We wish all our readers and writers a Happy Christmas and a Merry and successful New Year.
Here are our reflections on 2015 …
Tag: short story
Literally Stories – Week 54
Tomorrow we end our year at Literally Stories with reflections: an address from each of the LS Editors in a fashion far removed from anything Papal or Monarchical.
Today we take our usual look back on the week’s stories.
Epistemology by Frederick K. Foote
Knowledge is useful information to a particular being at a particular place and a particular time. GSM, (age fourteen) UC Berkeley Thesis Outline.
My sister sits across from me in the coffee shop, legs akimbo, hands flying like spasmodic birds, face full of light, glowing as if she is in the throes of post-coital bliss. She is wired, high, buzzing, on the edge of space, about to break the bounds of gravity.
“Sis, where is my nephew? You just disappear, and I’m used to that, but his cousins miss him, and so do Fidelity and I.”
A Boy Called If by James Smith
My father once told me that to be a man you must protect your family. The Reverend told me that you can only be called a man once you have taken another man’s life. They are both wrong. There are no such thing as men, only animals, living in the wild and fighting and killing each other until there is no one left to fight and kill. Here in the jungle we are wild things, fighting a war that started long before any of us were born and will continue long after we are gone.
Overpowered by Diane M Dickson
It shoulda been okay. Tommy told me it’d be fine. “You worry too much Davey. You’re as bad as a whinging woman. What about this and what about that. It’ll be fine.”
Well, I ask you – “As bad as a whinging woman” and him supposed to be my mate. My best mate. Anyway what could I do then? I had to go along with it didn’t I?
The Rise and Fall of Johnny Thunders by Adam Kluger
David Burstein was not quite sure how it started exactly.
You ride the subway for years and after a while, weird shit just happens, right?
David was with a couple of his new publicists or interns or whatever attractive young women who work for free in a shit economy want to be called — when it happened.
The old woman looked a little bit off.
Continue reading “The Rise and Fall of Johnny Thunders by Adam Kluger”
Literally Stories – Week 53 – ‘The Penultimate Week’
The Penultimate Truth is a novel by one of my favourite authors, Philip Kindred Dick (b. 1928 — d.1982).
Pee-Kay-Dee — as fellow D***heads call him — story, is set in a Post WW111 earth ravaged by nuclear weapons and based upon one of his countless short stories, namely, The Defenders (1953).
The novel was published in 1964 in what many regard as Dick’s Golden Era, which included The Man in the High Castle (1962) that won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1963.
Whilst The Penultimate Truth won’t feature too highly in devotees top ten lists, as it lacks the many-layered aspects of his best work, it is still a good book.
The World Jones Made (1956), Time Out of Joint (1959), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Ubik (both 1969), Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974) and A Scanner Darkly (1977) illustrate that throughout his life PKD continued to grow as a writer of original, philosophical fiction, albeit his latter years being increasingly devoted to an exploration of theological matters — most famously with Valis (1981).
Week 54 will herald the last round-up of stories published on LS in 2015.
We return 4 January 2016.
In honour of Phil I have dubbed Week 53 ‘The Penultimate Week.’
Continue reading “Literally Stories – Week 53 – ‘The Penultimate Week’”
The Man Who Lost Everything by Erica Verillo
Zayde died last Saturday. This afternoon we gathered to attend a service over a plain pine coffin and to remember him over cold cuts on rye. I remembered my grandfather chiefly as a madman.
“He died happy,” said my mother. “That’s all that matters.”
Continue reading “The Man Who Lost Everything by Erica Verillo”
Category 5 by Emily Tiedtke
He hadn’t meant to do it. As his muscles strained against their tendons, sweat pouring from his brow, reality blurred like the trees standing behind rain-covered windows. Adrenaline coursed though his veins, filled his mouth with a metallic taste- He wondered if she’d tasted it too, in those few brief moments of chaos.
He hadn’t meant to do it. Really. But, in the moment, it was the only choice he had.
~
Jason Mattis was old. Not in the physical sense — though a few gray hairs had begun to work their way into his shadow of a beard — but in what he’d experienced over his 26 years of life. Growing up, Jason had watched his mother deteriorate in a mess of tubes and needles and medication, the whirring machines sucking the life from her as fuel for their colorful blinking lights. Sunken eyes, sagging skin, and the shadowy shapes of bones resting just beneath the surface. Smaller and smaller upon that white bed, until one day, she simply wasn’t there anymore.
Hate Circle by Sam Baldassari
Like the agonizing drip of a faulty faucet, they file into the church of my youth. They wear black clothing and looks of pity. There are many of them and they mean nothing to me.
I sit far away from the others, perched in the pew like a crooked angel on top of a spruce tree, uncomfortable and temporary. The austere wooden seat is familiar from the Christmases and Easters I spent here, the two days of the year my mother thought it important to be Christian. Two too many, if you ask me.
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