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Latest Stories

November 29, 2025
Flash Fiction L Christopher Hennessy

The Desperation Of A Man

In the drowned city of Nueva Esperanza, where the rain never ceased and the streets glowed with the like of broken billboards, Mateo lived alone in a crumbling tower. The elevators had long since stopped, so he climbed the stairs each night, counting them,…
November 29, 2025
Mystery Stories Dexter F. I. Joseph

Incomplete

She walked into the office, sighting him by the desk hunched over, seemingly looking tired of waiting for her. She made way to her seat, sat down and took her glasses off, gently placing them on the table. Watching his face and body language, she sought signs…
November 29, 2025
Flash Fiction Nelly Shulman

Game Over

It was never violent. The famous host, tall and spindly as a stork, perched at a podium where the all-powerful Machine, hidden somewhere deep in the bowels of the Propaganda Ministry, displayed a bundle of numbers on the screen. The host smiled heartily, and…
November 29, 2025
Science Fiction Stories Jim Henderson

Making Memories

Jared was half dozing at his desk, listening to relaxing ocean sounds on his phone, when a small alarm beeped and flashed on his computer screen, then another. He clicked on one and leaned forward to see the details. The alert gave a time hack and said,…
November 29, 2025
Crime Stories Tom Kropp

Vicious Valkyrie

 Supervisory CIA agent Kelly Oshanonhand stirred in her sleep disturbed by something. The moonlight beamed through a gap in the curtains of her hotel room offering some visibility in the darkness. Kelly had long, fluffy blond hair and bright blue--green hazel…
November 29, 2025
Science Fiction Stories Frank Talaber

Ponce De Leon Was Such A Bloody Idiot

I screamed in agony for a week; burning, every cell in my body on fire. The injections were easy enough, once a day for seven days. Being strapped up in bed beside several others screaming in a symphony of holy torture wasn't. "How are you doing, Mr. James?…
November 29, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

Appropriation

CHAPTER ONE The great man’s bodyguard stood with his mouth agape, as the photographer darted across the room and plucked the cigar from Winston Churchill’s mouth. It was 1941, and the British Prime Minister had visited Washington and was now in Ottawa to…
November 29, 2025
Horror Stories Thomas Wetzel

How To Survive Until Tomorrow

STEP ONE: First you have to kill the dog. If you don’t kill the dog you won’t be able to get downstairs, and the house is already going up in flames, so you really don’t have much time and the dog is always right there at the top of the staircase, growling…
November 29, 2025
Flash Fiction Sani Ibrahim

The Poisoned Soil

Arthur Finch was, by all accounts, the neighborhood’s kindly old grandfather. He lived in Number 12, the house with the impossibly neat lawn and the rose bushes that were the envy of the street. His days followed a gentle rhythm: morning coffee on the porch,…
November 29, 2025
Science Fiction Stories L Christopher Hennessy

The Neon Sky Doesn't Care

- for my daughter, my only child - I swear, the city was humming at me. Not like a song, not like anything you’d want to dance to. More like a migraine that had learned how to breathe. That’s what Neon Sky does—it breathes. You walk under it, and it’s like…
November 29, 2025
General Stories Jason Smith

Quality Family Time

Elsa looked out of the window at the wet and windy weather, she hadn’t wanted to leave Los Angeles and move to Seattle. After years of struggling and with one year of high school left, she’d felt like she was getting somewhere at school. Now with the move,…
November 29, 2025
Science Fiction Stories L Christopher Hennessy

A Stitch In Time

" If you could change one thing about the past, " Doctor Millburn asked, " what would it be? It's a serious question, Mister Shriver. " " It's Jadey, " I said. " My dad was Mister Shriver. I'm not him. " Millburn was checking my eyes with a Y shaped optical…

