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Latest Stories

June 04, 2025
General Stories Dylan James Harper

The Bylaws Of The Revolutionary Council

A loud clang rang through the bunker as the door slammed shut. “I really think we have a chance to win this thing!” Greg’s voice echoed throughout the cold walls. The three other inhabitants of the bunker, Jeff, Ben, and Malcolm, all sat around a table…
June 04, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

Resurrection

The man lay there in extremis, no longer thinking of cool abstracts like ‘catching the last train for the coast.’ He gulped great rasping breaths – holding them impossibly long – before finally exhaling in a shuttering burst of putrid air. He had been…
June 04, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

Time Warp

Nothing was in order, nothing optimal. Germany was awash with refugees and adventurers. Only Angie could hold it together; but then she opened the gates! Who knows why? Other politicians were dinosaurs in the museum. Integration was the solution, was it? That…
June 04, 2025
Fantasy Stories M.D. Smith

Car Of Dreams

Randy Jenkins, age sixty, lived the kind of life people don’t write stories about. He sold office supplies out of a small showroom in the back corner of a strip mall just outside Corpus Christi. He wore beige. Ate microwave dinners. And spent more time…
June 04, 2025
Science Fiction Stories David Rich

Earth Forever

With an exhale, Damerae unclipped a lint-free cloth from his desk, snatched it from the air, and wiped his glasses. He preferred staying hidden in his cozy interior office in the bowels of Orbital Counterweight Station of the International Space Elevator. But…
June 04, 2025
Flash Fiction George Vu

A Stolen Kiss A Beautiful Dream

It had been a long, exhausting day for her – a blur of endless tasks and demands. Yet, despite it all, she had fought for a moment to be with him. Stealing time from the world around her, she walked into the room quietly, hoping to surprise him. After a few…
June 04, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

Cow Bells

Based on actual incidents. Swiss Cabinet meeting, 15 March 1943 The American Ambassador has no comment, no explanation. We can expel the Ambassador in protest. I prefer he remains here under close surveillance. The bombing yesterday was of nuisance value; it…
June 04, 2025
Poetry Markus J

Signed To The Message

do your bit for king and country. are you a coward? or are you brave? so now is the time to sacrifice you don`t want to let your mates down it`s a kinship of the soul you know that’s the Australian way it was the message that was kept being sold so they…
June 04, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

On The Rebound

I was sitting in a bar knocking back my third Jack Daniels, when a drop-dead gorgeous blonde walked in. As she paused, surveying the room, I raised my glass in a complimentary salute. It was a ‘Hail Mary’ move, and I could hardly believe it when she came…
June 04, 2025
Science Fiction Stories M.D. Smith

Unplanned Landing

Red lights pulsed. Sirens howled. “Alert. Navigation failure. Proximity alert. Impact in thirty seconds.” Captain Mara Voss shot upright in her cryo-pod, lungs gasping like a drowning swimmer. Across the chamber, the rest of the crew jerked awake, groggy and…
June 04, 2025
Poetry Markus J

Marching To The Same Beat

an angel stands under a lonely pine showing the way to the lost souls the ones who innocently answered the king’s call and now flags fly half mast for those that no-more stand buried in some far off foreign land the pipes call out to the brave and the angel…
April 29, 2025
Fantasy Stories Chris Turner-Neal

The Gorgon’s Climb

I am the only one of us who calls it rape. Stheno, when she must mention it, says “our bad luck;” Medusa shrugs and says “gods don’t have to ask.” And I say but they should and she says but they don’t and Stheno says this attitude doesn’t help, and she’s…

“Mr. Peterson, you’ll never guess what I just saw!” From the bug-eyed look on Billy Dean Dickinson’s face, I know he’s about to spin one of his wild yarns. The boy’s eleven, the sixth kid in the Dickinson herd of eight, and has an imagination as bountiful as that guy who wrote Star Wars. Knowing this kid, he’ll say he saw Elvis or Michael Jackson … or maybe that Tupac fella. I sit back in my rocker and watch Billy Dean come flying across my yard like he’s got a pack of bees in his britches.

