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Latest Stories

March 19, 2024
Fantasy Stories Wondering Monk

Just My Imagination

The alarm clock went off and started playing an awful tune. Tom opened his eyes and closed them back, squinting. He reopened one eye and stood up to stop the torture. The phone was on the desk, in the furthest spot from the bed. Although he changed his way of…
March 19, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Ocelotlzin

Earth Is Dead

Recording… It doesn't matter who I was; I probably lived a long time ago, and I am now just a voice someone added to the audio-visual records. What is essential is the recollection of events that lead to the current state. So, a little history needs to be…
March 08, 2024
Flash Fiction Benoit

Some Enchanted Evening

It was a rugby tackle with tears: Chrissy burst in, sobbing and babbling, hugging James. Her face was all wet, eyes wild. What…? My parents split up, Dad has moved in with his boyfriend and I cannot join them. I am shut out. I have lost my dad. Torrent of…
March 08, 2024
Horror Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

In The Hands Of My Legs

The car pulled up in front of the large salon. The neon sign, that sexy broad thing, on the salon'sroof read "Mr. Gil's All-night Salon". The exhaust pipe of the car was pumping solid smoke, theswirls moving from the car and towards the salon.…
March 07, 2024
Mystery Stories Vanessa Leigh Giles

Casualty of Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Chapter 1 Until Death do us Part ‘Ring, ring!’. I answered the telephone and asked, “Hello, good evening. Who’s this? “Hello.” This is Dr. Smith from Red Cross hospital. “Is this Mr. Locke, John?”, he asked, hesitantly scratching his bald head. “Yes, doctor.…
March 07, 2024
Crime Stories Robert Pook

Bar Room Trigger

Another return journey on footpaths so familiar. He strides across each crack in each paving stone. Regular loose drain covers sidestepped. Mapping long ago mapped in Richard’s desolate mind. His pace hastened by the sight of the oncoming storm. Quickening…
March 04, 2024
Horror Stories Ano Chinemerem

Sanctity

Where should I begin? I could begin by telling you about this comely boy, whom every notable person around the streets agrees his smile could charm the bills off one. Between one smile, there was his goodness, his dreams and humanity—a little far ahead?— but…
March 04, 2024
Flash Fiction Emanuel Diaz

Et Mortui Partium

As Rafael stepped out into the rain, it wasn't the ordinary drops that fell from the sky. Instead, it was a storm of souls, each one taking the form of shimmering jewelry as it cascaded toward the ground. Rubies, diamonds, and sapphires twinkled amidst the…
February 29, 2024
Poetry Jing Li Ava

London

‘Am I in London?’ "I am." Where is Elizabeth? Happy living story All of your chapter Bounlance joy Please my heart Power hand Wise mind Our baby Vow vow Love all love Miss I miss Endless wonder Bring us together Love all love Miss I miss For everything My…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Rob Pook

Life Sentence of The Smith

Born nine months after his country won the World Cup.A child prodigy.Cast off at age twenty-four.Husband, father, emigree, away on the other side of the world.The blue-collar life.The dreams of success.The search for fulfillment.The long years of empty…
February 29, 2024
Mystery Stories Joshua Lowther

The Operator

Jason looked over to his right, his eyes barely able to focus themselves on the subject of his attention. His neck ached terribly from the strenuous movement. He was tired. The captain’s gaze came to rest on the rookie sonar operator sitting tense at his…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Salvatore Difalco

The Chute

At dusk, we left our unit with a soft pink bundle. I carried it through the wet streets and into the black woods. I said I’d take it all the way, the bundle, but that we had to drop it in together. My wife’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t make me do that.” I…

Them Haddock boys was mighty close, two peas in a pod, Amos and Andy, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, stuck together like barnacles to the bow and sap to a tree, but I always suspected there might be something missing in the glue. The trouble started brewing on a Friday and boiled over like Everest by the time Reverend “Moses” Maynard hollered out his first Amen at Sunday sermon. And on that day, it weren’t more than three hours after sunup before one of them brothers was dead and the other hauled off to the hangman’s hotel. Now I ain’t one for gossip, I leave that to the womenfolk, but that Lily gal had to be Satan himself all dolled up in a dress, pouting and preening with a wiggle and a shake, stirring up Cain and Abel in them good old boys until one of them was laid out cold on the undertaker’s slab. I know, an age old story, old as dirt, but this one weren’t so simple as all that and Lily Morgan weren’t no ordinary girl, no how, and you can take that as solid fact as sure as my name is Cappy McGee.

