Tag: Drabble

Crow’s Wing

Photo by Monica McHenney November 2023

We kept the dogs away. The severed wing lay at the corner, iridescent, shiny, black. How could it happen, a crow’s wing but no crow. Was there an epic battle with a hawk? Was the wing collateral damage? We wandered on, dogs incurious, my husband and I trying to solve this puzzle. 

“Evidence. I want a picture.” 

So we went back. The clues were obvious. There was no blood. The dogs had no interest. On further examination, a bit of fabric, synthetic feathers, the wing a costume piece. A case of overactive imagination; the best and worst of being human.

They Carry the Burden

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Let’s hear it for a different kind of war hero. Tim O’Brien tells war like it is through characters like Rat Kiley, who saves a buddy one day and another day shoots himself a ticket home through the foot. You know that book, The Things They Carried. The hero carries many things into and out of war. A photo to inspire, to torture, to raise false hopes. A first aid kit for when a grenade blows a buddy sky high. An army manual to list the protocols that caution against feeling. Read that book, or reread it. For the heroes.

Rusalka’s Story

Photo by Luna Joie on Pexels.com

Water coursed through Rusalka, around her slippery body, into her memory. The pagans called her a sweet thing, a beautiful maiden, a boon to forests and fields. Handmaid of Spring, she spread life-giving water to the crops.

Baptismal waters washed away that myth. There was no room for Rusalka in the new religion. She was demoted, maligned, branded a seductress. Some still believed she brought water to the fields as always. They became a minority, old thinking, out of date. God’s people cursed Rusalka. They didn’t deny her existence. They changed her story.

Witches: Part Two

Photo by Andre Furtado on Pexels.com

She saw him coming, saw him in the future, saw the pain and the pleasure, the sad ending to a tale she might have rewritten if only he hadn’t stirred in her the promise that she could be, for once and only, like other girls. A woman, not a witch.

She carried the child. Raven black hair streaked white, the mark of witches. Intuition stirred through her to foretell truths that no one would believe, the Cassandra gene.

Some don’t believe us. Some call us witches. We know their vision is blurred by greed and power and they are wrong.

Witches: Part One

Photo by Andre Furtado on Pexels.com

Living as she did on the far side of the moor, there were rumors. She looked the part. Eastern European heritage, a penchant for layered gowns, mostly black. Clothes that simultaneously hide and suggest: witch. Circe, a witch. Glinda too. Healers and granters of wishes, witches all. A misunderstood bunch. 

They said her mother’s streak of white hair, a lightening bolt in the thick darkness of her waist length locks, appeared the night her grandmother died. Grandmother, like mother, like daughter, witches touched at birth, not by death, but by the second sight that grew with breasts, blood, and womanhood.

A Dog Who Purrs?

Photo by Monica McHenney

Kohnan is a dog, though at times we think he’s a cat. Like when he luxuriates in the sun and, swear to God, purrs. Snout out, a rub on the rug, all two feet of him stretch, roll, vigorous arch, turn over and repeat. Pure pleasure.
I rub his tummy and his neck. He deigns to hold court on the comfy rug because he’s royalty. Devotion is his due, right? His liquid brown eyes melt me.
But when I leave the room, he foreswears sunshine for my sunless office and settles at my feet. I guess he is a dog.

From: Vogon Ministry of Culture

By Tom Povey CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78506711

To: Monica Flash Fiction

RE: Poetry posts

Honorable Ms. Fiction,

It has come to our attention that you publish poetry on your Escherous blog. How absolutely! Your poems are most spiraling and uniform. Consider this an invitation, no, a summons. Reality, under threat of death appear at the Grafitete Amphitheater of Doomicile for a command (no pun intended) performative.

A Vogon ship will be at your door on the day of cerebration promptly at midnight. Bring poetry to fill many hours. Bring copies of your latest book. Do you have a latest book? Publish one.

Apologies to Douglas Adams.

Autumn Chill

Photo by Monica McHenney
The dawn light has changed
to a grey gold cousin of the blue brilliance that brightened my summer. 
Max's golden lab fur blends into the tawny tall grass. 
He looks at me. “What do you want? The works? Right.” 
He pees again, strolls to the center of the meadow lawn, and squats to do his business. 

His business is to 
please. It is the thing he does best, most naturally. Despite arthritis, 
his portly, chunky body seems to yield. Face aging white, 
he's older than I am. Seventy-seven. 
At seventy-two, cranky and arthritic, I won't age gratefully or graciously.

Follow-up Questions for a MAGA Senator Concerning a Looser Dress Code in the Capitol

Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev on Pexels.com

– Sir, you have said that your peeps respect the “building,” the Senate, and the dress code should reflect that. Care to comment on the deer horns guy? January 6? He broke in. He was convicted of felony obstruction after sitting on the Senate dais encouraging rioters.

– Let’s just say, tourists can wear what they want. It’s a free country.

– But does it show respect, sir?

– Well, within our community, far right Republicans, free to dress and act is a cultural imperative that I am not in a position to judge.

Now, excuse me while I slip into something more comfortable.