-The best stories on the web-
Read or link to over 1000 stories listed under Stories to the left.
Submit your short stories for review as a Word document attached to an email to: Read@Short-Story.Me

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…

Just before dawn. Moonlight splinters through branches and glistens on damp leaves. A young soldier stoops over a stream and gulps the cool water. He is lost, exhausted, and now, as footsteps rustle in the undergrowth and a rifle cocks over his shoulder, he is flanked.

“Are you here to kill me?” the flanker asks.

“No,” the soldier replies, fearing the same thing.

“Pity. On your feet boy, turn around.”

The soldier turns around. A man with straggly, grey hair and an overgrown beard steps out of the gloom, tracking the soldier with his rifle, despite the bloodstained blindfold masking his eyes. A friendly - he wears the uniform - navy blue military coat, knee-length - torn at the collar, buttons missing.

“State your business, boy.”

“Got separated from my patrol, sir,” the soldier replies, noticing a faded gold emblem on the man’s shoulder, signifying an officer. “Ambushed in the forest last night, by Gorlians. Outnumbered we were, sir.”

The officer lowers his rifle and nods concedingly.

“You’ll do. Follow me.”

The forest canopy cracks and sways. Leaves rustle as the first hint of dawn sends bats flocking home. Far below, amongst the crickets and rising damp, a blind officer strides upstream, unfazed by wet stones and jutting roots, while an eager soldier hurries carefully behind. At a ruined stone outpost overrun with ivy and swamped by branches, the officer halts.

“It’s from the middle-period,” he says, as the soldier takes in the crumbling walls. “Before the Commonwealth, before these damn wars, before this.”

He holds up his rifle.

“I lost mine in the forest, sir,” the soldier says, touching his belt unconsciously.

“Here, take mine.”

The soldier takes the rifle. The officer marches away and grabs a shovel by the side of a tree, then rams it into the dirt and starts digging. The soldier perches on a stone and warms his hands with his breath.

“What is it you’re digging, sir?” he asks.

“My grave.”

The soldier squints - the rifle is filthy.

“Why are you digging your grave, sir?” he asks, while trying to pry open the chamber.

The officer steps back from the tree’s shadow and becomes a silhouette in the fading moonlight, veiled eyes catching the dawn as he aims them towards the sky.

“When you’ve seen what I’ve seen,” he starts, with a defiant smirk, before pointing his shovel at the soldier. “What else is there to do?”

He sinks back into darkness and carries on digging.

“What is it that you’ve seen, sir?” the soldier asks, unclogging dirt with his sleeve from the hammer and lock.

“Everything,” the officer grumbles, tossing out soil onto the growing mound.

The soldier blows dust from the barrel, wipes the damp wooden frame and peers at the rusty brass inscription on the shoulder rest.

“Are you a deserter, sir?”

The officer stops.

“How could I march? How could I fight?” he protests. “How could I give and take orders, once I’d seen what I’d seen?”

“What is it that you’ve seen, sir?” the soldier asks again, before getting distracted by the rifle chamber finally clanging open.

“Everything, boy,” the officer snaps, and pulls something from his pocket.

There isn’t even a bullet in the chamber.

“I’ve seen the truth; the how and the why; what is and what was and …”

“What is that, sir?” the soldier motions, towards the dark object in the officer’s palm.

The officer barks out a laugh and shakes his head.

“A better question would be: where did I get it?”

“Where did you get that, sir?”

“I killed a man and took it from his corpse.”

The soldier lowers the rifle and stares with sudden interest at the strange shadowy figure standing before him, knee-deep in his own grave - a deserter, a murderer, a thief. Then, as if sensing disgust, the officer, digging once more, says firmly:

“The man told me to kill him.”

Crows patrol the sky. Blood paints the fields. A red sky rises over the eastern mountains - the lifeless audience to an endless war. Somewhere deep in the forest, an officer stands waist-deep in his own grave, while a soldier takes a bullet from his satchel and forces it into a rifle.

“Was thinking, sir, about that man you killed,” the soldier starts. “Why did he need you to do it? Why not just do it himself, if what you say is true, sir?”

“Because he couldn’t.”

“I don’t follow you, sir.”

The officer lowers his shovel and leans back in the hole.

“Do you know that an imperial assassin is hunting me?

“Do you mean a Justice, sir?”

“They’re assassins, boy,” the officer barks, catching himself and immediately lowering his voice. “She crossed the bridge two nights ago. I was waiting on the opposite bank, ready, I thought, to surrender and die. But as she drew closer, and I heard her horse’s breath and it’s hooves on the cobbles, approaching like the drums of my execution, I couldn’t do it. Instead I hid there in the undergrowth until she passed, and fled back into the forest.”

The officer points to the trees and the soldier spies a noose in the dim light, hanging high above his head.

“I couldn’t do it,” the officer sighs.

“Why couldn’t …?”

