Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Fiction.
The Black Bayou Monster
Once Upon a Time. As a child, those four little words made me giddy. They continue to cast a spell today. My Mom fostered the love of reading in my brothers and I. My Grandad and my Dad fostered the love of storytelling. They were masters at it. We loved hearing stories and we loved telling stories. I am entering as evidence; we kids got very creative with our stories about what we were up to.
By Cheryl Edwards5 years ago in Fiction
The Damselfly Locket
Amanda peeked between the rails in the staircase, at the lounge where the rest of the students were gathered. Colors of red, white, and green, covered the packages. Sounds of laughter, sights of hugs and twinkling lights, could make almost anyone forget where they were. Amanda had vague memories of a tree and gifts. Family and friends gathered around, a big meal being prepared, and the warmth and happiness she felt.
By Anita L Worthey5 years ago in Fiction
The Great Depression
The panic that ensued mirrored that of the hysteria of Y2K; rioting and looting, apocalyptic utterances; the end of the world. Big and small businesses alike relished in the pandemonium that drew the forsaken to their store fronts, emptying their stock like “out of business” liquidation sales. Their jubilation quieted once the contagious virus of paranoia coughed up and spat upon the walls of their establishment. The infection spread. The chatter from the informed, over various mediums, were convinced the end of days were here. The diagnosis was delirium, and prophetic pharmacologists prescribed unhealthy doses of folklore and nihilist fiction as the remedy. The foreseen panic in scripture was created today by fear frozen sheep unable to see the strings animating their movements, decisions. It was true that the water levels had risen, depleting hundreds of square inch of land monthly, and it was true that natural disasters were becoming more common, shifting the traditional worldwide reaction to them from disbelief to disregard; but the horsemen of the apocalypse never came. The earth did not open up and swallow its inhabitants without warning. The great asteroid that made fossil of skeleton and dust of flesh, of our reptilian ancestors, did not return for a curtain call. Monday through Sunday continued as did January through December. The sun rose in the east, smiling, and set in the west, yawning. The predictions were not entirely wrong though, just misinterpreted in their translation. A global change occurred, derailing our affinity to function on auto pilot, with eyes closed, led like lemmings off a ledge. The people woke up and set fires to their property, ceremoniously sacrificing the past for present favours from Gods found within. Our perceptions had changed. Protests ceased as their functions became unnecessary. Influence and coercion were ineffective as truth was now widely accepted as being verified solely from the “mouth of the horse.” The financial elite no longer dictated the ebb and flow of commerce, religion and government, because all of earths dependant’s chose truths that were symbiotic with their own heart’s desires. Relief set in, and emotions teetered to a plateau as the fear began to diminish; but that was just the prologue. That was December 21, 2012.
By Mars Marley5 years ago in Fiction
The Hunt
Standing in the doorway he was once again seized by the silence that encompassed the Earth since its downfall. Watching an empty road leading to Memphis, he noticed dust being lifted into the air, like steam rising from a placid lake after being heated from the morning Sun. He turned into the abandoned station to eat then gather his things before traveling north, it had been picked clean save the cash which has no use in this new world.
By Mitchell Cota5 years ago in Fiction
Guaranteed
They would always hum in the Garden. With the rising of what little sunlight filtered through the smog, they would flatten their feet to the ground and the song would start. Sometimes old hymns or pop songs returned to them unbidden. The Music made their steps into a kind of dance past the solar panels and water filtration system in the back of the tent, along the rows of beans, peppers, potatoes, carrots, and rice filling up the tent all the way to the buried edges, and around back to their lean-to in the middle. They thought of the place really as a Garden first and their bed seemed out of place.
By Valena Hedin5 years ago in Fiction
The Pine Grove
As she walked down the desolate hallway her mind started to drift to a better time. A time when they were all together and the world was a different place. A time when her biggest concern was whose house she would be hanging out at. Her teenage years had now been replaced with scavenging for food, finding a safe place to sleep and hiding from the evil that now ran the streets. But, this was her few moments to forget it all. She sat in the corner, closed her eyes and she could almost hear her mother’s voice calling her. The lilac candle her mom would burn seemed to encircle her entire body and she smiled, for a brief moment she was home.
By Kimberly Dumais-Hutt5 years ago in Fiction
The Pink Doors
Hux plants himself on the cafeteria stool beside you, heedless of his own impropriety. Hard to believe he’s fifty-three with pouches under his eyes and silver woven into the neglected terrain of his face. He is still fresh and hairless in your mind. None of you are the faces molded by gravity and time. You’ll never look at him and not see the lanky fledgling, two front teeth busted out from catapulting himself off the third-floor banister. That was the year the Health and Wellness Association put up the floor to ceiling glass in every hallway. You used to be able to stop at any given point on the walkway and peer over the edge to the atrium below, or gaze up all the way to the seventh floor. The nurseries. You thought it odd back then that they moved you down a floor every few years as you got older. It felt counterintuitive in some way. Back then it seemed like surely there was some apex we were all rising towards.
By Sara Elise MacDougall 5 years ago in Fiction
