Fallen Apple

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Some writers have great skill and determination. Some just have luck.

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…the daughter of a famous suicide is a valid career path. One bullet and no door has ever been closed to me.

On the last Tuesday of October in 1962, a jewel of a day with the kind of blue sky that makes you want to cry, my mother put her notebooks in order, chronologically, and sent a final draft of her last poetry collection to her agent. My sister and I were at our babysitter’s so the only one to hear the report of the pistol was our…

By Remington Write

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Seven For A Secret

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I sometimes enter the submissions for short plays by theatre groups, I’ve never been selected but they get hundreds for only a few slots. This doesn’t stop me being proud of my work and so the following is a short play I wrote. It’s an Agatha Christie style mystery.

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ACT I

Scene 1

…old fashioned sitting room (1920s esq). There is an analogue clock on the wall saying seven to twelve but it doesn’t move for the whole play. There are three people. ANTHEA in her 20s with a string of beads round her neck, the flapper. She is standing, just right of the centre of the stage, by a table looking in to a mirror. Near her is an empty wooden…

By Arthur Hofn

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Mind Numbing

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…broke my first neck when I was eight. I didn’t even know I had done it when it happened. I just stared at the stupid PE teacher who was yelling at me and I wanted him to lie down and die. And he did. Just like that. It was the first of many neck breaks. And car crashes and plates broken. But, like I said, I wasn’t even aware that I had done it. Ost of the kids were just scared and screaming as the blood escaped from the corner of Mr. Brightman’s mouth. His eyes were wide open staring…

By T Gamache

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Into Lightness

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Previously published in Shirley (issue 2, 2015)

This story is about a dog that escapes into his dreams.

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…air was warm and the ground beneath me was soft, and wet, and I was running. 

The earth was moist, and I was sniffing the earth, letting my nose guide me to the answers that lay underneath the ground. 

Maybe I had escaped my kennel, or maybe someone had unlatched the door, but that ceased to matter to me once I scratched the ground and found earthworms, chicken, twigs. The smell of food was thick enough to chew on. I heard barking in the distance, and ran to meet…

By Monica Macansantos

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(Who am I?...#4) Every King within.

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Well here is #4 in my (Who am I?) series I want to get published. Let me know whats up?

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…dour nightmares elucidate,

an oasis of extravagant horrors.

Promising hope declares a mandate,

for agonizing torturous mutilation.

Recognition, peering in the mirror,

eludes comprehension of distortment.

A familiar face with similar taste,

invades with haste to stake my place.

On the eve of sunset,

amidst the fiery yellows,

within the blend of passions purple,

clashing of the flamingos pink hue.

A disbelief of such serenity.

Brings back to reality,

a knowing remembrance,

hatred conceived me.

Fervently streams of guilt relentlessly,

Collide forming a swell to flow over.

Dams fractured now seeping laceration,

trickles into roaring beasts strategic in…


By InSaNeLy NoRmL77

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Horror Lore & Survival Guide

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In case your damned soul ever finds itself in the mouth of darkness…

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…Oxford Dictionary defines the concept as “An intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust”. In the field of narrative fiction, it’s the genre whose main goal is to incite feelings related to dread, deeply related to the anticipating feeling before a fearful experience, also known as Terror. In spite of how many basic definitions had been given to the notion, every sentient being in the universe(s) can concede that horror, in all his forms and types, involves the action of generating fear on any living…

By RC Lanzmann

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When World Unites

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 …world unite

Hatred will lose its humongous value

Selfishness will die in striking solitude

Our night will be addressed as daylight

For gloom never will cause us doom

Heaven will cast upon us, stares of jealousy

Celestial bodies will wish to resign their duties

Mama will roll her wrapper peacefully

While offering her offspring's mirthful smiles

Papa will crown his cap unperturbed

Walking the heart of town undisturbed

When world unite

No room will be allocated for chaos

No space, be given for weighing woes

We, in safety sip our sultry soup

And lay our heads in serene…

By Sehloho Piet Rampai

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Incitatus

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The first chapter of "Incitatus", a novella set in the world of upcoming hard sci-fi tabletop roleplaying game, Project Aphelion. On board of “Incitatus”, a prison ship for convicts deemed a nuisance enough to be imprisoned for a whole twenty-year-trip, multiple factions find themselves tied in the fight for an incredibly valuable… for lack of a better word, thing.

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…ship slid through the void, dark except for an occasional flash of manoeuvre thrusters correcting its course. Its main engine was cold, having done its job many weeks ago – double rows of rocket exhausts idle. The rocket formed the core of the ship, with the crew quarters set on protruding columns forming an axis on which the bulbous hull rotated slowly. Overall the ship resembled a giant, pale mushroom with a conical…

By Jakub Wisz

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Little Lies

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…lies we all believe,

because they make us feel good,

like things happen for a reason

If you do what Jesus would.


Now, the truth we don’t say out loud,

like progress comes from greed.

And, an artist is just a fool who makes

the things that no one needs.

Or, to put this another way,

you might as well be masturbating.

It’d be easier to sell the paint,

than the god damn oil painting.

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But baby, keep creating

as long as it’s liberating.

And, pour your soul into everything you do.

But me, I’ve already seen

the side where…

By Paul Resnick

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Blind Greed

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…placed a cup of tea on the table in the far corner of the super supermarket’s food court. She removed her sweater before sitting down. As one who was sensitive to invisible energies, there was never a perfect time to shop in public places, only a prayer that nothing too malevolent would attack her.

True to routine, she slowly sipped her warm, herbal drink while conducting a psychic scan of the interior building and its customers, a practice that typically takes thirty minutes, even more when the store is exceptionally crowded. There was nothing out of the ordinary that caught...

By L L Cartin

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