fiction

The Occupant of the Room

October 5, 2018 By Algernon Blackwood in Old Stories Tags: horror, scary stories, fiction, short fiction, Algernon Blackwood, weird stories, old story

He arrived late at night by the yellow diligence, stiff and cramped after the toilsome ascent of three slow hours. The village, a single mass of shadow, was already asleep. Only in front of the little hotel was there noise and light and bustle—for a moment. The horses, with tired, slouching gait, crossed the road and disappeared into the stable of their own accord, their harness trailing in the dust; and the lumbering diligence stood for the night where they had dragged it—the body of a great yellow-sided beetle with broken legs. Algernon Blackwood was an English novelist and a prolific [Read More]

Of Dogs and Donuts

October 7, 2014 By Pete Galvan in New Short Fiction Tags: short fiction, donuts, fences, pigs, dogs, fiction

I utter to myself, “Your soul is Rome but your hopes are Pompei.” Time has done to my face what the Internet has done to human decency. I descend the stairs noting that 100 years has made them the deepest conceivable brown. “It smells like an old trumpet case in here.” My reluctance has become the issue. No longer is the issue the powdered donuts I venture out to buy. Rather it is my reluctance. My reluctance to step out into the harsh, sallow light unique to this geography. Dust steeps in the humid air and the nearby highway moans [Read More]

Adventures in Litter Bay: Coheed Stops a Leak

August 6, 2014 By Lars Peterson in Serial Pilots, Serials Tags: serials, shore, mcclatchy, adventures in litter bay, coheed, fiction

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Adventures in Litter Bay

Hitchcock Coheed had earned a private pilot’s license when he was 16 years old, a degree in electrical engineering when he was 22, a contractor’s license (as an electrician) when he was 26, a marriage license at 27 and at 28 he signed on to his bride’s idea to pack up and seek their fortune in California. A year later he washed up in Litter Bay clinging to a beat Toyota pickup and a toolbox full of tools. His lovely bride was somewhere else, scores of miles inland he guessed, but who knew. Fifteen years later, he still has no idea. [Read More]

Caller ID

July 20, 2013 By Lars Peterson in 150 Words Tags: fiction, zero to 150, 150 words, telephone, one-hun

Long, long before caller ID, my dad would answer the phone, “Hi! How are ya?” which never failed to flummox the caller. My brother and I followed his example and managed to keep it up for several weeks until one evening, when Dad was working the swing shift, the phone rang, and after asking our stepmother if I could answer, after all it was my turn, I picked up and blurted, “Hi! How are you?” “What?” It was Dad. “How did? Goddammit, put your Stepmother on.” After she was done with the call Katie our stepmother said, “Your Dad says [Read More]

Not the Dog!

May 31, 2013 By Lars Peterson in New Short Fiction Tags: short fiction, doughty, dogs, fiction

One afternoon I told my friend John Scane I was maybe planning on watching I Am Legend later that evening on streaming, and I said, “Hey have you seen it?” and he said, “Yeah, sure a while ago. It’s pretty good,” and I said, “It’s got zombies, though, right? You know I can’t take too much of the gore and stuff,” and he said, “Yeah, there’s zombies. It’s scary, but no real gore. You should be OK,” and I said, “OK.” So the movie started and there was that beautiful dog, and I texted John and texted, “the dog? do [Read More]

Good Dog Bad Heart

May 24, 2013 By Lars Peterson in 150 Words Tags: fiction, short fiction, 150 words, terrier, heart, syncope

I have a good terrier with a weak heart. She’ll die early. She’s still young, just four, and her condition isn’t apparent unless she’s playing hard at fetch or chase the hose water. When it gets her, she stops, lies down, rolls over, breathes, and waits. It’s syncope — the light headedness you feel when you stand too fast. Her heart can’t keep pace with her legs and her lungs and eventually there isn’t enough blood to her brain. When she was a pup it would sneak up on her while she romped — Boom, and over she went. She’s [Read More]

Making a Buck

May 17, 2013 By Lars Peterson in New Short Fiction Tags: whole foods, fiction, short fiction, buck, ginger ale, rye, bourbon, sling

Today at the checkout in Whole Foods, the checkout girl, or young woman, I guess, scanned my fancy ginger ale and said, “Making a Ginger Ale Mojito?” “Err, no. Not a … Mojito. I will be making a Buck.” “A … Buck?” “Yes. It is an old cocktail, well not truly a cocktail since there are no bitters, but nobody really pays attention to that. It’s a descendant of the Sling, which is an even older mixture, a portable Punch. Grog fits in there, too. A Buck is ginger ale, rye, and the juice of half a lime, over ice, in [Read More]

See the Orange Write the Orange

May 9, 2013 By Lars Peterson in New Short Fiction Tags: Robert Wallace, students, fiction, short fiction, oranges

It’s poetry month at the writing academy and I want the students to practice describing things accurately. From a suggestion in Robert Wallace’s Writing Poems, I’ve decided to use the first springtime oranges as objects to describe. We read a few haikus, first, to get an idea about how an accurate description of a thing can say something about the poet (or more). I like to keep things simple at the writing academy. I cut an orange in half, then I cut one of the halves into four pieces and arrange everything onto a translucent plastic plate. The plate is yellowish, the [Read More]

Louder Than Words

May 8, 2013 By Lars Peterson in Story Notes and News Tags: updates, heuristics, books, language, metaphor, writing, fiction

Linguists used to think there was a special region of the brain devoted to language. But beginning in the 1990s, researchers with access to advanced brain imaging equipment like MRIs found that in fact the brain did not have a single region or node dedicated to processing language. What they noticed was that when a subject was read a sentence, say, “The shortstop fields the ball and throws it to first base,” several regions of the listener’s brain lit up. Which regions? Visual, suggesting the listener recalls a related scene from experience; motor, suggesting the listener recalls making a throw [Read More]

Shannon O’Shannon

April 24, 2013 By Lars Peterson in Commerce Tags: fiction, short fiction, broadwayandredondo, commerce

There’s a self-consciously Irish pub on the north side of Broadway a couple of doors east of the intersection of Broadway and Redondo. The pub is tucked between the Clever Gift Shop that sells clever greeting cards and clever pewter candlesticks and the Narrow Hardware Store that has a wide selection of light bulbs and screws and spackling paste and not much else. The food is good at the pub, as is the beer (the pub doesn’t sell liquor) and there are plenty of TVs tuned in to sports for entertainment. The place is called O’Shannon and it’s a mystery [Read More]

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