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Latest Stories

March 19, 2024
Fantasy Stories Wondering Monk

Just My Imagination

The alarm clock went off and started playing an awful tune. Tom opened his eyes and closed them back, squinting. He reopened one eye and stood up to stop the torture. The phone was on the desk, in the furthest spot from the bed. Although he changed his way of…
March 19, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Ocelotlzin

Earth Is Dead

Recording… It doesn't matter who I was; I probably lived a long time ago, and I am now just a voice someone added to the audio-visual records. What is essential is the recollection of events that lead to the current state. So, a little history needs to be…
March 08, 2024
Flash Fiction Benoit

Some Enchanted Evening

It was a rugby tackle with tears: Chrissy burst in, sobbing and babbling, hugging James. Her face was all wet, eyes wild. What…? My parents split up, Dad has moved in with his boyfriend and I cannot join them. I am shut out. I have lost my dad. Torrent of…
March 08, 2024
Horror Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

In The Hands Of My Legs

The car pulled up in front of the large salon. The neon sign, that sexy broad thing, on the salon'sroof read "Mr. Gil's All-night Salon". The exhaust pipe of the car was pumping solid smoke, theswirls moving from the car and towards the salon.…
March 07, 2024
Mystery Stories Vanessa Leigh Giles

Casualty of Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Chapter 1 Until Death do us Part ‘Ring, ring!’. I answered the telephone and asked, “Hello, good evening. Who’s this? “Hello.” This is Dr. Smith from Red Cross hospital. “Is this Mr. Locke, John?”, he asked, hesitantly scratching his bald head. “Yes, doctor.…
March 07, 2024
Crime Stories Robert Pook

Bar Room Trigger

Another return journey on footpaths so familiar. He strides across each crack in each paving stone. Regular loose drain covers sidestepped. Mapping long ago mapped in Richard’s desolate mind. His pace hastened by the sight of the oncoming storm. Quickening…
March 04, 2024
Horror Stories Ano Chinemerem

Sanctity

Where should I begin? I could begin by telling you about this comely boy, whom every notable person around the streets agrees his smile could charm the bills off one. Between one smile, there was his goodness, his dreams and humanity—a little far ahead?— but…
March 04, 2024
Flash Fiction Emanuel Diaz

Et Mortui Partium

As Rafael stepped out into the rain, it wasn't the ordinary drops that fell from the sky. Instead, it was a storm of souls, each one taking the form of shimmering jewelry as it cascaded toward the ground. Rubies, diamonds, and sapphires twinkled amidst the…
February 29, 2024
Poetry Jing Li Ava

London

‘Am I in London?’ "I am." Where is Elizabeth? Happy living story All of your chapter Bounlance joy Please my heart Power hand Wise mind Our baby Vow vow Love all love Miss I miss Endless wonder Bring us together Love all love Miss I miss For everything My…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Rob Pook

Life Sentence of The Smith

Born nine months after his country won the World Cup.A child prodigy.Cast off at age twenty-four.Husband, father, emigree, away on the other side of the world.The blue-collar life.The dreams of success.The search for fulfillment.The long years of empty…
February 29, 2024
Mystery Stories Joshua Lowther

The Operator

Jason looked over to his right, his eyes barely able to focus themselves on the subject of his attention. His neck ached terribly from the strenuous movement. He was tired. The captain’s gaze came to rest on the rookie sonar operator sitting tense at his…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Salvatore Difalco

The Chute

At dusk, we left our unit with a soft pink bundle. I carried it through the wet streets and into the black woods. I said I’d take it all the way, the bundle, but that we had to drop it in together. My wife’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t make me do that.” I…

Susie Adams was a short girl with a fair bit more than she’d like around the middle, although at age fourteen she still lived in hope that her growth spurt was coming on any day now. She also had a particularly nasty case of asthma that caused her to miss school days and left her with too much time on her hands.

It took her six months to hack into Valentine Inc., the world’s premier dating site. As Valentine Inc. had gradually taken over as almost the only means of dating, many people had tried to game the system, but Susie had two advantages over the multitude: a brilliant brain that spent too much time cooped up, and a father who worked for the company and kept his password taped underneath his desk.

