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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…

I was so desperate I took a job attending funerals. It’s not as goulash as it sounds. I would open and lock up the church after the funeral. In between, the minister would officiate and comfort the family, but he couldn’t be expected to arrive a couple of hours before the funeral and stay an hour or two after. I was usually there five hours. The pay was decent enough.

The saying is that dead men tell no tales, but they do; and those who attend their funerals tell even more. The departed and the attendees tell everything. His obituary will say he was a faithful husband, but why is his girlfriend sitting on the aisle across from the wife? If he was such a loving father why didn’t his oldest daughter show up, and why doesn’t someone mention her name? If he was such a good husband, why is his wife nearly dancing a jig? I think she killed him. She has the look of someone who has been relived of a burden.

Family and friends, they try to put the best face on the corpse, but I can see it – he, or she, lies right there for all to see; to examine if his illness or age wore away his strength and vitality like his weight. Gaunt faces; sunken eyes; drawn lips, even before they were sown together. Old wrinkled fingers that squeezed pennies or let opportunities slip away.

People want to talk at funerals, especially to someone who doesn’t know. That way they can share it as news to a stranger instead of the gossip it would be to a family member or friend; and if you judge, so what? You’re just some guy waiting for the punch to give out so that the family will go home, never to be seen again. One person tells you the departed’s every accomplishment, but, sooner or later, someone else tells you his faults – maybe not directly, but they will tell. The particulars about the dead are like advertisements for houses, there is far more there than is revealed and the truth is concealed between the lines. She loved children because she had none, and that was because she couldn’t conceive; he riled against abortions because the one he forced a girlfriend to have so long ago still haunted him; he gave generously to good causes but cheated his partner and stole the business; she loved life, but committed suicide; he will be buried beside a wife he was forced to have instead of the man he loved. They will share a headstone the size of a small northern state: beloved wife; beloved husband, it says.

I’m afraid for my own funeral. Not because I’ll be dead, but because all my secrets will be revealed to the stranger sitting in the back of the room waiting to wash out the punch bowl. Who does he think he is?

THE END

Jamie C. Ruff is a former reporter, native of Greensboro, NC, and author of three e-books, the western “Colby Black: from Slave to Cowboy,” the contemporary tale of camaraderie and personal conflict “Reinventing the Uninvented Me,” and the coming of age story “The Peculiar Friendship.” All are available for download at Amazon.com.

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