Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Serve.
The Murder of Xalapa (Part I)
The most beautiful man of the English-speaking world is about to do the unthinkable. He is quite mad, but he is more sad than angry. He is tall and has the perfect tan sin of the Caribbean and the Mediterranean Sea. He just lost a good friend and his first friend, Mr. Yépez.
By Arnoldo Alonso5 years ago in Serve
Home Too Soon
In my short adult life I've been known as many things. A mistake, a blessing, a compeer, corrival. The love of someone's life, nothing... a beggar, a thrull, half live or partially undead. living off the bits and pieces from the few civilized who chose to spare it. Hunger pangs rock me in an out of sleep, like an angler's line on an empty tarn. "These train carts sleep a lot better when ain't nobody on em". I heard in the distance Another exclaimed as he adjusted himself in recumbency. Homelessness mustn't suit me well I thought, 7 months in and My pride still thwarts my reality. Unfamiliar with the uncertainties each night brings, let alone the encroaching city air; a nightly reminder that i'm not at "home". Wherever home is. A veteran, not gone long enough to be a hero, home before it was okay to be forgotten. Here I sit. Existing In a non essential existence. "Existing"I glanced one eye to see 8bit sand draining from the digit hourglass on the platform display. "This is home for the night." I told myself as The hour neared 3am I found safety in that thought.
By Devin Moore5 years ago in Serve
Van Lew
EARLY ON There were a lot of people active during the American Civil War aiding in the Union winning. In particular was a woman named Elizabeth Van Lew. She was born in Richmond, Virginia in the year 1818. Her father owned several slaves which were freed by her and her mother when he died. Some of the former slave help was kept and paid to work for the family. Van Lew even took inheritance money and purchased family members of the slaves they owned and freed them as well. When the war broke she began bringing food, and clothing to the Union prisoners, even helping some escape. There were safe houses for those escaped and she even went as far as to help get Union sympathizers roles as prison staff. One of the places that was held as a safe house was her mansion which held Union prisoners and those looking to desert from the Confederacy side.
By Faheem Jackson5 years ago in Serve
CHANUTE FIELD
The Ivory-billed Woodpecker has flown. Lord to God I wish it was not true, but now I have to tell his story. After all, he left me $20,000. And a stamp collection, a Boy Scout Handbook from the 1930s, a metal-encased pocket bible from WWII, and a little black book that looks its age -- eighty years, if it was eighteen years younger than he.
By Lise Erdrich5 years ago in Serve
Nowak Bakery
Tarnow, Poland, May 1939 Toothbrushes were set to the cobblestone streets as lawyers, bankers, reporters, and the communities elite scrubbed each inch of their towns busiest street. Soldiers prevented the street cleaners from leaving their assigned task. A crowd gathers to watch men in suits scrubbing the street. Initially, there was silence. A German soldier, not more than nineteen years old, walks slowly to a store filled with many fruits and vegetables. He grabs an apple and throws it at an older man who has just stood and asked to use the restroom. The soldiers all start laughing and rushing to grab a fruit. The townspeople start cheering as the community's upper class are pelted with food and then furniture, and finally, the scene grows very dark. Wives try and protect their husbands, and then the soldiers take the wives.
By Robert Nicholson5 years ago in Serve
The Citizen Journalist
For Nour, technology was critical, but there was only power for a few hours a day at most, and online she was hunted and traceable. She frowned wondering how much they knew - she wasn’t a big fish, but she wasn’t small fry either, people had been killed for less. Right now the roads out were kill zones, bombed alleys of death, then there was Aleppo city, now home, being pummelled by the Syrian regime, with it’s Russia Hezbollah ‘Axis’, fighting rebel and religious factions, the civilians, forever in the crossfire, now huddled together at night, with the eerie advantage of understanding exactly what lingered in the skies above. Barrel bombs - oil drums and fuel tanks filled with explosives and metal fragments fell from helicopters with indiscriminate targets. Cluster munitions with their baby bomblet cargos and white phosphorous, rained down, targeted hits on hospitals and aid convoys, all apparently illegal internationally, it was 2016, after five years of war the whole world knew what was happening in Syria - Nour could never understand why nobody made it stop.
By Rebecca Smith5 years ago in Serve
Hamlin's Bakery
May 20, 1991 “Thank you so much for all you’ve done for Jeff and me, LT Jacobs,” Rebecca said with a hint of sadness, “Jeff really admired you and looked up to you more than you’ll know.” The funeral ceremony and then burial had ended over two hours earlier, but there were so many attendees and well-wishers that wanted to offer condolences to the wife of their fallen shipmate that LT Don Jacobs had just gotten a quiet moment with Rebecca.
By Richard Lane5 years ago in Serve
Papaw, the Devil Dog
My paternal grandfather, Linton Carl Fendley, was a giant of a man in my eyes - a lovable, affable, fun-loving giant. Papaw was usually the life of the party at family gatherings with his self-deprecating humor: “I have ears like open cab doors,” and his full gauge electric train, which occupied much of the basement. Going to visit Mamaw and Papaw was always an adventure. We counted on Papaw to provide fun and laughter, and even a mold for lead toy soldiers, which he and I used to crank out miniature fighting menk during visits. (This was the 50s. We didn’t know about lead poisoning back then.) Mamaw, on the other hand, was a gray horse of a different color. OCD to the max, melancholy, she was given to sitting in front of the radio listening to Billy Graham hour after hour. We kids learned very quickly to sit carefully on Mamaw’s plastic covered furniture, and to walk deftly on the plastic runner protecting the carpet. Serious consequences awaited if we happened to step off the plastic runners.
By Ken Fendley5 years ago in Serve
Memory of Something Almost Lost
The crooked smile of a crescent moon hung over the gutted skeleton of the place once called ‘Boston’. Even at this hour Rusty could hear the shrieks of the things that still lived here but they were far enough into the Commons now to safely make camp.
By Stan Toyne5 years ago in Serve
