New Tales Told – Original Short Stories

Nobody in New Orleans had ever made Bernard de Marigny look foolish in public. He was rich past counting, small as a foil, and very likely the most dangerous man in Louisiana with a pistol in his hand. Then a blacksmith from a far parish, seven feet of him and slow to speak, said something true on the floor of the legislature, and the whole chamber laughed.The card came to the forge two days later.The blacksmith was no duelist. He was, however, a man who had spent his life learning where something hard gives.From Short Storyverses. More at shortstoryverses.com.

An obituary arrives in the mail, folded in thirds, no note, no return address, and the creases are sharp enough to cut with.Roy Kittleson has not seen the man named in it since a Friday in 1986, and he has his reasons, and none of them are good. He drives up anyway. Three hours, most of it flat.He has rehearsed nothing. He is counting on grief to arrive on its own.“The Wrong Funeral,” is an original story written and read by Don McDonald from ShortStoryverses.com.

Welcome to Season Two of New Tale's Told, a collection of my original short stories. I've spent the summer creating some unique tales for you. I hope a few of them bring you a bit of pleasure.The Garden was finished before anyone in it was born. The rain arrives on schedule, in the amount that has been decided. The manual has never been improved on.Nobody touches anybody. Children learn it early, with the short rod, because correcting is cheapest when they're small.Sela is twenty-two and has never had a low year. When the tremor takes the hands of the old man who grades pears beside her, she stands up and says, "I'll take that." Nothing forbids it. There is even a provision.Two hundred and nine times. Over twenty months.Somebody is keeping the number.“The Garden’s Wall” started with a question I couldn’t put down. What would a society look like if it decided, sincerely and on the evidence, that compassion was a defect to be bred out? Not a cruel place. A reasonable one, where the punishment is measured, the reasoning is sound, and nobody enjoys any part of it.The answer turned out to be a garden, and a wall nobody built, and a gate that opens outward, and forty-one people put through it in a single lifetime.If you enjoy these stories, please check out my many short story universes at shortstoryverses.com

Enjoy a Summer Bonus Episode Before the New Season in SeptemberNora has come up to Lake Sabbath to do one hard, practical thing — close the old family house for good, and mark what will be sold. She means to stay a single night. But a house keeps its own memory: the key still on its nail, the drawer that sticks, a boat with a name. And a long, unhurried summer evening on still water can ask more of a person than they came prepared to answer. Short Storyverses is our multiverse of audio fiction — where each show spins in its own orbit but shares one sky. Classics and originals on LitReading, suspense on FRIGHTLY!, romance on Love Lit, comedy on HumorUs, new voices on New Tales Told, and tales for the youngest listeners too. Short enough for a commute, a walk, or the quiet before sleep. Press play at shortstoryverses.com.

This is the season finale of New Tales Told.I wrote this one because of a fact I couldn't put down. The universe is expanding, and it isn't going to stop, and the stars are burning the only fuel there is. The bright ones go first. The small, dim, stubborn ones last the longest, trillions of years, and then, someday, the last of them goes out, and there is no morning after it. The lights simply go off, for good.I kept thinking about that final star, and about who, or what, might still be there to see it go. Not the science of it, really, but the loneliness of it. The last witness in a universe with nothing left to witness. That question became a watcher, and a long vigil, and this story.\It's called Dark. I'm glad you're here for it.

In August 1864, thirty thousand Union prisoners were dying behind a wall of felled pine in southern Georgia. The man in command was a Swiss-born captain with a ruined arm, a sick wife back home, and a daughter whose portrait he kept on his writing table. His name was Henry Wirz, and a year later he would be the only man executed for war crimes after the Civil War."Man or Monster" follows him through a single day. The morning report. The short rations. The chain. The deadline. The letters to a Richmond that never wrote back. No verdict, no villain's speech, just one man doing his duty inside a horror he could name but could not stop, and the question the title leaves with you.From the world of Don McDonald's novel The Line Uncrossed. The book is available at Amazon.com, BN.com, and others booksellers or you can get a special ebook bundle that includes this and two other Civil War stories at donmcdonald.com