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Latest Stories

July 08, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

Dance Of Death

CHAPTER ONE 1940 Chief Inspector Kenneth Langford offered the Commissioner a crisp salute, and then walked back through the labyrinth of passageways to his own small office. Langford was a member of the London Metropolitan Police, commonly referred to as…
July 08, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Winter Blues

the winter blues has a grip on me, all so tight Its icy tentacles wrap around me and squeezes freezing my fingers and toes with its nasty frostbite staving off the cold is a battle, an endless fight it brings forth an assortment of nasty diseases The winter…
July 08, 2025
Horror Stories Sushma R Doshi

Deliverer Of Messages

A loner in my childhood, my scrawny and weak figure prone to being bullied by sturdy and robust boys, I tended to wander around places frequented by few. Those curvy roads which fell into darkness after evening without street lights, the area near the pond…
July 08, 2025
General Stories L Christopher Hennessy

With A Side-Eye I Cherish

for Brittany ma amour Up to my neck in sadness for something just out of reach and she came along and fired up my life with kisses and the physical. The moment I looked into her eyes I didn't want to share her with anyone else and keep her all to myself. In…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Days Of Future Dreams

the days of future dreams the flames once rose high thinking our lives would end up supreme thinking our future seemed a far of dream but in the end nothing is what it seems many times the winds of changed has blown this way one minute we`re lapping the cream…
July 03, 2025
General Stories L Christopher Hennessy

Bad Girl

Part 1I lost the entire manuscript when I assassinated my laptop with sauvignon blanc as I rubbed the lower back of a woman who dozed drunk on my bed, sweating. She was crazed, somewhere between screaming and lying about the orgasm. Bree was a miracle to me,…
July 03, 2025
Horror Stories Nelly Shulman

Black Is Our Colour

“I swear she could have been you. Look! This girl is your long-lost twin.” Fi nudged me, and I smiled. “Never had or wanted one.” I stood up. “Let’s go, or the bargain hunters will clear the shelves before us.” We dived into the vintage emporium across the…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Transformation

"I need a brake" words that twisted my heart- shattering the dream that we would never part. I asked myself 'what ever did I do wrong? sad, gloominess could`ve easily been my song. I wouldn't let the anger and misery grow or cultivate- uprising feelings I…
July 03, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

Jae

It was Jae’s birthday today. She turned eight. What a beautiful sunny girl! Hyo planned a surprise or two; Li, his wife, did too. Birthday cake, a puppy and … Don’t forget, they grinned just before he drove off. Traffic was intense. A long call came from…
July 03, 2025
General Stories Matias Travieso-Diaz

Fear

Leandro stood outside the Kroger, leaning forward as he shivered in the early March dawn. He hated this moment: the cold, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness, the anticipation of another day ahead at his degrading job picking collard leaves under the…
July 03, 2025
Horror Stories Mihko Askiweno

Found You

Panic gripped her as she staggered up the steep, rocky incline, breath coming in jagged, shallow gasps. Sweat streamed down her face in torrents, her hair clinging to her forehead and cheeks in disheveled clumps. Her legs trembled with exhaustion, molten fire…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

Lost On The Path

But alas; sometimes I think we've lost our way- too many strayed opinions...one too many a survey. Walking on the road ahead, just following the herd of sheep- with a hypnotised mind, wide awake yet very fast asleep. While yelling...join the team of the…

Life in Northern Massachusetts was always quiet and laid back. Times were different back in the early 1980’s. Life was simpler to say the least. It was an average night in the Arsenault house, Dad was watching some cop show, Mom was enthralled in one of her romance novels and my brother and I were reenacting a great battle of some long-forgotten war with our GI Joe’s. Dad was one of those “o-o-h” and “a-a-h” type of tv spectators. There must have been a particularly wild scene flashing on the screen as Dad was heatedly screaming, “What are you stupid? The guy is behind the dumpster!” All the hullabaloo caught my brother’s attention and soon I was conquering rebel forces without proper ground support.

 

Seeing that the entire family was now engrossed in matters that offered me no entertainment value what so ever, I decided to slip away and headed out to the garage. Dad kept an old 8-trac player along with a plethora of classic rock music stashed away in his office. As I walked in I noticed some new tapes haphazardly piled in an old wooden milkcrate. Dad must have picked them up at the flea market earlier that day. I rummaged through the box and noticed a bright pink tape. “Led Zeppelin 2” was scribbled on the top as the label had obviously worn off from over use. “Never heard of them,” I said out loud as I popped in the tape.

 

With a thundering crash, the opening riff of “Whole Lotta Love” echoed through the garage. Quickly I turned down the volume as not to get caught. Dad was a stickler about his vintage music. If he found out I was touching his stuff I surely would have paid the piper. I remembered that time Lewy caught hell after touching some of Dad’s stuff. He was playing with Dad’s new Zebco and broke off the tip. He couldn’t sit down for two days after that incident.

 

As the blues driven rock concert permeated the office I sat down at Dad’s desk and flipped on the dingy old desk lamp. The lamp was bright enough to keep the darkness at bay, but dim enough to not draw attention to my impromptu musical odyssey.

 

The sun was setting as day turned into twilight. Twilight is that short space in time between the warmth of day and the bleak chill of night. The sky had an eerie deep purple glow as the sun slowly surrendered to the murky grip of the eventide.

