Story Du Jour #12

All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small presentation in these trying times.

Lowlife Literature

All Due Respect

"On the Edge" - by Sharon Diane King

1,228 words

Shrink vs shrink in a seedy motel with plenty of resentments to go around. 

Here's a sample of the writing:

McLeod paused, trying to even out his breath. He stared out the window at the thrashing ocean. The wooden balcony jutted out over the jagged rocks on the beach below. He’d been right to come. The perfect setting....

 “What is it you’d want me to say to you, Sandy?”

 “Truth’d be nice. For once.”

 McLeod grasped his cane and stood up slowly, gazing at the man with his back to him. “Okay, all right. You want the truth? Here’s a start. You were all about getting what you wanted, no matter what it took or who it hurt. From the day you rolled into town.”

 Sandy turned and stared at McLeod.

“You came here with all this hype, big city doctor settling down to a heartland practice. Your beauty pageant wife, your gifted kids. Your guitar, your garage band. Big fancy trips, RVs and motorcycles and new cars. Flashy stuff. Flash in the pan, more like. You used us all, so you could get everything you ever wanted.”


 Sandy smiled thinly. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? You done?”

More fun fiction soon.

Short Story Du Jour #3

Screw Amazon. Try Raw Dog.

Café Irreal, “Manuscript Found by a Stoplight After a Grave Accident” by Osvaldo Gonzalez Real 1,035 words 

 Here’s a droll little tail from a quarterly webzine seeking “fantastic fiction infrequently published in English . . . described[ed] as irreal . . . resembl[ing] the work of writers such as Franz Kafka, Kobo Abe, Clarice Lispector and Jorge Luis Borges."  A dead man looks back on his last day and realizes he’s not as unique as he thinks. 

Funny, fast, with a nice twist at the end. And it certainly lived up to “irreal.” Here’s a sample of the writing: 

 “Patiently, I gathered all the possible data regarding fatal traffic accidents of the past five years. I investigated—with the help of an astronomer—the periodical variations of solar flares, eclipses, and the strontium levels found in fluvial precipitations. I consulted experts on ecology and numismatics. Finally, using a bell-curve graph—the result of my erudite and tedious investigations—I honed in on the N260 and N300 bus lines. From that moment onwards I felt more assured of accomplishing my goal: math was on my side.” 

 On Monday, I’ll be exploring Beneath Ceaseless Skies.