Susie planned to set herself up as the perfect match for Dylan Colin: school quarterback, honors student, and dark-eyed Latino senior. It was true that Dylan had brushed aside her clumsy attempts at flirtation and the last time he and his friends had passed her in the hallway they’d all started spontaneously laughing, but Susie remained convinced that he was the smartest boy in the school and she was the smartest girl and they were made for each other.

Susie’s plan screeched to a halt when she was unable to crack the security for underage profiles. Loath to just leave, she flicked through the profiles of unmatched adults in her city, mischief in mind.

She found two college students, both passionate baseball fans, science-fiction readers, and majoring in chemistry. Susie activated a match between them.

Her next couple was a man who looked sort of like Han Solo in the original trilogy but a decade younger, and a woman who looked sort of like Princess Leia but a decade older. Susie felt confident it was true love.

She passed the profile of a fifty-year-old man seeking only women aged twenty and younger. Vaguely indignant on behalf of her gender, Susie matched him with the first woman she spotted who was ten years older than him.

When she found the profile of a chubby balding publishing house owner who exclusively sought athletic women, Susie’s sympathies swung in the other direction since she’d been mocked for her weight in the past, and she matched him with a gorgeous blond English PhD student.

Next, Susie clicked rapidly through profiles, looking for a woman who looked like herself. She finally found someone of roughly the right hair color and facial structure, and paired her with a former football player and Spanish professor with smoldering dark eyes.

Susie abandoned her project when her mother called her down for dinner.

That very evening, beyond Susie’s sight or knowledge, the matches began exchanging emails.

The two chemistry majors were both astonished to see that they have been paired with each other, as they were ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend. However, if Valentine Inc. said so…

The Han Solo and Princess Leia look-alikes met in a coffee shop, but once small talk ran out, they discovered that they had nothing in common, and stared at each other awkwardly.

The fifty-year-old rejected his match based on her picture, and sent her a scathing email about what a hideous bag of bones she was that reduced the poor woman to tears.

The publishing house owner met the English PhD student for lunch, but declared that his type was redheads, not blondes. He then proceeded to lambast her choice of a major, mocking English as a worthless degree, and made it clear to her that she had better be able to pay for lunch. The English student wolfed down her sandwich so fast it gave her a stomach ache, threw her money on the table, and fled.

The woman meeting the Spanish professor wrinkled her nose in disdain upon hearing his accent, and the date went downhill from there. She checked her phone repeatedly during the date, criticized his shirt, flirted with the waiter, and finally made an offensive joke about Mexicans that had the professor storming out of the restaurant.

Valentine Inc.’s security system discovered Susie’s intrusion within twenty hours, but not fast enough to stop the dates from occurring.

The ex-boyfriend and girlfriend simultaneously received apologetic emails telling them that their match had been made in error. They both looked at their smartphones, shrugged, and then went back to making out.

By sheer coincidence, the Han Solo look alike and the English PhD student stood next to each other at the bus stop coming back from their disastrous dates, and the Princess Leia look alike and the Spanish professor fell to talking at the gas station where they were filling up their cars. Han Solo and the English PhD student were both reading the same book, which led them to start a conversation about their mutual passion for Edgar Allan Poe, and then exchange phone numbers. Princess Leia and the Spanish professor had differing beliefs on the most likely winner for the next Superbowl, and arranged a dinner date in their eagerness to convert the other.

The sixty-year-old woman was given several free matches from Valentine Inc. as an apology for her bad experience, and within eight months she was engaged to a Canadian hotelier and widower who adored her.

The remaining three all continued to have trouble finding anyone who would meet their exacting standards.

Valentine Inc. never did uncover what had caused the error, but Susie’s father noticed that someone else had used his login. But Susie had a particularly bad asthma attack and he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but delete her dating profile.

Susie, who had faked the attack, despaired over her lost match with the profile-conscious Dylan Colin. However, a month later, Jake Callahan won the state robotics championship, and Susie realized that he was the real smartest boy in school. She contrived a plan to impress him by doubling the robotics’ club budget via a school-wide pyramid scheme.

 

 

AUTHOR BIO

Katherine Toran is an economics PhD student at the University of Kentucky. She has coauthored eight nonfiction research papers, and writes fiction as a relief from the endless math jargon. Her fiction has been published in Short Fiction Break.

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