 

Dad’s office was not much bigger than a coffin. The one small window was covered with cobwebs and carcasses of dead flies that the resident arachnid had devoured over the past decade or two. It smelled of ancient oil changes and stale cigar smoke. Dad enjoyed an occasional smoke, well cigar to be specific. Mother hated the smell and insisted Dad keep his “filthy habit” relegated to the garage.

 

As my eyes started to adjust to my dimly lit confines as I noticed half a cigar precariously hanging from the side of Dad’s ashtray. Feeling the need to rescue the half-smoked stogie, I reached over and grasped it with my visibly shaking right hand. A subliminal sense of fear must have set in as I was shaking like a leaf on a tree. I thought to myself, “Oh boy, if Mom catches me partaking in Dad’s “filthy habit” I’m a dead man.” Nothing scares the pants off a twelve-year-old more than the thought of ardent discipline dispensed by an enraged mother.

 

Being young and foolish, stupidity got the better of me. I clicked off the desk lamp and reached for Dad’s old lighter. Click, click I flipped the lighter with my thumb. Sparks flew as the room was soon illuminated by the small yellow flame. Slowly I raised the blazing torch towards the ash covered end of the forbidden snipe. The flame touched the end as wisps of smoke started to rise. Puff, puff, puff, poof I was in business as I stood up and glanced out the window. The Coast was still clear. Slowly I pulled the festering blunt up to my plump red lips. Hesitantly I opened my mouth and grasped the smoldering weed with my teeth. Feeling the warmth on my nose, I allowed my lips to wrap themselves around the glowing ember as I leaned my head back and proceeded to take a long, deep breath.

 

Instantly I felt my virgin lungs burning like a field of wheat during a wild-fire. My heart skipped a few beats as I tried to expel the toxic exhaust from my damaged lungs. The room started to uncontrollably spin as I gasped for life saving oxygen. My body started to convulse as I started to feel light-headed. At one point, I’m certain the earth stopped spinning as I my eyes became raging waterfalls and I fell to my knees. Coughing, wheezing and spitting up what I thought were pieces of my insides, I was convinced I was dying. What have I done?

 

As I sat on the floor contemplating my foolish choice to end my life at such a ripe young age, something caught my attention. OMG, did my father, or even worse my mother come out to check on me? Still woozy from my near-death experience I staggered to my feet. The room was spinning as I tied to take a breath. Before I could exhale a sensation of hot flashing nausea took over my body as I blew chunks. Pieces of half-digested meatballs and strings of red-tinged linguine now adorned the walls of my Dad’s office.

 

Slowly I wobbled into the garage. “Hello, Dad, Lewy, M-M-MMMom, is that you?” Nothing, not even the sound of a cricket. I wiped off my mouth and lifted my head as I saw a large featureless form step in from the darkness. Without making a sound the enormous Specter took two steps towards me. Silently I stood trembling with fear. Two more steps, slowly the entity veered closer. Cautiously I mustered up the courage to look directly into the Phantoms face. Horrified I realized the featureless form did not have a face. No mouth to speak hypnotic spells of haunted exhortation. No nose to inhale the foul stench of my unbridled fear. Only two fiery red eyes. Eyes that looked like the glowing red tip of the forbidden bidi that set this metaphysical nightmare into motion. They were not eyes that could see my petrified state of horror, rather eyes that could see into my soul. Eyes in the truest sense of ALL seeing.

 

One more step, the Phantom eased closer. Without a sound, it closed its fiery red eyes and faded into the darkness from which it came. Slowly I stepped back into Dad’s office and flopped into the decrepit desk chair. I felt chilled to the bone as I sat in disbelief. Silently I swallowed a lump of fear that clearly was a part of my reprieved soul.

 

The music continued as the soothing hum of “Ramble On” started to play. Clearly, that is what the entity felt it was time to do, time to ramble on. Quietly I sat shivering like someone just pulled from an icy grave. “Was that real? Or was it the ill effects of my foolhardy voyage into smoke induced manhood?” I said to myself as I rubbed my eyes.

 

I know what I saw, but how could it have been real? I tried to convince myself that what I saw could not have been real. “Ghosts aren’t real,” I said out loud. But I could not shake the notion that maybe, just maybe I really did see a Phantom. One minute it was there, the next it had faded back into the slippery world between man’s mortal coil and the afterlife’s vast unknown. Either way I saw something!

 

Realizing I may have truly just had a spectral visitation I started to laugh, not laughter of happiness, but laughter of relief. I survived a brush with death and lived to tell about. Quietly I cleaned up Dad’s office and returned to the house.

 

After a quick clean up I slithered back into the living room. Mom was still immersed in her novel. Dad and Lewy were still intently watching tv. Dad’s cop show had finished as he and Lewy were uncontrollably laughing at the antics of “Alf” and his terrestrial family. I slid in next to Lewy and picked up where I left off, domination of the world through the eyes of my favorite hero with the kung-Fu grip. Just as I grabbed Joe’s army Jeep Mom looked at my father with a serious scowl, “Arthur, were you smoking on the front porch?”

 

I laughed to myself as I said, “If they only knew!”

 

End

 

Good day, I'm BR.Giga, a 48 year old husband and father of six. I hail from central Florida by way of Massachusetts. I enjoy Sci-Fi, Horror and Action Mysteries

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