He runs up my porch steps and says, “I’m walkin’ home from the store when this little blue car comes barrelin’ around the corner. I have to skedaddle out of the way to keep from gettin’ run over cause the guy’s drivin’ so crazy. Then I see it in his backseat.” Billy Dean’s eyes widen. “My jaw dropped and yours would too, Mr. Peterson, if you got an eyeful of that thing. It’s gotta be the weirdest creation on God’s green earth!”

Some folks here would wager that Billy Dean is God’s weirdest creation.

My wife, Ellie, says the boy’s not weird, he’s just a little misguided. Says he needs attention so he makes stuff up. Personally, I think Billy Dean’s from the land of the whoppers – and not the good kind like they got at that Burger King place over in Fogerty. Everybody knows the kid’s a fabricator; I used to call him a liar, but Ellie set me straight.

Billy Dean was seven when he swore up and down he didn’t take his little sister’s candy. Said it was a chocolate-loving ninja who “snatched it from Tammy Lynn’s clenched little fist.” Right, like ninjas hang out in itty bitty places like Grove Hill. Bobby Dean, that’s the boy’s dad, asked the kid why his sister would accuse him if it wasn’t true, and the answer was, “I don’t know, Daddy. Maybe she’s stupid or somethin’. I mean – look at her!” When his dad pointed out the chocolate smudges on Billy Dean’s mouth, the kid’s eyes got even wider than usual. Then he turned on the tears. Between sniffles, he said, “I was real scared, Daddy. Why’d that ninja smoosh Tammy Lynn’s Hershey bar in my face?”

Now he’s pacing in front of me, muttering something about calling those tabloid people to get them out here to take a look. Says he bets the National Enquirer or The Globe would pay big money for a story this weird.

Last year Ellie was hanging the wash when she saw Billy Dean in his backyard with his friends. “Naw,” she overheard the boy say. “That’s not my dad. My real dad’s a big shot in the government – some sort of spy or somethin’. He’s got to keep a low profile – that’s what Ma calls it – so that’s why he don’t ever come around. Ya can’t tell nobody though cause it could get him killed. Then I’d really be in hot water.”

Ellie was agitated when she told me, insisting the boy’s mama was as faithful as an old dog. When my wife calmed down, though, she felt sorry for Billy Dean – said that with five older brothers and two younger sisters, there’s not enough attention to go around. Then she said that with most kids nowadays having at least one step parent, Billy Dean was probably just trying to fit in. I told her making excuses for the boy stunk as bad as a big ole pile of bull pucky. She set me straight on that one, too; said I’d best watch my big ole mouth.

Now Billy Dean turns to me. “It’s the craziest thing I ever saw, Mr. Peterson. A two-headed cow! Two heads right next to each other, stickin’ out the window big as you please.”

I shoo a fly away from my face then reach for my glass of lemonade. “A two-headed cow stuffed in the backseat of a little blue car, huh? Well, I gotta hand it to you boy; at least you’re original.”

“Dang it,” Billy Dean says, face getting all blotchy. “How come nobody believes me no more?”

“Well, son, if you’re gonna make up stories, you gotta make ‘em more believ …”

Right then a little blue car comes hauling round the corner – its backseat filled with the craziest looking two-headed cow I’ve ever seen; worse than that ugly-looking thing they had at the State Fair a few years back.

Just like Billy Dean said it would, my jaw drops. The boy turns to see what I’m gawking at then turns back wearing an ‘I told you so’ grin. The car barrels out of sight, and I’m left wondering if there wasn’t at least a little bit of truth in all those whoppers the kid’s told over the years, including the one about his daddy. I mean, but how do you explain the boy’s being the only one in that family with blonde hair, buggy eyes, and ears that stick out like off-road spotlights?

 

 

Bio:

 

April Winters hopes her humor helps people forget their troubles … if only for a little

while.

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