145 Articles Under This Category. Now Displaying Page 1
The Aliens Among Us - Gregory Lewis
(The Bill concept bears some resemblance to Roger from American Dad, with overtones of scenes from Heavy Metal) TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP – I used my broomstick to signal Bill next door to turn down his stereo. He was playing that weird alien stuff again; a repetitious synthetic melody. The... Submitted 4 days 3 hours ago.

Review: The Litigators - - ngoldman
Author: Lindsay G. Arthur, Jr. ISBN: 0-9765201-0-9 Publisher: Scarletta Press Set in Minneapolis, the crux of The Litigators focuses on an unfortunate event where a young woman, Ruth Bergstrom contacts some unknown disease and begins to lose strength in her legs causing her to... Submitted 4 days 19 hours ago.

Suicide - Broken Lives - Brianna Popsickle
We’d grown up together and were best friends. Rachel was always smiling and laughing, so much so she earned the nickname, Giggles. We shared a lot over the years. We had long discussions over whether or not Santa was real. We made houses out of cardboard boxes and would go for walks in... Submitted 129 days 16 hours ago.

After Party: A Short Story - Melissa Swenka
The lights are up, the show is about to start, and no one is more excited than you. Music on the hi-fi system is recycled, created for mass production. You’re in a set of clothing worth more than your life, created by a man you’ll never meet, and whose name you will never be able to... Submitted 158 days 19 hours ago.

Take a Number at the DMV - Marcia Calhoun Forecki
The box suspended from the ceiling of the DMV glowed a digital green. A pattern of small rectangles formed the number 64. I watched intently, waiting to see the rectangles rearrange themselves into 165. "Next." I leapt to the counter in two steps; before the clerk's voice had risen to the... Submitted 2 years 81 days ago.

Why is Sherlock Holmes Timelessly Popular? - - Joel Gray
Very few fictional characters created long ago have remained popular to this day. Tintin, a cartoon character created by Georges Prosper Remi in 1929, has remained popular since its creation (10). One of his Tintin books has been turned into a feature-length Hollywood movie ( The Adventures of... Submitted 72 days 13 hours ago.

The Legend of Herb and Fruit - Gregory Lewis
“What are you going to do with your share of the loot, “Herb?” Fruit stirred the bacon fat in a black skillet. He was thankful the air was cooling as the sun retreated below the mesa. “Want to buy a little sheep ranch, Fruit. Going to order me one of those mail order... Submitted 147 days 4 hours ago.

Difficult things - Marcia Calhoun Forecki
Blood covers the toes of his shoes. The room is only ten degrees above freezing. He exhales jets of frost from his exertions. A new carcass comes before him. He lifts an electric saw over his head. The trapezius muscle of his upper back excretes a drop of lactic acid. The drop will join with... Submitted 234 days 23 hours ago.

The Curse of Sherlock Holmes - Jack H. Schick
Sherlock Holmes is one of the best known characters in all of world literature. He is by far the most familiar character in English fiction. Holmes has been phenomenally popular since he first appeared in the Strand Magazine in 1887, and solved the case of The Scarlet Letter. Sherlock Holmes is a... Submitted 1 year 343 days ago.

Message From The Missing Piece - - Joyce Dunn
Let me introduce myself. My name is Perfecta. Jenny thinks I'm her missing piece, and keeps desperately looking for me. She is so positive that she is badly flawed without me that she tries to fool people into thinking I'm not missing, that Perfecta is really a part of her. Don't you find it... Submitted 2 years 18 days ago.

Adriana, A Short Story About A Mom Who Feels Ignored - Fran Larson
No, Mother, I don't need you to help me pack. I've called Nadine and she'll be glad to pick up the extra money." "Nadine?" "Yes, mother. Remember she cleaned house for me on a regular basis for a while. It turns out that she's between jobs now, so she'll be glad for the extra cash. She... Submitted 2 years 101 days ago.

A Caring Gesture - Marcia Calhoun Forecki
This one is new. Her touch is lighter and she hesitates before she lifts the blanket to look at what is left of me. I can not see her, of course. I haven't seen any of the others, but I can identify them by their touch, their breathing, and the words they whisper without realizing it. Certainly... Submitted 2 years 103 days ago.

The Humbled - Michael Ramzy
John lives in a very small house on a side street in a mid-size American city. He lives a very unassuming life, by himself, and spends most of his time working on his little garden and his house. He has a vehicle made in America, although to be fair it wasn't so much a buy-American thing as it... Submitted 3 years 63 days ago.

