Herting”
Katerina Valencia Contrerez is an angry old bruja who lives outside the village of Dos Cruces. She hates her nephew, Cecilio. She beats him with her fists and chases him away. So Cecilio made her a beautiful walking stick to get in her good graces. Now Katerina beats him with her stick. The villagers say the lesson is, don’t arm your enemies. They say Cecilio is a great teacher.
Continue reading “The Dancer, Maria Elena Gonzalez by R Harlan Smith”
“Hey, Beth, you got a minute? I need your advice.”
“Greg, not really, however, I’ll always make time for a call from my ex-husband and the father of our children. First of all, you should move out of that horribly dangerous Oak Park place where you have domiciled my children. Apparently, the law enforcement thugs have a year-round open season on black people in Sacramento.”
Continue reading “The Talk Part Three – Driving While Black by Frederick K Foote”
We live in Gino’s Café, Beaufort South Carolina, Minerva and I. Here’s the reason why I called her that, before you start a-wondering too: the moment she came out of me, she already had this face like she’s thinking about something all the time, so Gino said to call her Minerva – ‘Like the goddess of Wisdom,’ he says – and I did. It’s not like there was anyone else around to offer me a different name.
Over the years, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who wanted to discuss the end of the world with me, but Jeremy Smedley was a bird of a different color. He didn’t have a standard preferred pseudonym, for one. He was willing to speak with me on the phone without turning on any dodgy homemade anti-surveillance devices. Most significantly, I didn’t have to meet him in a church sub-basement, a hidden personal library, or anything one might describe as a bunker. Jeremy felt no need to conceal his galactic insights, instead offering to meet me on a charming grassy hill overlooking an otherwise charmless Midwestern town.
Continue reading “Mr Sunshine and the Instant Dawn by Andrew Johnston”
literally stories 