Category: Fiction

Fiction by Nov 6, 202111:56 am

Requiem for a Home Cooked Meal by Krystian Morgan

Alice was yet again in the kitchen, checking on the food being kept warm. It looked appetising when it was ready over an hour ago, but the prolonged stay in the oven irradiated any vitality it once had. Steamed greens lay pallid and mournful. Within the casserole, the lamb, root veg and liquor have broken down into a single homogenous mash, and a thick skin has formed over the top, already tanning under the orange light of the cooker.

She hears the front door and his usual clatter when returning home. He ascends the stairs without fanfare; no explanation for his lateness, nor for not replying to her texts and calls enquiring as to his whereabouts. Just his work bag slung into a mangled shape in the vestibule and soaked-through shoes bleeding dirty rainwater onto the floor.

Fiction by Nov 6, 202111:55 am

Best Foot Forward by Riley Winchester

On the morning of May 27, 2017, I woke up and couldn’t remember if I get out of bed with my right foot or my left foot first. This triggered a crisis in my mind that left me paralyzed in bed. Right or left? Left or right?

What was the impetus behind this podiatric enigma? I hadn’t the slightest clue. I realized that I had never once woken up and deliberated on which foot should lead, nor had I any intimation as to which foot usually led when I woke up. But there must be a dominant foot that I led with every morning. The body is a muscle with rigid memory. This worried me further and bolstered my crisis. What other everyday aspects of my existence was I ignorant to? How little did I know of myself?

Fiction by Nov 6, 202111:54 am

My Friend Has a Name by Tam Eastley

His blood pools on the tiles, red and thick. I know I should feel something, to see him lying there, but where one would expect denial and sadness and fear, there is nothing. You probably think this is horrible of me, that I am monstrous, but I am balancing between two worlds right now and it is hard not to tumble all the way down into one of them. Will you judge me if I say he is already starting to look like meat? Like flesh wrapped in clothes?

My hands are nubs but I manage to push myself up out of the bath anyway and I slide against the porcelain because my skin has started to go translucent and onion-y. I lean in close and I am reminded that he is in fact human. It is the smell – soil and sweat and last night’s shampoo. A hint of metal. So unlike me, all pickled and peppery.

Fiction by Nov 6, 202111:53 am

Another Baby by Kevin Stadt

Emily stood in front of the coffee pot at the kitchen counter, holding her empty mug and trying to talk herself out of pouring another cup. Her teeth buzzed already, and she’d been having trouble sleeping lately.

She listed all the reasons. The caffeine made her sleep for shit and then that led to her being tired and wanting more coffee the next day. And of course it then fed into her drinking more wine in the evenings just to take the edge off, which was a whole other issue. She’d also read lately that it was especially bad for people with anxiety issues and panic attacks.

Fiction by Oct 1, 20219:26 am

Collapses of the Night Sky by Laysha Ostrow

3:33 a.m. Every night for the past six weeks. In the long moments before dawn, far away but imminent. The sleeplessness wasn’t just annoying, it was persecutory. Waking in a pool of her own sweat, blazing like she was running in her dreams, chased by demons. Quickly falling into sleep only to be woken with a start.

And why 3:33? Or was it sometimes 3:23, or 3:43, or even 4:33?

Fiction by Oct 1, 20219:23 am

Clothes Make the Man by Tom Barlow

Sybil had known her brother Wyatt was gay since he was 14 and sold his BMX bike to pay for a ticket to a Madonna concert. However, in the 15 years since he ran away from home, they had avoided the subject during their infrequent phone conversations, he in San Francisco, she back in Columbus.

Although she and her husband Ian worked hard to show no prejudices in that direction, she’d been just as glad to avoid sharing her brother’s orientation with their children rather than try to explain it to Xavier and Bailey. At eight it might just confuse the boy, and Bailey, now a teenager, had reached the point where anything having to do with her family, from her father’s bicycle commute to Sybil’s hand-knit Christmas sweaters, was deeply humiliating.

Fiction by Oct 1, 20219:19 am

Undying Love by Kip Knott

I suppose the last straw was when I asked Ophelia to lay on the floor so I could trace her body to make sure the coffin would cradle her perfectly.

My father was a carpenter, and his father before him, and Jesus before that. From the time I could hold a saw and heft a hammer, I had been able to make anything out of wood. I thought of myself as a kind of alchemist who could turn a piece of knotty pine into cash with nothing more than a few simple tools and some linseed oil.

Fiction by Oct 1, 20219:18 am

The Wedding Invitation by D S Powell

The invitation came from Mortimer. We’d been close at school and for a bit after university. Now we only kept in touch via Facebook. He’d gone into venture capital, I’d gone into the services.

Traditional church service (very nice) then, after photographs, on to the reception at this big country place and more photos by the lake with champagne served in plastic glasses (a bit tacky, I thought). After an hour of this we were called in to lunch (which was just as well as I had reached, and then surpassed my optimum booze intake and could hear myself becoming over-friendly and loud).

Fiction by Sep 4, 202111:16 am

The Dendrophobe by Martin Agee

The ground begins to shake beneath me. I stumble to the nearest park bench and sit down hard. The cobblestones in front of me crumble; the branches of the oak tree above me vibrate and tremble. My heart skips a beat as I look to my left and some guy with a grey beard three benches down is flattened by a large falling branch. Further down, tree limbs are being flung like pick-up-stix, and to my horror the largest one takes out a pair of joggers. The couple are crushed in an instant. I blink. To my right, a towering ash is uprooting as pedestrians and dog walkers scramble toward the street. The giant trunk teeters for a moment in slow motion, and then in a split second crashes to the pavement, squashing the horde like so many mutant cockroaches.