Stories

The year is 1891, and the Wild West is dying. Alvarez is a smartly dressed, smooth-talking bandito riding north with a stolen fortune, a lethal six-shooter, and one very spoiled cat. He travels alone, until he finds a half-frozen boy bleeding in the cold mud. Devon is an exile, violently banished from his Mennonite community and hunted by the very boys who broke him. As they ride together, Devon's cold logic clashes with Alvarez's flashy chaos. Slowly, the pinstriped killer and the battered runaway must learn to trust each other before the past catches up to them both.

Two enemies wake in the ashes of Jerusalem—one a deserter drowning in guilt, the other an amnesiac who remembers only how to kill. Hunted across the desert by a vengeful lord, they must disguise themselves as a Crusader knight and his squire to survive. But in the war-torn port of Jaffa, masks slip. Secrets surface. And a feral German street rat with a talent for trouble forces them to confront an impossible question: in a holy war that devours everything, can two broken boys build a family from the ruins?

Poetry. Hopefully some good!

Fresh out of his master’s, openly gay Marc dives into a high-pressure Munich consultancy and straight into the orbit of his cold, closeted boss, Frank. When a “running group” becomes their private ritual, breathless runs, heated glances, and charged locker-room moments ignite a tension neither of them can outrun.

This one comes from Prompt #71.

Write a short story featuring only one character. No secondary characters at all. You might drop them in the woods and see how they fare, or come up with your own idea, but only one character is allowed.

Fraser Vogel knew it was dangerous to parachute in high winds. He wasn’t left with too many options in his Cessna 182 Skylane when its yoke seized and the engine failed.

Jump or crash? Pretty easy choice.

Following the death of his mother, fifteen-year-old Robbie is forced to move from England to start a new life living with his uncle’s family in Canada. Homesick, confused, and missing his close friend, it soon becomes apparent that Robbie is carrying a lot more baggage than he arrived with.

Cwtch is a Welsh word, translated into English it means a hug, but the meaning is deeper and more profound than a simple hug. When you give someone a cwtch you also give them a safe place and this is what twenty something Londoner Harry gives Welsh farmboy Aled. The story tells how two souls find each other, and recognise one another immediately. It is attraction, but also love at first sight, although true love is never easy.

This story is also published under the title Eighteen Years by E K Stokes.

Aboard a storm-tossed vessel, scholars Christian and Julian pivot from deciphering a ledger left by Barnaby—a time-traveling capybara who accidentally visited their era—to test an advanced gift he left behind: a collection of protective sheaths. In their lantern-lit cabin, a clinical experiment into friction and viscosity rapidly escalates into a vigorous study of mechanical boundaries

Gabriel Foster has a problem; he's a high-priced assassin known only as Robert. Senator Elias Hutchinson got in the way of a broker named Mehmet, who hired Robert to eliminate him. When Robert turns down the assignment, a mysterious man begins stalking him. As he races to stop this unknown shooter, he meets Sean, lead singer of Mysterious Neon, a world-famous boy band. Now he has to elude the Yakuza and a persistent Homeland Agent while juggling his feelings for Sean. Everything comes to a head at Hershey Park as he races to stop his replacement before it's too late.

Caught using his dad’s Fleshlight on Father’s Day, Luke expects the worst. Instead, the forbidden toy becomes the thing that pulls them together in the hottest, tightest way possible.