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Latest Stories

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…
June 04, 2025
Fantasy Stories M.D. Smith

Car Of Dreams

Randy Jenkins, age sixty, lived the kind of life people don’t write stories about. He sold office supplies out of a small showroom in the back corner of a strip mall just outside Corpus Christi. He wore beige. Ate microwave dinners. And spent more time…
June 04, 2025
Science Fiction Stories David Rich

Earth Forever

With an exhale, Damerae unclipped a lint-free cloth from his desk, snatched it from the air, and wiped his glasses. He preferred staying hidden in his cozy interior office in the bowels of Orbital Counterweight Station of the International Space Elevator. But…
June 04, 2025
Flash Fiction George Vu

A Stolen Kiss A Beautiful Dream

It had been a long, exhausting day for her – a blur of endless tasks and demands. Yet, despite it all, she had fought for a moment to be with him. Stealing time from the world around her, she walked into the room quietly, hoping to surprise him. After a few…
June 04, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

Cow Bells

Based on actual incidents. Swiss Cabinet meeting, 15 March 1943 The American Ambassador has no comment, no explanation. We can expel the Ambassador in protest. I prefer he remains here under close surveillance. The bombing yesterday was of nuisance value; it…
June 04, 2025
Poetry Markus J

Signed To The Message

do your bit for king and country. are you a coward? or are you brave? so now is the time to sacrifice you don`t want to let your mates down it`s a kinship of the soul you know that’s the Australian way it was the message that was kept being sold so they…
June 04, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

On The Rebound

I was sitting in a bar knocking back my third Jack Daniels, when a drop-dead gorgeous blonde walked in. As she paused, surveying the room, I raised my glass in a complimentary salute. It was a ‘Hail Mary’ move, and I could hardly believe it when she came…
June 04, 2025
Science Fiction Stories M.D. Smith

Unplanned Landing

Red lights pulsed. Sirens howled. “Alert. Navigation failure. Proximity alert. Impact in thirty seconds.” Captain Mara Voss shot upright in her cryo-pod, lungs gasping like a drowning swimmer. Across the chamber, the rest of the crew jerked awake, groggy and…
June 04, 2025
Poetry Markus J

Marching To The Same Beat

an angel stands under a lonely pine showing the way to the lost souls the ones who innocently answered the king’s call and now flags fly half mast for those that no-more stand buried in some far off foreign land the pipes call out to the brave and the angel…
April 29, 2025
Fantasy Stories Chris Turner-Neal

The Gorgon’s Climb

I am the only one of us who calls it rape. Stheno, when she must mention it, says “our bad luck;” Medusa shrugs and says “gods don’t have to ask.” And I say but they should and she says but they don’t and Stheno says this attitude doesn’t help, and she’s…

On the outskirts of Madras, the city where I live in Southern India, it is said that there once lived a famous knife thrower. I don’t know how many of you know what knife throwing is all about for now it is a dead art and you rarely find knife throwers except in a few stray circuses.

For the benefit of the uninitiated let me explain what knife throwing was all about. The knife thrower was usually a man who could throw his knife blind folded with deadly accuracy. Normally, the knife thrower would have a partner; usually a female who would be strapped on to a rotating wheel and the knife thrower who normally was blind folded would hurl his knives from a distance of about fifty metres or so at the rotating wheel. While the knives would land on the circumference of the wheel with precision and accuracy they would appear to just miss the hands and feet of the woman tied to the wheel, while a collective gasp of anxiety would go up from the assembled gathering with every miss of the knife.

It was such a knife thrower that I am now referring to. The knife thrower and his paramour who also was his female partner in his knife throwing act, lived on the outskirts of Madras and frequently toured other parts of the country to display their skills and make a living out of it. It is said that the knife thrower during one of his tours had by mistake thrown the knife at the heart of his paramour and killed her on the spot. It was also rumored by a few people that the knife thrower had begun to doubt the fidelity of his paramour and had therefore deliberately thrown the knife at her heart and had killed her.

Whatever, the case may be it is said that the grief stricken knife thrower took to the bottle in a huge way to overcome his grief. It is said that in his inebriated state he turned into a dacoit and began looting the passer bys who traveled on the high way near which he lived. It is also further said that the knife thrower turned dacoit amassed a huge fortune and one day in a fit of drunken frenzy stabbed fifty knives into his heart and killed himself in remorse for his lost paramour.

While this incident had taken place nearly a hundred years ago, many of my friends who used to travel on this high way regularly have informed me that while traveling in the middle of the night on a particular stretch of the highway they come across an apparition of the knife thrower turned dacoit who appeared before them with a knife dripping with blood and staring into their eyes demanded, “Shall I throw?”, with the arm holding the knife outstretched as if in preparedness to throw the knife at them. Needless to say that all my dear friends who witnessed this apparition and faced its threatening gesture ran away in fear before the knife thrower could kill them.

News of this midnight apparition spread far and wide and people started avoiding that stretch of the highway at midnight and rather took a detour while traveling. However, there was another friend of mine who did not believe in God or Ghosts and having heard of all this decided to go and meet the apparition of the knife thrower at midnight on a new moon day.

The apparition appeared to this non believer just as it had to all the others and threatened him as well. My non believing friend assumed that it was all a prank being carried out by some mischievous elements and boldly challenged the apparition, “Throw if you wish. I am prepared.” The moment my non believing friend said this, the knife throwing apparition dropped its knife and picked up a huge wooden chest and threw it by the feet of my non believing friend.

My friend was surprised to find that the chest contained rubies, diamonds, emeralds, pearls and many other precious stones and gold coins as well as ornaments. The apparition then peacefully looked at my friend and said, “Thank you, for accepting what I threw at you; for this treasure is what I had looted from all the innocent people who passed by this highway and I was destined to escape my bondage as an apparition only if a living human being accepted the treasure from me. Thanks to you, I can now go and live in the spirit world with my dear paramour,” having said this, the apparition vanished and never again reappeared on that stretch of the highway.

My dear non believer friend is now a rich believer. He is greatly into charity and social service as well as the renaissance of religion. All my other friends who ran away from the apparition now curse themselves for not having had the guts to face the apparition and accepting its challenge.

Author’s Bio - sketch: Suri Ben Noah (1959 - Present) is a creative writer based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India who has been writing since the age of 12.  Suri had a rather colourful childhood and believes that these experiences have helped him understand the true nature of life.

Suri Ben Noah’s stories are the expression of a person who truly cares for the people of today, especially the youth. Suri also occasionally blogs, writes poems and essays on his own brand of philosophy. Suri's interests also include meditation, philosophy and understanding Truth, graphology, physiognomy & other alternative sciences.

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