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Latest Stories

July 08, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

Dance Of Death

CHAPTER ONE 1940 Chief Inspector Kenneth Langford offered the Commissioner a crisp salute, and then walked back through the labyrinth of passageways to his own small office. Langford was a member of the London Metropolitan Police, commonly referred to as…
July 08, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Winter Blues

the winter blues has a grip on me, all so tight Its icy tentacles wrap around me and squeezes freezing my fingers and toes with its nasty frostbite staving off the cold is a battle, an endless fight it brings forth an assortment of nasty diseases The winter…
July 08, 2025
Horror Stories Sushma R Doshi

Deliverer Of Messages

A loner in my childhood, my scrawny and weak figure prone to being bullied by sturdy and robust boys, I tended to wander around places frequented by few. Those curvy roads which fell into darkness after evening without street lights, the area near the pond…
July 08, 2025
General Stories L Christopher Hennessy

With A Side-Eye I Cherish

for Brittany ma amour Up to my neck in sadness for something just out of reach and she came along and fired up my life with kisses and the physical. The moment I looked into her eyes I didn't want to share her with anyone else and keep her all to myself. In…
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…

Magenta moon and... - Editor

Incarnadine Stars

by Chris Deal

“When's the sun come up?” he asked from the other end of the bench, his voice quiet, not his usual boisterousness. He was shrinking into himself as the night drifted.

“Not for another hour.”  I looked up, past the lamp's halo, past the city’s lights, into the pale gray of the birthing day.

“Shit.” He spat the cigarette butt away, onto the walkway.

“Think you'll make it?” I light a another smoke and hand it to him, his hand shaking, weak, then I do another for myself.

“Nah. Wish I would, but don't believe it to be.”

I lean forward, elbows on knees, and there's a smudge on the black leather of my left shoe. With a clean handkerchief I wipe away the dull incarnadine.  It came from him.

“Stars sure are clear,” he said.

“Yeah.  I figure that’s 'cause it's so cold.”

“How's that?” He coughs, and it is the sound of a blade cutting through wheat.

“I think it's the cold, it keeps the molecules in the atmosphere from vibrating, making the stars appear clear.”

He grunted, or made a sound that could be construed as a grunt.

“But I ain't a scientist or nothing, so I don't know.  Could be we’re closer to them in orbit or whatever.  I don’t know.”

He didn't say anything, and neither did I, for several minutes, we just sat there, looking up at the sky, and it was getting to be a brighter shade of gray, the same color of the ash that was growing on his cigarette, between his fingers, unmoving on the armrest, the cherry dying, fading.

“Sorry it went down like this,” I said.

I stood and walked toward the car, stopping only to pick up the lone casing, then away, towards where the sun will soon be.

©2009

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