Everything started at the beginning.
In a very confused moment I was informed that I had been born.
This happened, years ago, on a small isle with an unpronounceable name: Ghawdex, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and even if everybody attending to the event asserts I was there, too, I must admit I cannot remember it.
I was baptized and they say that in that precise moment all the water in the font evaporated, but I guess it is an overstatement.
I tore down my childhood petal through petal, building reality as an infinite pieces multidimensional puzzle unfolded over the eternal hills of the natal hamlet.
Puberty and adolescence assaulted me without warning, preying on my inexperience and youth. I repaired my rent inner tissues dealing the distressed moments of my treble voice with those of off-key baritone with the charm of a diplodocus and a horsefly trying to dance the black swans 'pas de deux'  together.
Finally time put me the adult costume but my entrails did not know it, adulthood is a chronology, not an ontological condition. My face came in my help: I looked adult.
During some years I tried to save the world but then I realized that my arrival was late... Way too late!
Astride on time I let it carry me ahead, the sad voice of the Mistral and the icy breath of the Cierzo followed my memories after leaving the cosy world of the 'Mare Nostrum' and the universe opened up to my amazed childish eyes of toddler who looked like an adult.
That very innocence and ignorance were my deliverance, nobody could believe that I could be so imbecile! (perfection does not exist except for especial cases as mine) and that belief made them, (people around me) to cook up stories of conspiracies where I abet stronger and darker forces or that I was that darker force myself with wicked, hidden, and unspeakable purposes. This same stories awaken trepidation and fear and took them to show an esteem toward me that they do not feel really, but served well to preserve me from greater evils.
So I flew over human miseries, mine and others, filling my empty days with arias and readings that as guardian angels wrapped my soul and let me be happy even in the middle of cruel vicissitudes.
Then again, the meddlesome time stated that I was an old man and to my chagrin my body agreed: each time I told to my body: "Let's run to that bush and jump over it"!, my body answered: "Who, me ?!!
And it happened that the inner child found himself alone: older people thought him crazy, and younger fellows, not understanding his predicament, thought him a lunatic.
Again, innocence and ignorance came to help me, looking around I found that my experience in languages acquired in years of traveling our rickety planet could be used to balance different cultures from language to language.
Unscrupulously and with the freedom that only youth can use I started to be a translator and Luck, who as a good female she is, loves naiveté and babies rewarded me letting me feel my intention accomplished, which is all you need to feel successful... Years went by and one day, adding to my already very confused nature I was informed that I was not any more part of those that warm their bones in the fire of Life.
With my usual soft resignation to the inevitable, I tied up my little baggage with the few belongings I had: some blurred memories of warm and kind hands which owners I couldn't remember and with a feeling of light-heartedness started my journey toward the unknown.
After a trip on a parallel line to time I found myself on a beautiful meadow almost alive in timing with a breeze that made the stems of shining dandelions move as a lively sea.
Colours danced between earth and sky leaving hue wakes that filled the eye with new scents and Immensity coiled in the hollow of my hand as if infinity wrapped around my fingers tried to comfort that daily solitude that clothed me in life.
I quickly removed my footwear and began to walk on the soft grass that carpeted the ground. The contact of the gramma and soil with my feet revealed a new secret:
This was home... No, Home!
I started to run and jump over low shrubs, now my body followed me in happy conjunction.
I felt the urgency to lie down over the grass as long as I were and I must be very long since I could not see my feet. I looked up to the sky, the clouds were so beautiful that I wanted to sing and tell the world my feelings so humankind could be with me in this extravagant experience.
Then I knew it! I had to sing it!, I had to write it! And I remembered a sentence read many years ago, I do not recall where from: "unless you change and become like little children..."
That had been, that IS my Gift: "to change and become like a little child", all my life was like that, full and filled by grace. I understood it then and I wanted to convert that gift in my legacy.
I took a thin dandelion spike and moistening it in some dew drops I started to write this tragicomic story of mine and the secret message so, if there are people who still ask themselves what are they doing in the world, could find a small compass showing that deep in our heart always there is a reason to live.
And then again, my innocence and ignorance make me believe that I have thread for a yarn and as a writer this words will reach the heart of my readers...

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