Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Disguise

By MorningAJ


“Perfect disguise”, Amanda said to her reflection in the cheval mirror. “No-one will recognise you.” The wig made her head look like a coconut and the mouth was a delightful touch. She gnashed her teeth and pulled back her lips, gurning at herself to get a better look. Yellow and crooked: what they call ‘English teeth’ in the US. Then, of course, there was the fat suit.

Amanda knew from bitter, adolescent experience that the best way to stop people from seeing you was to be overweight. She had suffered a long time to learn that lesson. All through her teens she had been the butt of the jokes, left out of invitations and spurned by her peers, just because she had a weight problem. Behind the size she was actually quite attractive but they never knew because they never looked. They deemed her invisible. Talk about the elephant in the room!

But when she reached twenty one she inherited some money and used it to change her image and her identity. Not because she was unhappy with herself, but because she realised by then she would have to play by ‘their’ rules to win their game. And she had won. Her face appeared nightly on TV as a respected anchor-woman on a national news programme. Every one of her old tormentors could see her now. She was relishing her triumph and planned to crown it with a visit to each of them to point out the error of their old ways.

Hence the disguise: the wig, the fake teeth and the fat suit made her look exactly like she did at school. That was the point. She wanted to make sure they knew who was responsible as she murdered them, one by one. It was the perfect disguise for the perfect crime. Only the victims could identify her and they did not live to tell tales. She had even been captured on security cameras a few times and earned herself the nickname of The Fat Slasher but no-one linked the obese image with the svelte news reader. She knew she would never be caught. She just had to remember not to laugh when she reported the latest killing to her eager viewers.


Copyright ©2011 MorningAJ. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.

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This story was originally published on the Jobbing Writer site on August 24, 2011.

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If you like this story, check out these other Morning AJ stories, published on this site: Earwig, Falling star, Helen's dilemma and Jetsam.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

MorningAJ is a professional (science PR) writer/rebel who fends off the
restrictions of her paid-for work by creating short stories, poems and
microfiction in her spare time. She’s even managed a novel, thanks to
NaNoWriMo, and is currently working on her second.
She also paints watercolours.
Badly.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The sandwich murders

By Steve isaak


Jacqui the penguin nun waddled out of the address-crossed timespace portal.

Where the heck am I? This isn’t Disneyland –

She saw the eviscerated Sandwich aliens, their loins and bellies mutilated, peanut butter and jelly intestines everywhere.

Aghast, Jacqui dialed her cell phone. “Hello, police?”

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Using his tweezers, Intergalactic Agent Harrison picked up the brown paper scrap reading “42”.

“Douglas, Adams,” he addressed the uniforms behind him. “Any idea what this number means?”

Douglas snickered. Someone’s stomach growled.

Harrison turned. I hate working with local cops

He saw the kitchen knife, the murder weapon, in Adams’ hand.

“Adams, stop licking the evidence!”


Copyright ©2006, 2011 Steve Isaak. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.

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This was originally published in my book Charge of the scarlet b-sides: microsex stories & poems.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Compulsion

By Anna


Always her OCD got the better of her, always, always ruled her life. He had left her eons ago, moved on to a better place.

She had the clean thing and had this numbers thing – everything had to be repeated ten times; if her compulsion was interrupted she had to begin again

She had seen the earwig crawl across his forehead as he slept his alcohol induced sleep and fearful as she was of them, she had to clean it away, had to get rid of it. She picked up his beer glass and smashed it on his head, once, twice, thrice – he woke up then and began to gesticulate wildly, and she counted in her head four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

He had left her then – for good; left everyone.

Every time she saw an earwig floor or wall crawl in her cell, she thought of him – ten times.


Copyright ©2011 Anna. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.

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This story originally appeared on the puzzelicious site, on July 13, 2011.

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If you like this story, check out Anna’s other stories, published on this site: Industry, Retribution and Simkins.


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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

I'm a mother, friend, nurse, wife and lover! I think I have always been 'creative' drawing, painting, writing stories and poetry from an early age. I am moronically happy as I don't see the point in being miserable and find life - 99% of the time - wonderful.

Monday, August 15, 2011

**3 of my mainstream poems were published in the latest issue of Milk Sugar Literature

Three of my mainstream poems - Just checking; Z waves on the 1:09 bus; Mailbox stomp 442 - were published in the August/September 2011 issue of Milk Sugar Literature.

If you have a moment, and are inclined toward reading life-true verses, check them out. =)

Thursday, August 11, 2011

**One of my stories, Hot Flicks, was republished on the Every Night Erotica site

One of my adult-content stories, Hot Flicks, was republished on the Every Night Erotica (ENE) site yesterday. (It was originally published, as a shorter version, on the Divine Pleasures website in June 2002.)

This story has more plot, is more mainstream than most sex stories. It also has a background, series-recurring character, Katrina Sirkus, who later appears as an adult in a loosely-linked sequel, Kat and Mirah's Midnight Show (published on the ENE site on March 5, 2011).

If you have a moment, and are inclined toward reading quality erotica, check these stories out. =)

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Jet lagged

By Baird Nuckolls


I slept with my face in your pillow. I wore your sweater. I wandered the apartment, checking the clock. Eight hours difference and it seemed like my soul was out of phase with my body. You called at the strangest times, which pissed me off, but left me yearning for your voice the minute you hung up.

Now you are home, smelling of airports and stale coffee; the cat is hiding, and I keep tripping over your shoes. I need to press my breasts against your wet back in the shower. I want to fall into your kisses, forgetting myself until we are in the same time zone again.


Copyright ©2011 Baird Nuckolls. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.

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If you like this story, check out Baird’s other stories, published on this site:
Chickens roosting in the trees, He Preferred Red and Scarred.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Baird is a writer, living in Northern California, who has too many stories that want to be written. She multitasks as much as possible.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Alex and the zebra

By Steve Isaak


(for Eliza Rain Brecheisen)


Alex, six, playing with dolls in her playground, saw the light purple zebra, standing in the plains beyond the high cyclone fence bordering her backyard.

She dropped her dolls and watched the purple zebra.

The zebra appeared to be a colt – a male foal – rubbing noses with his mother, who happily made blowing noises through her loose equine lips.

His mother, like the rest of their herd, was white with black stripes.

He’s different from the others, like me, the adopted Asian girl thought. Why is he different?

Raising their long necks, the ostriches, who’d been grazing near the zebras, hissed warnings: predators approaching.

The birds hightailed it, their brown butterball bellies and wings shaking. Seconds later, the zebras, with accompanying whinnies and loud snorts, followed the ostriches.

Alex ran inside her house to tell her red-haired mother, Stephanie, about what she’d seen.

Stephanie paused in her vegetable cutting to kneel beside her daughter, smiling and pulling Alex close when the little girl, breathless, finished her tale.

“That’s great,” Stephanie said. “Why don’t you draw some pictures of them?”

Thus began Alex’s famous career obsessions: purple zebras and painting them.

She never saw a real live purple zebra again.


Copyright ©2011 Steve Isaak. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form, including electronic, without the author’s express permission.

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This was originally published on the Reading and Writing By Pub Light site on March 7, 2011.