The gate clicked shut too loudly behind her, and I stood frozen for a moment too long. Afraid to go after her, afraid to take the time to look at what she’d passed me, I slipped down the stairs to the underground barracks and felt the way through the dank black to my bunk.
Tag Archives: Short Stories
The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 3
It was blank.
Both facing pages were completely blank. Nerves burning a hole in the pit of my stomach, I knelt and tentatively flipped to another. Still blank. I quickly thumbed through the entire second half – not a single word, symbol, or picture printed in the book.
The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 2
No one I had ever met had ever learned to read.
And yet here they were, books by their hundreds, being shelved day after day after day by dozens of unquestioning workers happy only to have a temporary job and a roof and a meal.
The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 1
In the corner of the library, behind row on row of shelves, past the dusty and the musty and the entirely disused, there is a door without a handle.
Small Town Summer Nights
It’s a summer night like a fever, sticky with sweat and verging on delirious. Every front porch swing and backyard Adirondack down the street plays host to listless bodies searching for some scrap of cool in the darkness. The cool is not forthcoming.
10 (More) Notable Canadian Literary Magazines
I’m back again with ten more quality literary publications that are based in Canada. Most of these magazines accept submissions from all over the world, but for all my fellow Canadian writers, it’s a little bit special to find a home for your work that is close to home.
A General Feeling of Vague Writerly Dissatisfaction
Perhaps that is just what the increasingly heavy state of the world does to us. It seems an insurmountable challenge to be joyfully creative when there are much weightier issues to be concerned with.
The Things We Leave Behind
A diverse and engaging anthology, The Things We Leave Behind will resonate with a wide variety of readers. I found myself drawn in from the opening line.
Aly Writes 