Fiction Archives / Stories 80-61

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River of Secrets, River of Mercy
by Kris Saknussemm
"Viola Mercy’s generous bosom was fully exposed, her hips arched, providing a tantalizing hint of that taboo passage that led to the secret place within her heart. The gambler still had on his once dapper but now slightly threadworn britches and his bull’s blood Spanish leather boots. His silver hand, however was hard at work. The dagger that had been projected from the index finger had been replaced by a device of equal length, significantly greater girth and arguably far more innovative utility, which St. Ives referred to as the 'Tickler.'" Sliptongue is honored to present a preview from the novel ENIGMATIC PILOT, scheduled by Random House for publication in 2008.

To Flaming Youth
by Gary Beck
"We sailed on Long Island Sound almost every afternoon with the Germayne twins, Ginnie and Melody. They were identical redheads, with long curly hair, green eyes, freckled pale skin and strong athletic bodies. They were striking rather than pretty, but they were very spirited. Steve had slept with both of them last summer, but they weren't jealous or possessive and we had a lot of fun together. I was still tortuously shy with girls and much too timid to try anything with Melody, though I really liked her."

Taboo: A Memoir, Chapter Three
by Tom Hathaway
"In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Diana was a teenager, the city attracted a stream of rebellious drifters. They were similar to the high plains drifters of the late 1800s who had made it their base, lone outcasts, many of them burnt out by the Civil War. The later group emerged disillusioned from World War Two. They too were restless seekers for ever-new beginnings on an open frontier, this time a mental one." Sliptongue is proud to serialize the first three chapters of Tom Hathaway's novel.

Bohos, Mojos and The Pinus Arista
by Lynka Adams
"Now, truth be told, Corinna was not the type to put-out large on the first date. She had been raised with the attitude that guys should be tongue dripping, fur ball coughing slaves of adoration before they got even a taste of the divine honey pot. “The Golden Pussy Syndrome” is how a college friend once termed it. I.e. your pussy is so fine that only the best and brightest, driving ‘vettes and XKE’s get to pull into this garage. But that was in another land, far and away, and time and a lengthy relationship, not to mention a very strong sex drive, had made her reconsider the idea of bait and tease."

The Deflowering of Liam Laverty
By Alan Warren
"Tom must have worked his way through most of a bottle of Jim Beam. He had virtually melted into the dining table. His right forearm acted like an engineering support, the only thing keeping his face separate from the table’s polished surface. Felicity, who normally limited herself to a glass or two of white wine and soda, had been attacking the champagne this evening. Although not as wrecked as Tom, her complexion had reddened and gained a slick sheen, and her eyes were narrowed meanly; she was at the truculent stage of drunkenness familiar to bar-brawlers the length and breadth of the land."

The Alphabet Game
by Abeer Hoque
"Three months ago, Alexander’s life turned inside out. Three months ago, his older sister, Fiona, came back from the bad girls’ school to start her junior year at Clarion High. The house he had begun to think of as his own had become overrun by girls. Fiona’s girlfriends were very different from his 8th grade classmates. They laughed when he least expected, pouted through their fears, screamed when they got their way. The girls he was used to were less strident, less effusive, far less threatening."

A Dakota Education
by D. E. Fredd
"Three weeks after the funeral, a cold, hard reality settled in for some of the staff. As impolitic as it was for some women to think about, there was a very eligible man out there for the taking. Men in North Dakota, educated men especially, who know how to treat a woman were not that easy to come by. It was true that Jodi’s shadow would be difficult to overcome, but the reward was well worth the effort and, in the Castleton High community, there were three unmarried women who seriously began to wrestle with the situation."

Beside the Still Waters
by Randy Lowens
"Fortunately for Rachael, the Sunday morning paradox, the tension between the Sunday School practice and the Worship Service theory, the gaping chasm between God's love as experienced in Sunday School and God's vengeance as hinted at in the pastor's sermons, was a finite phenomena. That is, it only came to mind once a week, on Sunday mornings. For the remainder of the week, the Sunday School mythology of the Good Little Girl reined supreme. She knew that when the girls and boys at school shunned her, and called her "slut" and "whore", that she was only being persecuted for His sake."

Last Days in L.A.
by Bella Sapphire
"Every guy I’d been with before Simon had wanted to be on top most of the time, especially the first time. I always thought it was some kind of straight-man control issue, where they felt like they had to show me what they could do, or they were better able to keep an erection that way, or some other performance-related insecurity. I hadn’t complained. But Simon scooted out of his pants, lay down on his back, and as I leaned over him, he started grinning. I pulled my hair back with my hand. I still had my skirt on, but all that was between us really was my tiny lacy thong."

