The Room

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Reality an illusion? ..Or illusions that are a reality?

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…alling beads of water momentarily caught the street lamp's dull glow as they continued their suicide plunge from the clouds to the wanting street below. Some cautiously lingered in the cascade of the languid yellow beam before slithering down the creased, worn paths formed in the air by their predecessors. Travis lie spreadeagled on the pavement seeping into the crevices waiting for his wet splattering companions to be weighed down by their own watery mass and accompany him on his journey to the furthermost cracks in the pavement. The raindrops seemingly…


By RayFed

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The Fish Doesn't Have To Be Real

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Reflection of an earlier time, in fiction form.

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…Whitworth had not failed in life. He’d retired from the U.S. Marine Corps as a brigadier general (although he’d only been given the rank as a retirement sendoff gift, and never really served holding the rank at all). Retirement pay was not that significant when it came to supporting his wife, repaying educational loans for his children and dealing with the real costs of owning a home on Wing Point. Whitworth needed a job. He’d found a job as part of a local crew fishing the Sound, but the skipper…

By James Strauss

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Nothing To See Here

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Grady Pearson saw something in his cornfield that would forever change the way he viewed his life.

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…heard a squawk—kind of like the goose call that comes out of a police cruiser. Blinking red and blue lights danced on the window shade, so I figured they must have nabbed somebody. The trouble was, they were behind my house, in my cornfield.

I peeled back the shade, and what did I see but a crap-load of state police parked sort of in a big circle. The ground mist was so thick, I barely made…


By Arthur M. Doweyko

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The Train from Tucumcari

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…had been to Clayton, New Mexico many times by car and stayed at the Eklund hotel often. This time, perhaps his last, he came on the train from Tucumcari.

They met because they had been the sole occupants of the passenger car on the train other than two women conversing in German in the front seats. The old man and young girl were now the only customers for breakfast in the dining room of the Eklund Hotel in Clayton, New Mexico. According to the frost-encrusted thermometer just outside the window, it was fourteen degrees and howling wind pushed swirls of…

By John Green

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Waking

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A short story about a devastation of a broken heart, and the unexpected. I hope it reminds you of that searing pain that we have all experianced, and fills you with the courage to move through it

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…way your pillow has quietly scrunched itself up to match the shape of your face, the curve of your nose. The quiet rustling of sheets, clean and fresh. Early light creeping in through your windows smuggling a perfume of cherry blossoms.

That wonderful smell. They smell like the dawn. Like spring time. Like life.

But then, The Remembering comes to you. Whispering of…

By Gordon Palmer

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The Legend of Erhart

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Do not judge by appearances. Sometimes those that are different have their places.

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…was growing every minute near the hen house. The egg the boy from the big house placed in the nest belonging to Sally Hen, the prettiest chicken on the farm, moved! Yes, it moved. All of the animals near the hen house said it was a prank.

”Eggs cannot move,” they said.

“Yes they can,” Sally said. She had watched many eggs hatch into plump little chicks. Each time the egg moved just before a tiny hole appeared in the shell. Eventually a large enough opening would…

By Robert L. Scarry

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How Things Look

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 …important ARE looks?

Shel knows why she got this job and is ok with it most of the time. It makes sense that a place like this isn’t going to want some babe at the front desk. For one thing, anyone with any looks at all is going to start getting ideas and who needs the turnover? She hands a clipboard with all the agency’s forms to the mother of yet another coltish girl as three of this month’s most booked properties swan in for their schedules. They glide through the double doors to what too many young women in…


By Remington Write

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The Pitanga Tree

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The Pitanga Tree is one of 22 short stories from my book, "The Skipping Verger and Other Tales".

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…was never permitted to set foot in the attic. It was the boys’ room and her brothers defended it like possessive knights in a medieval castle.

The attic at Brambles, the family home in Surrey, was where they played with their trains and soldiers and, as they grew, where plots unfolded out of reach of little sister. It was also the natural store room for school trunks and forgotten things. To be fair, Alice never ever wanted to interfere with the boy’s…

By John Reid Young

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Hell is Thicker Than Water

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Bronwen Eld struggles to decide on whether he should go to Hell as the Devil's heir by choice or by force.

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…town was consumed in an inferno. Those who were unlucky enough to be touched by it were screaming in pain and pleading for a mercy that they would eventually grow to learn would never come. A trail of bloodied bodies that were either dead or dying lead to the source of the chaos. He continued to walk slowly without a hint of remorse, as he looked around at the outcome of what he started; he knew the denizens of…

By Monique Star

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Lizard

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This is a back story that will be featured in an upcoming collection of short stories.

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…were plenty of reasons why she started doing it. Pastors don’t make a lot of money to begin with, and being the pastor or a small, rural church of one hundred souls certainly won’t net you a six figure income. The income Dan made being a pastor had to be supplemented, so early in the marriage she had found ways to pick up odd jobs here and there, using her many and varied talents. It was talents, after all, that had convinced her that…

By a stump

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