Short Fiction

She had legs from there to here, and if she ever had to brush something off her arm, it would be gold coins the size of a personal pizza ... but the important thing was that she had a dead ocelot ...

The battle is staged, but Command has given them no backup... what do they expect them to do?

Something draws near when a writer flexes his fingers and begins to draw upon his own past for words ... the words are easy, but what is it that they evoke?

Hailing from the quiet, itchy back woods of Pennsylvania, Paula Patruzzi has this to say about herself:"I've been a paper carrier, punch-press operator, 'sales associate', and pipefitters'/welders' helper. Now I'm a writer, which is a lot more fun than the other ones."

"This time of year," she said, her voice soft, yet possessing an alarming severity, "the curtain between the worlds is thin. Rips do occur..." An oh, what a rip it was ...

Nate and Sammy have a dangerous job -- protecting humanity from the witches who attack and hide from the government. But isn't there a kind of shell-shock from battles like that?

No matter how down on your luck you are, it's best to see with open eyes and watch where you're going ...

"He worshipped the very air she trod upon, but did she really give a FCC?"

Tom Larsen lives in Lambertville, New Jersey with Andree and her pets. His work has appeared in Newsday, New Millennium Writings, Antietam Review and Puerto del Sol. Larsen's short story "Lids" was included in Best American Mystery Stories -- 2004. His first novel FLAWED will be released this fall.

Ted Gnarles made preparations for care for his exotic plants, even though he was 85 years old.

Alas, Dunwitty was Dunwitty, and Miss Haversham was ... well, she was dismissing him, wasn't she?

It's not necessarily the words you say, it's how you say it -- and whether or not your listener has been trained to pay attention.

How ironic that the very sport that brought them together would be the one to drive them apart ... no pun intended ...

Tim Henderson is a freelance writer who currently resides in Asheville, NC. He holds an M.A. in Communication Studies, spent several years teaching English in Japan and traveling around Asia, and is finishing up a collection of short stories based on his adventures in the Far East. In addition to the views enumerated above on the subject of human-pet relations, he also believes that teaching a dog to shake your hand on command is degrading to both man and beast alike.

Send the kiddies to the other room and keep your hands and feet inside the car -- Nigel and Lucy Biatch are about to have an affair ...

How we protect the rights to wage warfare! Laws surround it to make sure it does well; if warfare is treated with no respect, we grimace and protest and beat our breasts with grief! Is it any wonder War comes to us, begging for sustenance and seeking our attention ...

Complacency is so easy to foster ... it often takes sacrifice to make people aware of how tenuous life can be.

Karla Lammers works as a corporate lawyer and has written several academic articles. Since turning her pen toward literary fiction, some of her short stories have appeared in online publications.

Someone has to do something to keep the Gurstockians from destroying Mars, but Snake Theriot's heart is torn with grief and sadness ...

It was to be a night of love -- or not. It was to be an advance of a career -- or its demise. Let's face it -- Warren was between a bear trap and a cliff over a river of crocodiles ...

Joy-riding vacations before graduation are not a good idea, even if you have a pal with a ride who says he knows all about the locals ...

They came to Mars from Gurstock as the latter planet disintegrated in waves of nuclear blasts. The Gurstockians didn't seem to mind ... they had a goal ...

It came from space in a fiery cluster of molten steel, shattering the solitude that covered the blue water below as it plunged deep into the cold darkness. There it would lie dormant, to be stirred by life that flourished both in the water and above.

Inexplicable, inexorable ... only those who witnessed the Singularity truly understood the meaning of those words.

Color matters in a population ... at least until the population realizes that color doesn't matter, and that we're all people under whatever skin color we wear ...

Possibly the most annoying of alien abductions is not the one which is simply inconvenient, but the one that is also completely mistaken ...

Dint your Momma ever tell you that gettin' pie-faced drunk could get you took advantage of?

A cautionary fable, about death and greed and death again.

When business is booming, picking and choosing your sales tactics is a viable path. But when the company is tanking, and jobs are on the line, you go with what works -- even skills that are a bit rusty ...

Was it memory? An overheard story? Or echoes of something that once might have been?