David Himmel 9/19/18 David Himmel 9/19/18

Love Curse

Fast & Short is a flash fiction collaboration between eight Literate Ape writers. Each was tasked with authoring one piece of flash fiction that would be combined to create a single short story. The writers’ flash fiction needed to serve two purposes: 1. Stand alone as a unique piece of flash fiction and 2. Serve as a vehicle for building a larger story and driving that story forward. Over the next two weeks, Literate Ape will publish all eight flash fiction stories individually with a link to the growing compilation.

Don Hall 9/18/18 Don Hall 9/18/18

Playing "What If?" Can Save Your Sanity

“Can I tell you something that you won’t judge me on?”

Don Hall 9/17/18 Don Hall 9/17/18

I Believe… [Hurricanes Give CNN Staffers Boners]

…that as horrifying as the latest hurricane is/was, all I can see in my mind’s eye is CNN programmers furiously masturbating (with consent from the female staffers, of course) as the ratings go higher and higher because nothing sells ads more than American disasters.

Guest User 9/17/18 Guest User 9/17/18

Love Curse — Part I

She remembered it was a full moon right before she got in. As soon as they pulled out of the uptown apartment parking lot, all packed in and heading out to a dark graveyard in rural nowhere, she wanted out of the car. But she couldn’t say so. She was hanging out. This is what you did when you hung out and had idyll time. Suddenly, she wanted to be alone. She was hating herself for not turning around and walking back down the hill toward home. Her eyes grew big and dark. Her mouth pulled in with silence.

Jenni Thurston 9/16/18 Jenni Thurston 9/16/18

Free the Prisoner: Book Excerpt from "Fallout Princess"

Her freedom hard-won, her love finally secure, Gaia must sacrifice it all to rescue a friend falsely accused of kidnapping her. But to do that, she will have to face the warlord and his army of soldiers. Can she rescue him and still retain her new life?

Contributing Writer 9/15/18 Contributing Writer 9/15/18

Beach Love

We would wake up at 5 a.m. and run along the lake. Not on the running/bike path, mind you, but actually along the lake, in the sand. I was not the best running partner; I am slow as hell and I hate sand. After a few weeks, he asked me to stay at home, which I understood. I wasn’t helping him advance his training. It was annoying him. Annoying like having, oh, I don’t know, sand in your shoe.

David Himmel 9/14/18 David Himmel 9/14/18

Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 9, 2018

The people who post how excited they are about the Christmas Season/Holiday Season in September are the worst kind of people. Slow your roll. Appreciate what’s in front of you. Be present. It’s OK to be excited and have things to look forward to but dial back your enthusiasm. No one likes an adult who gets giddy over something three months away like a puppy gets giddy over rolling around in its own shit.

Kari Castor 9/14/18 Kari Castor 9/14/18

I Will Let Go of Straws When You Let Go of the Bloated Corpse of Capitalism

Doing away with straws is the thoughts & prayers of environmentalism. It makes us feel like we did something good without having to put in any actual effort whatsoever.

Contributing Writer 9/13/18 Contributing Writer 9/13/18

American Shithole #25 — Can the Dying Mule Become the Butterfly?

We are still in the age of clutching things. We humans like to clutch. Our belongings, our pearls. Our ideas. Our instincts to gather and protect were selected long ago — so the idea that resource collecting is at the heart of our concerns today, is a tough pickle to swallow, compounded by the behavior’s hidden influence on all other human doctrine.

David Himmel 9/13/18 David Himmel 9/13/18

Identifying the Corpse on the Blue Line’s Third Rail

I turned around. There were wakes of glistening human coolant running down this woman’s forehead. They were almost as long as her airbrushed and bedazzled fingernails. It was too hot for a weave that thick. She kept tapping at it, itchy from all that sweat spewing out from the top of her head. The nails, the hair — how does she function in this kind of heat? There’s no way she worked a desk job, or any job that requires her to type on a keyboard of any kind.

You do?

“I see this shit all the time working for the CTA,” the sweaty woman said. “He’s just some gutter punk.”

Joe Janes 9/12/18 Joe Janes 9/12/18

The Minutes of Our Last Meeting – Bridgeport Neighborhood Watch Tackles Gang Violence

It’s my neighborhood. It’s where I live. I want to keep my friends safe. I want to keep my family safe and will, if they come back.

Contributing Writer 9/12/18 Contributing Writer 9/12/18

Required Watching: Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999)

Time for another installment of Required Watching where we knock you out of your comfortable routine of TV and movies to show you a documentary that's weird for the sole purpose of making you a better person. Knowledge is power.

Jenni Thurston 9/11/18 Jenni Thurston 9/11/18

The Suicide of Abigale Walters

Abigale Walters had been found in the morning by her young nieces and nephews on the couch. They couldn’t wake her, so they called their mother who called 911. When responders arrived, they couldn’t find a pulse. CPR was performed for over two minutes before bringing her back. They did not know how long she had gone without breathing.

Don Hall 9/10/18 Don Hall 9/10/18

I Believe… [The Positives of Trump]

…that if there is anything positive about the Trump presidency it is that all of a sudden, more of the citizenry is paying attention to the mechanics of governance and he's making every other president we've ever had look great.

Don Hall 9/9/18 Don Hall 9/9/18

The Lack of Hope Is the Disease

Oh, yeah? Another mass shooting? How terribly desensitized we’re becoming to this trend.

Jenni Thurston 9/8/18 Jenni Thurston 9/8/18

Real Life Ghost Stories: The Bodies Beneath Lincoln Park

The tour group walks through the rolling grass of Lincoln Park. The sun is too low to be seen through the jagged skyline of Chicago architecture. The sky is fading quickly into a sleepy black. As the people move forward, they are all too aware that beneath their feet lay long-forgotten bodies.

David Himmel 9/7/18 David Himmel 9/7/18

Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of September 2, 2018

The greatest threat to the LGBTQ community is not Donald Trump or the Republicans or the Alt Right. It’s gender reveal parties.

Guest User 9/7/18 Guest User 9/7/18

Rib Of Twilight

He wanted to know if I had anything that belonged to her, or what kind of things did she leave behind? And that gave me pause, because I’d never thought of her, or her case, that way before.

Then the question for me got caught between that place where you consider what you might leave behind and what is left to you, which is kind of all the same thing. Like a big merry-go-round of belongings all changing hands from life to life.

Contributing Writer 9/6/18 Contributing Writer 9/6/18

American Shithole #24 — A Love Letter to the UK, Revisited

I penned this genuine, heartfelt love letter to the United Kingdom in the summer of 2016, quite possibly hours after the news of the Brexit vote broke. America followed suit a few months later, by instructing the world to "hold my beer."

Don Hall 9/6/18 Don Hall 9/6/18

Your Life, Your Music

"If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn."
— Charlie Parker

The converse to this Parker quote is that if it comes out your horn, it’s because you lived it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about bias these days. Looking into my own biases and parsing out where, exactly, the playing of my horn is exposing those dark areas of things I cannot get behind no matter how many strident, angry voices tell me to.

What comes out of my horn for some time in recent history is predicated by my experience, thus the quote.