Historical

Live and Let Die
Paris, 1982 Angela stepped into the roomy walk-in closet and glanced over her shoulder. She hadn’t gone through Hayden’s jacket pockets in weeks and wanted to get it over with before they flew out that night. His suitcase sat next to bedroom door and she wondered if opening it was worth the risk. She doubted he’d pack anything incriminating and anyway, he’d realize she’d been through it in about a millisecond.
By Lori Lamothe5 years ago in Fiction
The Devil and the Debutant
The woman on the balcony had been a candle’s light in the night. She had flickered bright against the abyss of the night; darkening everything else the longer you stared at her. The lamps indoors and outside had cast shadows compared to her bright brilliance. Embarrassment flooded The Duke of Portland as he realized how he had been drawn to her like a moth to a flame. He was grown man for pities sake he knew how odious an infatuation could be. He ought to have known how to recognize and eradicate it. He hadn’t though, though. He stood there like a fool gawking at her and now he replayed that look she gave the sky and the way she had seductively closed her eyes and suck in the crisp night air.
By E. J. Strange5 years ago in Fiction
A Long Night in Eindhoven
My name is Judah Meijer. I was born May 5, 1897. I was a soldier and farmer, and am now a husband and father. I am a Jew. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands, my family and I were forced to flee our home outside Arnhem. I was fortunate enough to have friends willing to conceal my family from the SS and men like Captain Heinrich Richter. Many others were not so fortunate; I didn’t realize how important it was for our mere survival.
By Matthew Stanley 5 years ago in Fiction
Strong Like Bull
My grandmother came from the “old country”, as they call it. Her mother’s mother’s grandmother was a victim of the Great Famine in 1848, dying of hunger herself so her nine children could eat. Many Irish fled the blight, but none of her family could afford the escape to America. Her great grandmother saw the global violence of World War I and the bloodshed right at home with the Easter Rising of 1916; the combined death and destruction was horrifying. Her grandmother witnessed the Treaty that established the Irish Republic, and fell in love with a dashing young Limerick lad named Sean who joined the IRA. My grandmother’s mother died as the Troubles began, and my grandmother finally managed to save up enough to move to Philadelphia just as Dublin and Monaghan were bombed by the Northern Irish loyalists.
By M.G.5 years ago in Fiction
The Bathhouse at Qusayr Amra
Al-Walid II, whose tastes were too peculiar to find expression in Damascus, turned to Qusayr Amra, his desert palace and bathhouse, to satisfy his eccentricities. Obscured from the critical gaze of zealots, in a kind of ritual exile, as he liked to think of it, he indulged in his lust for heat and human forms. And who could begrudge him for adorning the walls of his bathhouse with frescoes of unclad, high-breasted women—in the austerity of the desert, surrounded by measureless expanses of lifeless dust, no less?
By Willa Chernov5 years ago in Fiction
The Jornada. First Place in SFS 5: Raging Bull Challenge.
Sara looked at the muddy road in front of her and knew she should have stopped at the second gate, where the road turned from gravel to dirt. She had only been at the station for a few days, and she didn’t even know how to reach the range manager. Less than five minutes and barely a mile later, she came up on a long stretch of water where the road was supposed to be. She wasn’t surprised when the wheels started spinning, and she slowly rolled to a stop. She was looking down at her phone and trying to push aside her pride when she saw the lights bouncing towards her in the rearview mirror, and the 4x4 pulled up beside her.
By Ruthie5 years ago in Fiction
A Good Trade
Some years before the Yankees descended upon Johnny Reb, a decade or so I reckon it was, a former slave by the name of Caesar Freedman pulled up on his horse before a stately home in the heart of Mississippi’s cotton country.
By Gregg Newby5 years ago in Fiction
The Tragedy of Joselito
The boy woke up especially early. It was a hot autumn day and the last day of the Talavera de la Reina bullfighting season. He had devoted the entire season doing an assortment of jobs so he could buy a ticket for today’s spectacle. His hero, Joselito, would be in the ring and he would not miss it.
By MATTHEW FLICK5 years ago in Fiction
Mayflower
Lark Rose, who was eighteen years old, lied in bed wearing a Pink Floyd band tee-shirt; plumb, in a still-like position as if she had been poisoned by some pestilential substance; after ignoring her alarm clock for the third time, she finally awoke to realize she was late for her first day of college. Moments later, the door knob turned and a fledgling woman waltzed through the door with a shy, pygmy smile.
By Ellie5 years ago in Fiction
Bull Juice
The Furher is being injected with Bull Semen, read the highly top secret telegram. Bernard Cribbins stared at that particular passage again trying to figure out its significance for the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Was it means to which the world could get rid of one of it's most evil bastard's, was it a propaganda master stroke the equal of that one ball in the albert hall song that the boffins came up last year or was it what was usually placed on his desk, utter piffle? The report seemed even too far for this department. Sure, in the course of six years of long hard attritional warfare that had involved the murky worlds of murder, sabotage and espionage the men and woman of Cribbin's department had done some very ungentlemanly things but this seemed beyond the pale somewhat to the British. Maybe I should pass it over to the Americans, wondered Cribbins to himself.
By Paul Armstrong5 years ago in Fiction
The Bulls in My Life, the Guernica Painting, the Wall Street Bull
“To expect life to treat you good is foolish as hoping a bull won't hit you because you are a vegetarian.” ― Roseanne Barr 1 - A very important bull for me is in the Guernica, painting by Pablo Picasso
By Regia Marinho5 years ago in Fiction
Bull Leaping
“There is no feeling like it,” she heard her father’s words echoing in her head. “There is no feeling that is more thrilling. Your heart will pound and feel as though it is about to leap out of your throat. Your mind will narrow and focus, so that you’ll be able to see the smallest detail. You will never feel more in control of every muscle and limb of your body, then when you take your first leap”
By Patricia Corn5 years ago in Fiction