A fierce swelling on her forehead, where the squat and grinning man had struck her, throbbed with pain. The hood of the trunk pressed hard against her upward left side, and her hands were bound cruelly tight behind her. Her eyes were open, but the darkness was total. Facing the torturous end of everything, she was alone, more so than ever. Within her Continue reading In A Lonely Place by Pete Risley
Category Archives: Fiction
Noise Complaints by Connor de Bruler
The man in the adjacent apartment used to listen to sitcoms all night long. The noise pollution of weak storylines and canned laughter bled through the prefabricated walls like noxious gas into a death chamber. I didn’t sleep for days. I have always suffered from severe insomnia. The tenant’s name was Pharat and he was from Istanbul. I knocked on his Continue reading Noise Complaints by Connor de Bruler
The Ultimate I.D. by Fiona Glass
Shirley was nagging again. Yip-yip-yip, on and on like an irritating little bird that never stopped chipping and cheeping till it did his head in. Usually it was the biscuits, or because he’d left the loo seat up again, but this time it was some crap Continue reading The Ultimate I.D. by Fiona Glass
Pony Trip – Equus 2 – Joshua’s Field
By Richard Godwin
The farm lay untenanted for months that passed with the slow resolution of some grim prophecy.
Winter turned and settled a million leaves deep in the soil that acquired new fecundity from the mulch and insects that bred there.
The earth seemed to be ovulating.
And black clouds scudded across the glass screen of the horizon through which Joshua watchfully peered.
Are You Happy? by Benjamin Imamovic
So Jimmy told me he wants to marry Alyssa and I know he knows I hate him for bringing it up. Jimmy and Alyssa have been going out for a year. Is going out even a good description of their relationship? It sounds too nice almost, too much like something real couples would do. Jimmy and Alyssa aren’t even an item in my eyes. She is going to leave the bum any day now. It won’t even be her leaving him.
It Wasn’t Slim Ricky by Chris Rhatigan
I rotated the glass and stared at the whisky. All three fingers stared back. Chewed over what lie I would feed her.
Drinking booze in the morning was shady, even for me. Then again, I never had a case like this. The body was, well, not a body. A bloody stump was more like it. Chunks of brain, organs, skull, plastered to the brick walls.
The Strap by Michael Keenaghan
The job was a cash ‘n’ carry in Tottenham, big bucks, and originally we were going to bring in Stix and Spida, but they pussied out man, showed their true fucking colours. Not that we were too bothered – I mean, those pricks just weren’t in the same league, and anyway, less cats to share the cream with. We’d do it as a duo and fuck ’em. The job would probably run smoother anyway. Lean and clean. Get in there, get the dough, ride off into the sunset fucking laughing.
The Matchmaker: A Highbrow Comedy Coupling “Brief” and “Straightforward” by KJ Hannah Greenberg
When the halls of her ivy league school no longer enticed her with prizes and with honors, when her imaginary hedgehogs ceased to bring her bushels of marshmallow fluff, and when her own children stopped caring whether or not she folded the laundry, planted asparagus, or danced uninhibitedly at their school birthday parties, she accepted that it was time to assume a new vocation. To wit, she became a matchmaker.
Twenty-Five Grand by Court Merrigan
Wanissa doesn’t have an address cabbies will go to. Three of them shake their heads and drive off. The fourth thinks a long while before letting us in. We cross the river and the cabbie tells us he doesn’t often get a fare to this part of the city. People who go there, he says, take chauffeured Benzes. The ones that live there take the bus. This doesn’t strike me as an especially good sign.
Corridors by Martin Garrity
Such tidy pavement. No cracks and no litter. The gardens here are neat. Too neat, there’s none of the chaos you see in a real garden. There’s something clinical here, something rehearsed. In gardens like these nothing ever gets planted ‘just because.’ The people that own these lawns and these bushes are not the people that tend to them. Also, whoever saw Continue reading Corridors by Martin Garrity
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