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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…

‘Hi, Mike. I read your profile on Matchmate.com and thought we might have something in common.’

No, too considered. Sounds like I’ve been comparing profiles. Anyway, I don’t own a bright red Mercedes to lean against; I find it difficult to pose for a photograph, and I can’t do that look to the sky, like a rare bird just caught my attention.

Mike seems to have hired a professional. Someone has fussed over his tousled hair, shot him from different angles and uploaded his best – that’s something we don’t have in common. From childhood, people have had to restrain me for photographs; just as well I never married, the wedding album alone would have led to divorce.

Damn this age of technology. How can a flat screen convey personality, the subtle nuances of character, or the idiosyncrasies that endear us to loved ones?

'Hi, Mike. You sound like the type of guy I’d like to meet.’

God, that’s awful; now I’m using cyber-jive and sound desperate. Mike would think I’d drawn up a checklist and sat in every night circling those who ‘loved to travel’.

Then again, maybe Mike, despite his cool exterior, feels similar apprehension. I mean it can’t be easy poring over a gallery of pouting blondes with gravity-defying boobs while trying to choose the perfect partner. Not, mind you, that I’m in the bronzed beauty category, but ten years ago, I could have held my own.

That’s the problem, I suppose. First time around, I knew where I stood – or thought I knew where I stood. Maybe we all thought we knew where we stood. I know ticked boxes never entered the equation. I know we weren’t reduced to megabytes and pixels, scored on compatibility, or matched by sophisticated software. We behaved as humans; that’s the difference. Was that the difference? Anyway. We met; laughed, shared, fell in love, cried. We . . . well, you know the deal. ‘Different strokes’; ‘horses for courses’; ‘if hindsight were foresight’, and all those other hateful clichés. And please, don’t give me the ‘plenty more fish in the sea’, nonsense. That’s the one I detest most of all – like it’s some kind of universal therapy for a broken heart.

Shéa hadn’t needed a computer. We met in Molly Malone’s on 69th Street on a hot July night. I fell fast and hard – the thick Irish accent, powerful shoulders and gregarious personality. All that summer; weekends at the Jersey shore; long sunsets; sex on the beach; greeting dawn in each other’s arms. And the promises – oh, the promises.

'Hello, Mike. I’m Kate. Never married, no children, thirty-two years old. Brown hair, hazel eyes, willing to try again.’

I'm allowed to lie, a little - everybody does. That summer of copper skies and shared breaths passed. Shéa disappeared. His friends claimed he had overstayed his visa. Immigration tracked him down, and deported him. Against my parents’ wishes, I borrowed enough money to go to Ireland. I found him – safe and well, with a doting wife and two beautiful children.

I fell fast and hard, a second time – heartbreak, loneliness, depression. The medication left me confused and disorientated. I needed to listen to my mother and father; after all, they’d been right all along. Mother and I spent a week at a quiet location in upstate New York. I returned to school and stumbled through college, staying well clear of anything that smacked of a relationship. I learned my lesson and became a teacher.

'Hi, Mike, please tell me the truth, I can’t stand being lied to.’

Working with small children helps. The clammy hands and smell of fresh urine reminds me of how it might have been. Christmas cards splattered with fistfuls of red sequins and Santas of porcine proportions addressed to ‘bess teecher ever’. Mothers reminding me how much their prized offspring love me, then inquiring in hushed tones whether I’ve found someone. The haunting loneliness of the summer sun and the memories branded on my brain don’t seem to have eased with time.

'Hi, Mike. Somewhere out there lives my daughter - the one I gave up for adoption. I can’t see or speak to her, but she’s there every day of my life. She’s fifteen now, born on the date I used for my password to Matchmate.com. All these years she’s been close to me through that invisible thread that connects all mothers to their children. It’s not true, that I talk to myself on quiet evenings.’

< DELETE >

No matter how much I try, there remains a part that remembers.

'Hi, Mike, one day soon, I hope to be free.’

< SEND >

 

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