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Latest Stories

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…
July 03, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

The Brothers

Juan and Pascal were shipped to distant relatives on Delvina’s periodic hospitalisations. For smoking and breathing difficulties. She had been warned but could not stop. They did not understand the illness or the connection. Pascal stayed with cousins who…
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…

Sergeant Taylor always checked us thoroughly before sending us in: regulation uniform, backpacks, anti-ballistic helmets, Kevlar vests, and, of course, your gun. You couldn’t go anywhere in this place and be safe without your gun.

     Sergeant Taylor was strict not just because it was his job, but because he cared. He wanted us to have all the gear we needed to survive—in school.

     Since the Parkland Act, schools were now so much safer and more equitable. Everyone wears the same military grade school uniform. Everyone has to go through the same biometric security screening to get into the school and into every classroom. Everyone has a regulation handgun with live ammo and trains with it during PE.

     The math is so basic: the good guys will always outnumber the bad guys in any school. We were now armed and prepared to complete our academic mission. We were locked and loaded for learning. We were fighting fear with firepower.

     There were always some who spoke out against the Parkland Act and the militarization of our schools, but that’s just Twentieth Century thinking. School gun deaths are down 42% in the seven years since the Parkland Act went into effect. And once the coders figure out how to firm up the handprint safety locks on the primary grade handguns (who knew peanut butter and jelly could spoof the handprint recognition software), that should bring down the overall school gun deaths another 12% or more.

     So, we are making progress. Sergeant Taylor reminds us of that every day. He tells we are a new generation. A generation that can defend itself against anything and accomplish everything.

     I admire his optimism. But, I don’t share it…yet. I have to admit, I feel a bit dead inside because of what happened last month. My fifth grade pal Dara was killed. A substitute teacher accidentally shot her during recess. The substitute said the auto-safety feature malfunctioned. I cried for Dara every night, when no one else could see me. We’ve been taught that we shouldn’t get too emotional about things because that’s what can trigger the kind of mental illness that leads to school shootings. It’s hard for me to understand it all, and I’m concerned that my tears mean that I might fit The Profile. We’ve all been warned to be on the lookout for our peers that might fit The Profile.

      A couple of days after Dara’s death, our regular teacher, Ms. Forman, had us all trace our hands holding our guns on a big piece of butcher paper. We all got to choose different colors when we did the tracing and then write our names in the outline of our guns and add smiley faces and flowers. We even let the substitute teacher trace her handgun. Ms. Forman said it was a way to promote healing. We marched the big sign in during Dara’s funeral and draped it over her coffin. The clergy all smiled, and Dara’s mom fainted.

     Now, every time I get off the yellow armored bus and the driver and his tailgunner wave to me and my fifth grade pals, I feel like a piece of shrapnel is working its way deeper and closer to my heart. In many ways, I already feel like a ghost. Like I’ve joined Dara and we are hanging out on a mile-high jungle gym looking down into my school. Neither of us likes what we see.

     But, then we look beyond the school, and we get really scared. Ghosts getting scared, that’s really something. We see kids just like us on mile-high jungle gyms looking down at their schools all across America. We keep staring and one-by-one, all those thousands of kids turn and lock eyes with us. With me.

     Because Dara is looking at me, too. I only feel a little dead. Dara and those other school kids are all dead. They are still looking at me. To me.

     I slowly climb down from the mile-high jungle gym and go back to my classroom surrounded by all the other living and breathing ghosts that are my classmates. I go to my desk. Take out my school-issued handgun. Ms. Forman’s eyes widen a bit and her hand goes to her holster.

     I raise my gun.

     My eyes meet my teacher’s. She freezes.

     And then I loft my gun into the garbage can near her desk. The loud clatter makes all my classmates eyes widen in alarm and their small hands fumble for their guns. Then they realize what has happened and they freeze like little green plastic army figures. Ms. Forman is still frozen, for another moment. Then she slaps the big red panic button on her desk.

     Doors snap shut and auto-lock, blackout shades drop to cover all the windows. In 30 seconds, Sergeant Taylor is at the door, overriding the lock. He rushes in with his assault rifle drawn. He wheels on each of my classmates holding their guns, assessing, smiling, proud.

     Ms. Forman is pointing at the garbage can and Sergeant Taylor goes and kicks it over. My gun tumbles out. Ms. Forman now points at me, the gunless one.

     Sergeant Taylor looks at me, sees I'm the one who threw away the gun, and it's as if he’s been shot through the heart. He loses color and I think he might faint like Dara’s mom, but he doesn’t. He is now frozen. Stymied. Haunted.

     Haunted. Like he’s seen a ghost.

     And then I understood his fear and my new power. Sergeant Taylor had told us we were a new generation. I get it now. Dara on the mile-high jungle gym helped me see it.

     We are the deadest generation. Ghosts who your bullets don’t scare because you’ve already killed our childhoods, our innocence. Ghosts you can’t intimidate because you’ve robbed us of a violence-free future. Ghosts who are very good at one thing: haunting the conscience of America.

     We are the Deadest Generation. The new American Spirit. And we are on the haunt.

End

 A long-time English teacher and science fiction reader, I like short short stories and long long hikes in the Pacific Northwest.

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