Antiquing
by Kevin P. Keating
"Ed didn’t want to look up from his plate of mashed potatoes because he knew that by doing so he would be implicated in this crime, an accessory to his wife’s condemnation, but the waitress was young and pretty, no more than nineteen- or twenty-years old, and he needed to inspect, to study, to fantasize about her slim physique, her disproportionately ample bust, the caked muck around her eyes, he had no choice in the matter, the human soul yearns for variety, he had to supply his dwindling libido with some kind of fuel however meager."

Adage
by A.P. Prescott
"Two years later and now she was there before him. When the lights had gone up, he had barely recognized her. As he approached the platform, though, he had seen how her hair reflected in the lights. Like a fiery halo. She was covered in paint and still as death. Living art. Automatically he felt his lungs take up a familiar rhythm. Inhaling deeply he could smell her; strongly female under hot lights. He stood there too long, others pushing their way to see her. The main exhibit. A small commotion and her eyes darted towards him."

Bethany Barefoot
by Tara Alton
"I know you’re asking why all the fuss. It’s because I have to go to my sister’s wedding. Actually, it’s her second time around, but she still wants all the drama and fuss because she likes to show off how clever and stylish she is. She was so taken with her first wedding that she actually wrote and self published a How to be a Bride book. She tried to sell it in the back of bridal magazines and lost thousands of dollars in advertising. Not one order came in."

The Big Perm
by Dawn Ryan
"Yes, there were warning signs, but the Big Perm’s fellow citizens couldn’t be blamed for their blind-eyed ignorance. They were a simple, working class people, and proudly so, who were often caught up in the urban wrangling of the larger city close-by and who also had an abundance of more obviously strange types lingering around the streets and parks due to the half-way house for the mentally-ill located behind the public library, the school for the deaf and blind nestled between the mall and the old arsenal, and the various bus-stops peppered around town that worked as caravan for the homeless and drunk, and it had only been a couple years since that cat-breeder was found and arrested for having freezers filled with dead, deformed, inbred kittens."

A Woman’s Aim
by Jean Roberta
"He always reached under the waistband of her pants and pushed his fingers as far south as he could without unfastening any of her clothing. Then he would try to force his whole hand up under the snug band of her bra until she unhooked it to give him free access to her breasts. Her willingness to undress herself always looked to him like a thrilling sign of surrender, while it seemed to her like the raising of a theatre curtain so the show could begin."

Taboo: A Memoir, Chapter Two
by Tom Hathaway
"I was dreaming my penis was a candle, and mother leaned over and lit the wick with a match, not to burn it but to inflame it with passion. She had to get quite close, but it didn't hurt at all and the wick took fire and the whole candle glowed with translucent blue light that shone over our faces." Sliptongue is proud to serialize the first three chapters of Tom Hathaway's novel.

Boys and Girls Come Out to Play
by Barry Baldwin
"There was a Helen Rowe in every village. The sort of girl that gets buried in a Y-shaped coffin. It had very little to do with the way they looked. Faces didn’t count. It was common knowledge that you didn’t look at the mantlepiece when you were poking the fire. What mattered was that they had the experience and the know-how to take you in hand and get things started."

In the Locker-Room
by Alan Gordon
"The first few grabbed me. They held me down. I thought for sure...well, I thought what any women would think in that situation. And then they started pulling off my clothes. All at once. Like five or six different sets of hands just grabbing, and pulling, and ripping. That’s when I was sure. They were going to rape me."

Ten Minutes in The Hot Tub
by Robin Rose
"I turn my head; my brown eyes release the shelter, the anchor of her green ones. Andy’s hand keeps caressing my sex while my face rotates toward the semicircle of ladies. As if that trio knows something is happening, as if they sense some subtle energy shift, the group grows quiet; their eyes focus on me."

How To Make A Baby
by Robert Levin
"I was also, much of the time, in a small rage about the new burden I'd be taking on. I'm referring not to the responsibility of child raising per se, but to the fact that no matter how large was the contempt I'd developed for humanity over the years, having a child would force me to care about what the world might be like after I died."

The Healer
by Jennifer Tiernay
"Drachen struggled against the invisible weight pressing down on his body. He had heard rumors of this half sleep place where you are unable to move ~ as if frozen between the dimensions of dreams and awareness. Every night, even though he couldn’t move, the veil between the physical and the non-physical seemed as if it were getting thinner. The transparency in the “other dimension” ~ where this woman came from ~ was cutting through to Drachen’s realm."

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