The Wasp and Me - Gregory Lewis
I think I must be getting lonely. I have a new pet wasp in my bedroom; I call her Hudson, after W.H. Hudson, who wrote a 1905 essay titled Wasps, extolling them as one of the more intelligent insect genus. In the case of Hudson (my wasp) I think it belongs to genus polistes, species fuscatus... Submitted 3 years 124 days ago.

Life, Death And The Mystery of the Broken Mirror - Marty RicKard
My seven-year-old tiptoed into my study, her hands behind her back. Please dont be angry," she sobbed. Whats wrong, Susan?" She showed her hands. I gasped. She held the antique mirror I had given Carol two years before the accident. The mirror was cracked. A thin line curved across the surface... Submitted 4 years 80 days ago.

The Woman, Behind The Character In The Streets, Pushing That Decrepit Grocery Cart! - - elle kynzer
The wheel of the grocery cart was stuck in a crack in the sidewalk, and as the old woman struggled to pull it out she slipped slowly to the cold concrete. Her strength was gone and she wondered if getting up was worth it. Her hair was dark and stringy, and she hadn't bathed in weeks. The cold of... Submitted 26 days 17 hours ago.

Jules Verne: A Novelist Who Accurately Envisioned the Future - - Joel Gray
The future has been predicted by many people over the years, and some have been quite accurate in their predictions. In December of 1901, an article by Henry Litchfield West included his prediction that, “Aerial cars will ply between great centers of population, arriving and departing on... Submitted 105 days 16 hours ago.

If a Children’s Book Is Appreciated Also By the Grown-Up - Francesca Tessarollo
They are called children’s books, but very often they are appreciated by a much wider public: also adults like children’s literature! Often considered as a subcategory only addressed to younger readers, children’s books are recently achieving a great success also among those... Submitted 121 days 6 hours ago.

Idaho’s Bear Lake Valley is an Inspiring Country - - Linda Weaver Clarke
Idaho’s Bear Lake Valley is a stunning and tranquil place to visit. Looking down from the crest of the mountain, one may see flat rich meadowland spread out for miles and miles between the mountains, exhibiting more shades of green and yellow than one could ever imagine; and among all this... Submitted 207 days 17 hours ago.

R.a.i.n. (story) - Jesus Villalobos
Amidst the background of the college where I learned to fight not with my hands, but rather with my wits, I met Professor Zoe. It was he who would eventually be the cause of somewhat bizarre incidents in my life which would ultimately lead to a new understanding of life, liberty, and the persuit... Submitted 337 days 17 hours ago.

The Not So Beautiful Original Tale Of Sleeping Beauty - - Sydney Harrell
There are many different variants of the tale of Sleeping Beauty, but perhaps the most widely known is the one that the 1959 movie by Walt Disney portrays. Young Aurora has a curse placed upon her by an evil witch named Maleficent. The curse foretells that if Aurora pricks her finger on a... Submitted 1 year 11 days ago.

Thor the Shark - Gregory Lewis
LONG BEACH, CA - We were just kids at the beach, foolish and frolicking in the waves. Back then parents were less overprotective of their kids, so Mom not only didn’t know where we were, she didn’t care. We might have been playing with jellyfish or drifting half way out to Catalina.... Submitted 1 year 39 days ago.

From Dark Matter to Moby Dick: “All Deified Nature Absolutely Paints Like the Harlot” - Marc Adler
While reading a recent New York Times article about NASA's quest to confirm that dark matter underlies everything in nature, I couldn't help but recall the chapter in Moby Dick called "The Whiteness of the Whale." The Times article explains that Sam Ting, a celebrated scientist and winner of... Submitted 1 year 79 days ago.

O Eve Where Art Thou? - Ella Camp
There have been stories throughout time that have wanted to be told; and yet, the intolerant temper of the times did urge the storyteller to the couching safety of the metaphor, parable and fairytale; which we are now left to decipher through the glass darkly. In this certain time and place- a... Submitted 1 year 187 days ago.

Willa's Ghost - Jack H. Schick
The first sensation was sound, a subdued, dull sound; the rhythmic beating of his heart, a muffled thump...thump...thump in his ears. There was no actual consciousness yet, just the hazy notice of the faint, almost indistinguishable pulsing of involuntary life seething through his veins.... Submitted 1 year 329 days ago.