Short Story of the Day, The Executioner by Jennifer Marie Brissett

““The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”

― George R.R. Martin

Seated Woman, Willem de Kooning, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

Are we always responsible for our actions?

The Executioner by Jennifer Marie Brissett

From Lightspeed

Jennifer Marie Brissett

Flash Fiction of the Day, Live Stream by Kaj Tanaka

“Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.”

― Marilyn Monroe

A couple kissing, an engagement photo shoot I assume, in front of everyone waiting on a concert. Reflecting pool in front of the opera house, Dallas Arts District

Sometimes the internet is a time machine – a melancholy and distorted one.

Live Stream by Kaj Tanaka

Kaj Tanaka stories

Flash Fiction of the Day, Bones Passing Through by Stephen Ground

“my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.”

― Charles Bukowski

The bar dining spot at Oddfellows – a wooden bench, metal pipe for a backrest, and a log for a footrest. Our waitress has my wheat beer and Candy’s wine.

There is a certain kind of long-term despair….

Bones Passing Through by Stephen Ground

Flash Fiction of the Day, The Sky Blue Ball by Joyce Carol Oates

“Time is the enemy of lovers. Worse even than the frank light of day.”

― Joyce Carol Oates, A Fair Maiden

Decaying wall, Ladonia, Texas

Joyce Carol Oates is such a genius – it is scary. Her stories never turn out how you think they will and… most importantly… she is not afraid to go there.

The Sky Blue Ball by Joyce Carol Oates

Flash Fiction of the Day, Keys by Tim Parks

“With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.”
― Tim Parks

Keys, a dream, canoes, and the latest squeeze.

Keys by Tim Parks

From the New Yorker.

Flash Fiction of the Day, Chasing the Legend by Deborah Shrimplin

“Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird,

That cannot fly.”

― Langston Hughes

Autumn grasses, Courthouse Square, McKinney, Texas

A short piece about hope – and the idea that maybe we aren’t as stupid as we seem.

Chasing the Legend by Deborah Shrimplin

Flash Fiction of the Day, Time Travel by Melanie Lau

“This is what I say: I’ve got good news and bad news.

The good news is, you don’t have to worry, you can’t change the past.

The bad news is, you don’t have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can’t change the past.

The universe just doesn’t put up with that. We aren’t important enough. No one is. Even in our own lives. We’re not strong enough, willful enough, skilled enough in chronodiegetic manipulation to be able to just accidentally change the entire course of anything, even ourselves.”
― Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

The Time Traveler of Paranormal Percussion, with Clyde Casey New Orleans, Louisiana

If you could go into the future – maybe only a few hours – can you have your cake and eat it too?

Time Travel by Melanie Lau

from Flash Fiction Online

Flash Fiction of the Day, A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas, Texas

We all wake up in the middle of the night or maybe even five minutes before the alarm goes off and hear them walking around. Hear who? I don’t know.

A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf

Flash Fiction of the day, Different Shades of Yellow by Teddy Kimathi

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Sunflower

A friend called me one Saturday morning to tell me there were fields of Sunflowers blooming, vast, beside the Interstate on the way to Austin. I drove down there to take photographs. It was amazingly beautiful, the miles of yellow faces looking into the sun.

Today’s story reminded me of that day and these photographs.

Different Shades of Yellow by Teddy Kimathi


Sunflower
Sunflower

Flash Fiction of the day, Invisible Ones by A. C. Spahn

“Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Rest Area
The trail runs through some thick woods between the train line and the creek south of Forest Lane. There is a nice rest area built there. This homeless guy was sitting in the rest area, reading and writing in his notebook. We talked about the weather and I helped him find a lost sock.

Invisible Ones by A. C. Spahn