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I knew it as what they called - in that downtrodden city - 'the only climax': three short sharp snake-like bites on my bottom as the doctor prepared me for surgery. This doctor had rubber gloves to protect himself from the venom and - in other cities - he would have lived in a big house...

DF Lewis

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All Endings are Happy When I awoke, my customary surroundings were slightly – even imperceptibly – changed from what I remembered them to be. Not so much an alternate world or a parallel dream disguised as awaking or an onset of mild mental illness on my part (but who can be certain...

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(Another title given to me by G.S.Carnivals of TLO as a commissioning of a new DFL Thingie - about two hours ago) ................... ...Agitprop, Angels... - relatively common with a comma between to create two clauses owning each word in separate but connected sense-streams, but...

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The Tasteland, or April is the Cruellest Mouth Another Thingie which G.S. Carnivals of TLO has (about an hour ago) kindly commissioned from me by means of providing the above title. ----------------------- Unreal city, real meal. Let me start by saying straightaway that I...

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There was a flesh-coloured house like a face buried up to its neck in Ground ... right down to its old boots. It screamed as loud as silence would allow, possibly believing that its doorway was its mouth, even though those who lived in its head thought the mouth was merely a ...

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Most of (link) these 'stories' here on the TLO repository are now (link) in self-published books but still remain on this forum but a few have been removed from here due to being independently published in (link) 'The Last Balcony' book.

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A new DFL thingie

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DEAD PEOPLE WRITING Hmmm, to begin a fable ‘Hmmm’ is a little more involving than ‘Once upon a time' or ‘The night was dark’, perhaps indicating that the writer is annoyed or mystified – not by the story he is about to tell – but annoyed or mystified by the reader ... you. How...

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Upon the sea’s horizon – a blue, cooler-than-before, but still-warmer-than-average morning at the tail-end of April – was a Thames Barge with taut-rigged sails calmly sliding from right to left. It was accompanied by the neat parades of the Gunfleet Windfarm turbines that did their best to...

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I intend to recount a dream from last night that was so vivid I wonder if I’m now dreaming about it. I was the protagonist of the dream. Most dreamers are, I guess. But I wonder if we take this too much for granted. The expression that kept coming to my mind during the dream was...

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Brandishing Knives It all started when Steve walked along the sea front. The sparse but geometrically lined-up township of wind turbines four miles off-shore slowly twirled ... “as if the sea were brandishing knives,” he thought. Not that he dreamed up such trenchantly poetic turns...

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There were grins at dawn. But not pure grins. The sun was frequently an open orange mouth as it emerged from the sea’s rim of night, at first revealing a downturned grin, but then as the whole mouth inched into view, its otherwise pure upturned grin became the bottom of the whole mouth,...

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THE EXQUISITION First published 'Ocular' 1996 My name is Phillips and I have a journey to share. I intended to tell stories of the strange zones that inhabit the Elder Zodiac. But, once told, I've decided they're not stories at all. They merely employ my words from...

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The Water Boatman Much cold water has flowed under the bridge since I last saw Alec. He was once important in my life – first encountered as the ice cream salesman who ever seemed to park his open-sided van outside my house with the ding dong tune relentlessly driving out the sound of...

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a new short short story by DF Lewis

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Thanks to Phill (GSC) for the suggested title a very short time ago here: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?p=39085#post39085 ================================================= Lewicidal Tendencies "It is with some pride that, today, I announce my untimely death....

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It was Candlemass. Today. A flickering February Second 2010, a day after Imbolc, a day after a dubious palindrome, now supposedly an occasion when Fredrik could enjoy, without conscience, all the waxlit shimmering. It was this effulgent shimmering that he allowed himself every day...

by DF Lewis

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Written today 5 March 2006.

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There used to be an expression used by exasperated parents in my younger days to their obstreperous children: “Don’t give me any of that old nonsense!” Whether that was a condemnation of ‘nonsense’ generally, or an implicit desire for ‘new nonsense’, I was never sure. But I decided the latter...

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There was a sinking feeling among those who had exercised their typing-fingers in tune with the sentences they were hoping to produce that all they would end up with were different sentences. You could watch them sitting in their rows of desks, waggling their hands for several minutes in the...