Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction

The Savage World Of Men by Richard Godwin.

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Two guys wearing plaid jackets hung back in the shadows and listened to a distant song.

The melody was familiar and a little catchy and it began to rain.

Their jackets were immaculate and the drops fell more and more heavily as they stood there.

Finally the tune stopped as abruptly as if someone had cut a wire.

The older of the men, who had a grey beard that was neatly trimmed at the edges turned to the younger one and said ‘love songs make me want to kill’.

He was six foot and well muscled.

His companion was broad and had a jaw that looked like it was set in concrete.

‘It’s bitches’ music’, he said, withdrawing a toothpick from his mouth and inspecting it. ‘They’re all the same, they want romance and a little money on the side.’

‘That’ll be right Al.’

‘What now?’

‘How bout we do what we came here for?’

‘Hank I think that’s a fine idea.’

Continue reading The Savage World Of Men by Richard Godwin. →

Fiction

Sisters by B.R. Stateham

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She was sitting slumped back in a dinning room chair, a hand holding a cold compress on the back of her head.  Dressed in a black skirt, black jacket and white silk blouse, with dark wine-red heels on slim. petite feet. A very expensive looking ruby necklace worth a small fortune adorned her long, perfectly chiseled neck.

She looked like old money.

Not in the sense of time or age.  But old in the sense she rolled in dough.  Lots of it.  And had had it for years.

A mass of brown hair, curly, had been thrown over her left shoulder as she held the compress on the right side of her head.  Maybe in her early thirties she was well built, trim. With an athlete’s body.

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Fiction

A Fair Price by Scotch Rutherford

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"Naked City" by Scotch Rutherford

The King’s Court mobile home park was all the way out on Boulder Highway, where the outskirts of the Neon City became Henderson. Leon Diggs rounded out the park’s single digit tenant retention rate, since its greedy landlord had doubled the rent on the 200 some odd park-owned trailers.

Eddie needed to get high, real high. And Leon had the sweetest sugar shit he could afford. Eddie parked his truck next to a pristine 68 Lincoln Continental, with the suicide doors. Business must be boomin’, he thought as he got out, and rapped his knuckles hard on the side door of lot 142. Nothing.

“Leon, it’s Eddie. C’mon, man.”

Nothing. Eddie pushed on the door. It swung open, and sure as shit, he walked right into it. Blood was splattered everywhere. Cash, blow, and guns were scattered on the deck, between the bodies; everything ripe for the taking. Eddie spotted a jumbo Ziploc of powder on the floor. He snatched it, and slid two fingers inside. He touched his fingers to his nose, and took a hit. In a flash he had a powder burned red nose, and he knew it was good shit. That’s when he realized including Leon, there were four bodies; three dead, one barely breathing.

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Art/Comics, Fiction

Landscape With Sententers by A.R.Yngve

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Chugir was forty years old, weary, and damaged by bad booze.

The booze problem he blamed on the Drinkards. For months, he had been stalking a Drinkard and extracting almost pure alcohol from its body.

“Almost” pure. People were saying it was Chugir’s own fault, that he pushed the Drinkard too hard, until the booze it produced came out polluted. “Bad metabolism,” they were saying. Chugir wasn’t greedy. Each day, he’d been sharing with others the clear drink which he pressed out through the Drinkard’s metal tubes.

But this particular morning, the booze made him sick and he threw up blood. The others carried him to a Fixard, the common type spotted on the grass plains, and shouted for help until one of the Fixards heard them.

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Fiction

Just Stupid by B.R. Stateham

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Frank brought Stevie Toomey into the windowless cubicle of the interrogation room, kicked a chair out from underneath a table and sat the kid’s ass down into the hard wooden chair rather unceremoniously.  The room was just four bare walls, a small table sat in the middle of the floor underneath a very bright light, with two chairs facing each other.  From the ceiling a single light hung down from a long black cord.  The light was powerful enough to look at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.  From San Francisco.

The kid—Stevie—weighed about one and thirty five pounds, thin as a bone and as pale as freshly mixed bread dough.  The harsh bright light shining down directly on the table made the kid blink his eyes and squint.  Sniffling, using the back of one handcuffed arm to rub across his dripping nose,  he continued squinting as he bent forward a little to focus and see me sitting across from him.

“Turner!  Frank!  Jesus, am I glad to see you.  Listen , I . . . I’m innocent!  I didn’t kill no one.  No one!  I was just stupid, that’s all.  Just stupid!”

