Tag: Flash Fiction

If Hans Christian Anderson Were Writing Now

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Atticus Finch had never represented a bird. “So, let’s get this. You want to sue your adoptive parents.” 

“I had a terrible childhood. Bullied, teased. They called me Ugly Duckling.” The swan had tears in his eyes.

Maybe they were real, maybe it was just good acting. Horatio Swan was a highly popular leading cob. His beak was a fixture on Netflix and HBO.

Atticus leaned back in his chair. “Why now? You’ve said publicly your tough childhood led to the success you enjoy.”

Horatio trumpeted, “I’ve learned things in rehab. The price I paid. My inner cygnet is traumatized.”

Sensitive Princess

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“Priscella, the way you fuss, no prince will have you.” Spoiled. The king brought her silk from abroad. The Queen disapproved. “How many times has the royal seamstress made a pretty gown, only to have you give it to the chambermaid?”

“It itches, Mama. So bad.”

“But the ball’s tonight.”

“I have…”

“Not that old thing. The rag barely fits.” 

“I won’t go. The canapés are disgusting.”

“Don’t you start with umami again.” 

“Anyway, I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“Try the dress, Lola, there is not a pea in your mattress.”

“Must be a rock.” 

“Show me a bruise, then.”

Art Makes Life

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The artist is not in sight, but dinner is waiting for her. The long thread that holds her web to a fence on one side and a hedge on the other stretches at eye level. We bend to avoid it. We take care because we can. Because we have time to notice.

We are not running from war, wildfires, earthquakes, floods. We are not doom scrolling, furious, hunkered down. Instead, we appreciate the utile beauty of a spider web. It has survival value and strength, a work of art glistening with dew in the sun. A reminder of tenacious life.

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.

Rusalka’s Story

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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

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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

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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.

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.

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

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– 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.