Short Story
A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE
The winter wind is blowing like snot across Saskatchewan as my two friends and I huddle in a half-ton truck, the heat cranked high to warm our frigid bodies. As we bump along a frozen deeply rutted road leading to a highway, which leads to another butt-fuck town, I wonder where we will spend the night. My friend Rex Smith is driving, and I’m squished between him and his brother Cyril on the front seat, which I suppose is the back seat too, since there is only one seat in the truck. Rex has a contract to hook up underground telephone lines all over the province and to think I left balmy Vancouver Island for a couple of weeks to be with my friends without pay; not my idea of a winter vacation; busty-blondes sipping pinacolatos stretched out beside a pool in a Mexican resort was more to my liking but I doubted my wife would have approved.
Len ShermanPublished 3 years ago in Fictionbefore the end
No one lived anymore. I mean really lived. No one laughed, no one dreamed, no one loved. It wasn't allowed. The sky was gray, such a uniform and unchanging gray that all the color seemed leeched from the world. Gloomy, heavy, and dull. Overcast with a thunderous foreboding of control. I wished for drumbeats, for peace, for music, or dance. I wished that the sky would ever break its formation and let out the ozone, to smell fresh air and feel thunder shake the walls and reverberate in my chest. I wasnt a child when the Black Army took control.I could still remember the thrill of running through a rainstorm, feeling soaked to the bone and the cozy comfort of dry skin and clothes after coming in, as outside the storm raged.
Melissa EavesPublished 3 years ago in FictionOur Own Terms
Mom always said to keep pushing, to keep moving. We were survivors. We survived when we lost the house. We survived when dad left. W survived when the world changed, and the schools closed. We even survived when the explosions started and it seemed like the lights would be out forever. The news would come on at night and would list the numbers of all of the people who had died. That’s all there was to watch, just a scroll of the dead until the electricity went out and all of the stations stopped running. I guess it was something nuclear. Mom never would give me a clear answer, she would just mutter something about how people would rather hate one another than live. I don’t blame her for being vague, she didn’t know what this would turn into.
Samantha SlominPublished 3 years ago in FictionPriceless
I can feel the sweat dripping down my nose. I try to stretch my shoulder to wipe it off, but the weight of the crate in my arms left little slack for such luxuries. In all honesty, even I was surprised at how much I had lugged in from The Wilds. I'm starting to regret trading my shopping cart for a portable stove. Who wants a hot meal in the middle of the damn desert? That's what I get for being cocky, I guess. A few good sales go to my head and I get swindled by The Mad Max equivalent of a used car salesman.
Meghan BetkePublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Loom
She sat in the dank again, a cellar of unknown origin. She succumbed to the inertia waiting for him. The whole creation she had just spent months weaving and retrieving had grown it’s own wings and taken flight. So she waited for it’s return. A picture, an invitation, a breath of fresh, anything to summon her from the overwhelming stench of this decay.
Melissa EavesPublished 3 years ago in FictionHavel The Vodnik
Every morning just before the sun rose, Danicka's father would gather together his fishing pole, bait, tobacco and the lunch her mother tied together in an old kroj ~ a faded headscarf that her mother had handed down for her. Danicka would run to the door, stand on her tippy-tiptoes and kiss her beloved otec goodbye. She would stand in the doorway waving as he walked down the path through the woods whistling an old Czechoslovakian folk tune, ere he disappeared from sight.
Juliette McCoy RiittersPublished 3 years ago in FictionThe End of the World Should not be Pretty
Handcuffed and forced to march into the city, I couldn’t help but feel let down by all the books and movies about the end of the world. The apocalypse was not supposed to be pretty. The end of the world was supposed to be gritty, chaotic, and brutal. Where were the gas masks, the piles of rubble, the radiation twisted beasts?
Katie L. Oswald (BookDragon)Published 3 years ago in FictionKenya Harris
August 27th, 2102 Book 16, Entry 47 I don't know where it came from, but every night it haunts my dreams. I see flashes of fire, destruction and …dragons? I don't understand, but I must continue on. I need to understand what it means. Why can't I remember? She left this to me, almost frantic, making me swear on my very soul that I would never allow anyone else to see it, touch it, or even know about it.
Crystal "Daisy" AntonPublished 3 years ago in FictionLike No One Is Watching
“What’s that around your neck?” Dad had come home early. “Dad it’s just-.“ “Just nothin’, boy. Now take that shit off. I’m about to make sure you don’t grow up like one of them men in dresses.” I took off my mother’s locket, her most prized possession, and placed it back in the trunk as gently as possible. It was silver with a ruby heart that was surrounded by tiny diamonds. She looked so beautiful in it. I missed Mom.
Brandy EnnPublished 3 years ago in FictionPrecious Cargo
She sat bolshie, clenching her hands, teeth, and toes; Her billowing mass of red, tangled hair yanking at the heart shaped locket around her neck.
Victoria BamberPublished 3 years ago in FictionTwitchers
I do not remember the date anymore, not since it happened. Weeks or months, years even, pass by without much notice in this world. I do remember how it happened. A normal morning, traffic and people yelling at each other over petty nonsense. Then fire rained from the sky. Not meteors, but jets of flame that fired down and scorched whatever they touched. I can’t say what caused them, only that hellfire seemed to cold a term for them. Looking back, I wish those fires were all that happened.
Patrick MarreroPublished 3 years ago in FictionInto the hell on earth
6022A.D. The war between heaven and hell had ended after what seemed like decades of bloodshed and deaths. I Lilith the 7th had witnessed it all as a young girl growing up to be a young adult with this war between Lucifer and the Mashiah, fighting to the death. Now that the war had ended just weeks ago I set out to find anyone or thing that could have survived the brutal fight. Ash litters the ground as the fire dances like Daisy in a strong breeze. The bells from the church that was left standing rang out in to the empty world. The fire slowly stopped its dance and the sight of bodies littered the ash covered ground. Not many people survived the war a lot of men and children were made to fight or die, Lucifer needed more men to fight for him and if they were to refuse he go for the children to fight for him. Especially since they had nothing of real desire. So, they were easy to per sway to fight. Thank goodness, my child has not been born yet especially during the war; I thought to myself. The church is where my child will be born in to this world it will be a day of peace and I told my grandfather Lucifer that it is a day of peace for his grandson to be born on the day that nothing happens.
Dragon Matthew Wood - HillmanPublished 3 years ago in Fiction