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Fiction

Torrent by Chris Deal

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Hollow chest. Eyes of glass. His hands shook from the drink and his stomach churned a brew of acid and rye. The bar was a cacophony of attempted sex and with every sip the volume was turned down to a rolling hum. Two gladiators tried to maim and kill the other on most of the televisions lining the walls. The broadcasts on the others had been interrupted for updates on a bombing. No smoking allowed inside anymore. The itch of the craving moved behind his eyes. The tender stopped charging him hours ago. A body filled the empty space above the seat at his right, her form reflected in the mirror behind the bar and the bottles. Blonde hair with black roots and a toddler’s face. Inches of make up and a fake ID, her low top pouring out of her jacket and all but pressing against his arm. “Buy me a drink?” The impulse had been to ignore her until she lost interest. The shock of her words betrayed him. “What do you want?” Give her a drink and she’ll go away, he hoped. “A beer?” New to the game, she had to be. Stout would take her down. Go with the Continue reading Torrent by Chris Deal →

Fiction

A Political Choice by Chris Pollard

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There was a knock at the front door, and Barry went to see who it was.  He looked through the peep-hole, and there on the doorstep was a youngish man in a suit, wearing a big red rosette.
Barry opened the door.

“Good morning!  Mr. Jenkins?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Hello, Mr. Jenkins, I’m Bob Wilkinson, your Labour candidate in this election, would you mind if I came in for a moment?”
“Dunno,” said Barry, looking up and down the deserted terraced street.  “When can I come round your ‘ouse for a cup of tea?”

Mr. Wilkinson looked a little taken aback, but before he could speak Barry continued, “Only joking, mate, course you can come in!”

They went into the little sitting room, and Barry indicated a threadbare grey sofa.  “’Ere, ‘ave a seat.  Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Thank you, that would be most kind of you.”

Barry went and put the kettle on, and came back a little later carrying a beaten old  tin tray with a steaming old teapot, a small jug of milk with no handle, a little plastic sugar bowl, a cracked china cup on a mismatched saucer and a glass of Continue reading A Political Choice by Chris Pollard →

Fiction

Fly by David Whelan

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But I had never been a writer.  That was something I could never be. I didn’t have it in me to create, I could only destroy.

I was Jack Torrace with a nagging little voice inside my head all the time. Telling me to hurt, telling me to run, telling me to fly. But, mostly, it would tell me to block out everyone else from my life.

Sometimes it got so bad that I found myself projecting my face onto everyone I knew and I hated myself for it. That sneering little rat. Grinning like a gawking child, whispering in my ear like a fowl little vermin. I had become so desperately alone.

The voice was like a small black crow that followed me everywhere, that slowly grew into a flock until I couldn’t ignore the batting of wings. A slight murmur behind my back, whispers in the wind that picked up slowly then quickly, gently and then viciously, wrapping around me until the words hammered into my head and I become deaf with rage, fear and depression, murmuring. Hitting me over and over and over and over and over: Fly.

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Art/Comics, Fiction

‘TRUE LOVE OH BABY TRUE LOVE’ by Ashok Rajamani

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"HIS LOVE" by ashok rajamani ink/paper/canvas,11" x 16," 2010

 

Lakhan knew he wasn’t supposed to fall for monsters anymore.  Well, not since that embarrassing incident of 1987, at least.  But he couldn’t help lusting after the one in front of him.  The beast was, he believed, obviously male, although there was no discernable bulge.  He was lusciously dark, the result of deep-chocolatey South Indian genetics, with, of course, long hours toiling in the hot Indian sun, Lakhan assumed.  His face was as delicious as his build, with full lips and wide-set black eyes framed by thick charcoal eyebrows. His nine arms were muscular, sexier than the arms of any two-armed man.  The horned tail was to die for.  With his lengthy nose and prominent chin, both geometric in their sharpness, the beast’s face was as angled as Lakhan’s was round.

 

Fiction

The Fifth Circle Of Hell By Ian Ayris

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Monday. The doctors’ surgery on Bennett Street. The place is heaving with the ill and the frail, the skiving and the mad. The loud-mouthed receptionists keep order, spitting bile at anyone with the temerity to question their authority.

Coming out of one of the doctor’s rooms, inching his way towards the receptionist’s desk, Mr Henderson Flint, leaning on a zimmer. Henderson Flint. Five foot two of crumbling humanity. Henderson bloody Flint.

One of the whip-handed receptionists. Weary. Exasperated.

‘Can I help you, Mr Flint?’

This one, worse than the rest. The Dragon Lady.

‘Busy today?’ Henderson says, cheerily.

‘Yes, Mr Flint. Now what is it you want?’

A disdainful glare cuts him off at the knees. Henderson feels the tension in the air around him rise. He leans into it, resting on the front bar of his zimmer. Holds the glare of the Dragon Lady with one of his own.

‘I need you to phone me a ride home,’ he says.

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