Invisible boundaries. The gum lines of aggressive brushers. Chins, if you’re a Hapsburg. The stamped fingerprints of once white shoes. Synthetic beards on aging tires
THE FALSE GEMS by Guy De Maupassant
Monsieur Lantin had met the young girl at a reception at the house of the second head of his department, and had fallen head over heels in love with her.
Story: Retreat by Jack Coey
She ran away from home, and Pastor Bruce was dismayed after talking with her mother. Her mother said she’d been sullen for the last month or so, and even the school nurse called once. Her daughter wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, and she asked Pastor Bruce
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
The Gift of the Magi One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher
Story: The Steadfast Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen
There were once five and twenty tin soldiers. They were brothers, for they had all been made out of the same old tin spoon. They all shouldered their bayonets, held themselves upright, and looked straight before
Story: Helping Me Up by Bruce Ransom
“Are you going to be my new daddy?” she asked directly.“I don’t know,” he said, looking down at the flowery dress squirming beside him on the edge of the living room couch. “I like your mom, but to get married you have to really, really like each other.”
My Daughter’s Best Friend by Michelle Reynolds
“Here you go Missy.” Elizabeth hears her daughter say as she enters the kitchen. Brooklyn is sitting at the table, pouring milk into the empty glass in the seat beside her.
Story: The Birthmark by Loretta Martin
I was born with a birthmark that looked like a bruised flower. It trailed along the left side of my face, from hairline to where neck and shoulder met. I grew accustomed to open stares, sidelong glances, and children being chastised for pointing.
Story: Monday the 28th of August By Dean MacAllister
Today is the worst day I have ever experienced. But it’s not over yet. It’s not going to end for thousands of seconds. Thousands of raw, grating seconds.
Horror Story: Night of Fire and Glass
The freaks are out again tonight. I hear them howling. I hear branches cracking off trees. There were out last night, too. It has been warm and heat draws them…
500 Word Horror Contest Entry: Footloose by E. W. Farnsworth
It was dark, and the party was going to start on the other side of the freshly-plowed south pasture anytime. Bob impatiently stomped through the damp earth toward the Thompson…
Story: Disclosure optional by Keith Nunes
A middle-aged guy in a dark jacket and a patterned shirt sitting at a bar, a woman of a similar age in a deep purple dress walks over and sits next to him
Story: The Cop and the Anthem by O. Henry
On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy…
Story: The Storm by Kristin Leprich
Describe the storm for me, would you? My brother speaks to me in a hushed tone, as if the shaking echo of a louder voice might break the sight in…
Story: Trapped In A Bottle by Ruben Michael Molina
The sun sizzled the soft tanned skin of Alison Bailey, as she lay comfortably on her favorite azure beach towel; the soft gurgle of the ocean tide lulling her into…
Story: The Magic Spot
He lay in the grassy median of a road which bounded one side of a large inner-city university. How he had come there, nobody knew. From his looks, though, his…
Story: Strutters’ Ballby Barry Basden
Cleaning out my father’s things I found an old black and white photo, one I’d never seen before. Hidden away all these years.
Story: Escape by Murdock O’Mooney
“We got to get out of here,” I tell her. She tells me she knows and that she’s waiting for the right time. “You saw what he did to Johnny-…
Story: Nobody Shall Sleep By T. Dee
I’m lying down on the bed. Naked. Carefree. One hand thrown carelessly behind my head propping me up. The other playing with my belly button or any small indent on my skin within a comfortable radius.
Story: A Quick Twist by Patrick Hanford
I’m sitting in a bar, sipping a beer, wondering if she’s going with me
tonight.
The door bangs open, a man with a gun.
“You bitch,” he yells.
Story: Them by Meg Pokrass
You would hate it if you knew how many times I apply lipstick now that you're gone. I'm putting it on, like, every five minutes to get through the next fifteen, though I know they use fish scales to make it
Crazy by T. E. Cowell
She said, “This is crazy.” She looked at me. “Isn’t this crazy?” I shrugged. I thought that, sure, maybe it was a little crazy. But I thought it was exciting, too. Crazy or not, I thought it might be crazier if we parted ways and never saw each other again.
Story: Who/Whom? by David Lohrey
David Lohrey grew up in Memphis. His poetry can be found in Otoliths, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Easy Street and Quarterday. In addition, recent poems The post Who/Whom? by David Lohrey…