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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…

When I was a boy there were tales of a lady in the lake.

During the Summer months, my friends and I would ride our bicycles out there, and swim all day. Sometimes, we would take a tent, and camp out there, our parents thinking that we were having a sleep over at Joe's.

We would tell stories, trying to scare each other, and it would work, because none of us would get a wink of sleep, convinced that wild pigs might attack us, or Donny Brooke's pitbull was loose, and hunting us down. Never did we did tell ghost stories, though, because ghosts are like fairies, just something made up.

Ghosts do exist. I know now.

We were aware that people had occasionally drowned in the lake, their bodies later found tangled in the reeds. My father had been a rescue worker and told me that sometimes they would find a floater, have to slide a piece of board beneath them, remove the body that way, because the skin would be tissue thin, and brittle. He said that one time he removed a body and his fingers sunk right into them, tearing away their flesh.

My mother stressed the most, saying, “ Don't swim beneath the surface, David. Those reeds are dangerous. Beth lives in them. She'll get you. “

Beth...

Beth had been a girl who went to school with my mother and father. She was the girl with a bright future, so everyone thought. Her future was cut short by a boating accident. The propeller cut her head up and they found her a week later. She was submerged deep, tangled in those reeds.

Boys will be boys and we challenged each other to swim down to them, ignoring old wive's tales, to feel the slime upon them, to see how they wriggled and waved, like slender green fingers.

I swam down there.

Beth was beautiful and I was mesmerised.

She quickly grabbed my arm and dragged me deeper into the reeds. Her face changed and I saw what had happened to her, how she had been scalped, her face thrashed, and broken. She shrieked at me, I was terrified, and that's how I drowned.

 

End

 

BIO: I live in Orange, New South Wales, Australia. I have one child -a daughter. I was born in Sydney in 1977. My poetry has appeared in anthologies worldwide and my short stories have been published in men's magazines. I cite James Herbert, Tales from the Crypt, vintage Penny Dreadfuls, and Ripley's Believe It, or Not as an influence.

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