My Nana Westbrook, true as a saint’s prayer, always used to say the Devil was a woman thought up by the Good Lord Himself to test a man’s mettle and drag him down to Hell if he came up short and, Lordy, I sure as hell kept my granny’s wise words to heart, God rest her soul, never once dipping my stick in a place where it might get snapped. And the moment I laid eyes on Lily I knew for sure she was a steaming pot of misery for any man fool enough to give her too long a look. She sashayed her way into town nearly three year ago. Not more than 16 she was and pretty as twinkling sunshine on Callouts Bay, but ever since she showed up there’s been three boys dead and one half dead from pining over that serpent in a woman’s skin. There was Kyle Hawkins, Lenny the grocer’s boy, not more than 19 when he met Lily at the register in early May and by December he done hung himself from the railings of the Wochtaqouan Bridge, 60 feet above the bubbling waters of the Makittan River. I always wondered why he just didn’t jump off, sure as hell would’ve done the same job, but I’m guessing he was afraid of the water and everyone knew he couldn’t swim a stroke. And then there was Frankie Maynard, the preacher’s boy back on spring vacation from some college upstate a year after Kyle was found dangling in the misty breeze. He took up with Lily a week in and before a month passed he was crazy jealous every time she shot a sly eye at any man that wasn’t him. After a heated row with Lily at Maggie’s Roadhouse, Frankie stormed out to his Ford parked in the lot, drunk as a rat drowning in a still, and sometime around midnight smacked head-on into a semi. He was doing 80 on the wrong side of the road and weren’t much more than hamburger by the time they pulled him out of his car in big meaty chunks. Probably would’ve ended up that way for him, anyway, Lily or no Lily. Frankie never could drive for shit. And now there’s the Haddock boys, Kenny and Bruce, 20 and 21. Kenny’s the dead one and Bruce the soon to be dead in March of next year, the 25th, I think, if the lawyers don’t manage to get it stayed, that is.

Queer how it happened, though, darkly strange if you ask me. I was there to see it building up in little snips while resting in my lean-to propped in a ditch off Kings Road near the lip of Hackers Woods, only a grasshopper’s leap from Maggie’s Roadhouse. Lost my Maggie damn near 20 year ago from the consumption and I been sucking the bottleneck on a quart of JDs ever since, trying to hang on to the good old times when Maggie was still alive and I was tending bar while she grilled the burgers and fried the wings. That was a long time ago and I been spying on that old haunt of mine from my little spot in the dirt for almost two decade now. So I seen a lot and learned a whole lot more about people than I did when I was slapping the brews on the oak and yapping away with the patrons like they was lifelong pals. And I’m the only one that seen what really happened between Kenny and Bruce, and that she-demon Lily Morgan.

Oh, that Lily sure was a sly one, and tricky, too, making each of them Haddock boys think she was shining on him more than the other, but just enough on the other to make it sting. And she’d get real close and hot and heavy only when she had one of them alone and all to herself, leading them like the Piper through the break in the trees into the shadowed edge of Hackers Woods. Then she’d choke their hearts and heads with her sweet smoky lies, filling them with spirits of blind and aching love she didn’t really want or had an ounce of to give in return. And I seen her working that black magic on both them Haddock boys more than once and, my, oh, my, that Lily sure was a beauty, long black hair smooth as marble and gleaming like night-blackened sea waves rolling in the moonlight, and the face mask of Helen ready to launch a thousand agonies on that eternal ocean of woes against any and every man she claimed as her own. And not long after that black Sunday morning rolled around, Bruce had his fingers wrapped around Kenny’s throat, squeezing the life out of his little brother whose face was reddening, bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets, while Lily only stood there laughing and laughing with that naughty girl’s shrill and her eyes burning bright red with the flames of hell. That girl had the hoodoo magic of Merlin’s Morgana with a soul as black as Lilith, eating children and bearing demon spawn from the seed of any man fool enough to give her what she wants. When Kenny was finally dead and gone, stiff as week-old road kill, Bruce stared at is hands for damn near two hours, screaming like the town sirens on emergency test day while Lily sauntered away with a sway in her step and a wide beaming smile. Lordy, Lordy, that Lily Morgan sure was something and if I were only 20 year younger, I’d ask her on a date. ;-)

 

End

 

 

Bio: Born and raised in PA, skipped across the U.S from PA to NC to TX to VA to AZ to NV to CA and finally found myself in quiet southern UT limbo. Graphic Designer and writer of a collection of darkly strange short stories.

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