“I drowned when I was a boy, in the lake by the edge our farm. It was summer, and my father had beaten me and my sisters the previous day, after he caught us in up to our waists. He said the water was dangerous. He said that there were currents hiding under the surface that would drag us down to the bottom, but it seemed impossible to me - the lake was so calm and blue, I thought my father was creating a monster to frighten us. So the next day I went back, threw off my clothes and set off for the other side. I remember the darkness. I remember kicking at nothing and screaming without making a sound. I could see the sun; I could see my sisters - they were so close and yet I couldn’t get to them and I thought: how can this be real? I thought I must be dreaming; I thought that if I closed my eyes it would all be over and that when I opened them again, everything would be back to how it was before. So I closed my eyes.”

“What happened then, sir?”

“I woke up coughing on the bank as my father pounded my chest. He later said it was a good thing. He said it would turn me into a man because now my eyes would be open to the truth of how things really are, and that I’d be stronger for it; but my father didn’t know that only some truths build character; others destroy it.”

The officer picks up the shovel again.

“So, you want to know why that man couldn’t kill himself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because he didn’t want to die.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“He didn’t want to die – but once he’d seen what he’d seen...”

The officer runs a hand along his blindfold.

“You see, there is always hope, boy,” he says, as if gazing on some distant part of the forest. “There is always the hope that if we just close our eyes, our pain will be gone when we wake. No man truly desires to be dead - even men who hang themselves still kick - and a man whose pain is in seeing everything, well; he’ll even gouge out his eyes before he’ll take his own life. Do you follow?”

“I think so, sir. You mean the man wanted to snuff it, but chickened out every time he tried, so instead he asked you to do it?”

“Such bliss,” the officer laughs to himself. “No matter. Is the rifle loaded, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

The officer stands up straight in his grave, hands behind back.

“Good. Now aim that rifle and shoot me dead.”

The soldier aims the rifle.

“In the head or the chest, sir?”

“In the ... wait ...” he mumbles. “Just … wait a moment.”

Somewhere in the fields, a terrified soldier is clutching the wound at his throat as axe-wielding Gorlians rush his position; somewhere in the hills, a mother is pleading as Commonwealth soldiers light torches and force her and her children into a barn; somewhere in the forest, an officer is scrambling from his grave and throwing away his shovel.

“I’d rather be cremated,” the officer says, setting off towards the outpost. “I’ll get an axe.”

He disappears inside, curses repeatedly, then storms back out and starts chopping.

“We’re going to need plenty of wood, boy,” he yells, hacking wildly and grunting viciously with each swing.

“Just one more minute.”

The axe comes down.

“Just one more hour.”

The axe comes down.

“Just one more day.”

The axe gets stuck. He fights to wrench it free, growls, pushes down with his foot on the tree for leverage. Then with a crack he stumbles backwards, only the shaft of the axe left in his hand. He pants heavily. He sighs defeatedly.

“I don’t want to die.”

High in the forest the birds are singing, as sunlight breaks through the trees, brightening the officer’s dirty face. He raises his chin and sniffs the damp morning air and a brief smile passes over his lips, before his head whips back violently and blood spits out behind. A deep, red hole appears at the centre of his blindfold, followed immediately by a loud bang that startles birds and echoes through the forest. The officer drops like a stone and lies dead on the forest floor. The soldier darts to the outpost, takes cover behind a collapsed wall. Light footsteps through the leaves, approaching. A woman, the soldier spies through a crack, with a pale face and long black hair. She wears a dark coat, open at the waist, revealing a dagger at her belt and leather boots that barely disturb the ground as she strides towards her victim, smoke still rising from the barrel of a revolver in her hand. She inspects the corpse briefly; drags it by ankles and throws it over the back of her horse; swings up into the saddle; slides on her gloves.

“Go back to your war, boy,” she says coldly, tilting her head like she’s spotted a mouse. “Soldiers live longer than deserters.”

With that, she takes the reins and gallops away through the forest.

Go back to your war, boy.

The warning echoes in his mind, as he gazes at the stone on the bloodstained ground. Though it appeared dark in the officer’s hand under the moonlight; the morning reveals it to be translucent. A smooth, crystallized piece of rock with a deep light emanating from the core, seemingly awoken by the dawn.

Go back to your war, boy.

The soldier creeps forwards - over the shovel, over the axe shaft, through the blood. The stone pulsates and light splinters out chaotically. It burns his eyes but he can’t look away; can’t even blink.

Stop, soldier.

A blissful warmth washes over him, and a terrifying chill. There are voices on the air – thousands of them – laughing and singing, screaming and crying. The light pierces his skull. Thoughts evaporate. Mind fractures. The self drowns and the soul soars, high above the forest and the mountains, basking in sunlight.

How will you march? How will you fight...?

The soldier reaches for the stone with eyes wide open.

...Once you’ve seen?

 

 

Bio:

I recently graduated with a degree in English lit and therefore spent a hell of lot of time studying the classics. I gained a particular appreciation for modernists like Joyce and Mansfield and the key rule of modernism which was always ‘show don’t tell’. I love ambiguous storytelling, I love storytelling that evolves from the ground up, where information is revealed gradually and naturally through language and interactions between characters, and I prefer authors that respect the ability of their reader to respond to such subtlety. I also like fantasy, obviously.

0
0
0
s2sdefault

Donate a little?

Use PayPal to support our efforts:

Amount

Genre Poll

Your Favorite Genre?

Sign Up for info from Short-Story.Me!

Stories Tips And Advice