Antique Mannequins, Squirrel Girls and Prince Charming - it can only be microfiction!

​We've three new pieces of micro fiction for you now, covering everything from antique mannequins, to squirrel girls, and even Prince Charming, by Tonya Liburd, Richard Manly Heiman and Alexandra Grunberg...


Still Life
by Tonya Liburd

It was either the worst day of your life, or the world fell from under you, you still don't know which. He'd taken you to the back of this run-down antique store and stopped before a male and female mannequin. "These are your parents."


* Tonya Liburd shares a birthday with Simeon Daniel and Ray Bradbury, which should tell you a bit about her. She's at @somesillywowzer and http://Spiderlilly.com


New Breeds
by Richard Manly Heiman

When they discovered the savage squirrel girl she was a bag of bones. Stuffed in a tree trunk. Maxillae, carpals, frail inci and stapedes blocking leaves and twigs from falling down the hole at the bottom of the nest. Forensic experts found desiccated skin and just enough buccal tissue. They used this to reconstruct, extracting sufficient DNA that nine weeks later squirrel girl redux was born, in vitro. Clearly, errant chromosomal flotsam found its way into the embryo based on the beady black eyes, lustrous bushy tail, and extraordinary growth rate. Still, mostly girl. They strived to teach her English, social skills, and the prime number sequence to 100. Though she never spoke, researchers stayed upbeat based on motor progress such as using fork and spoon to eat her favorite berries with acorns. She adored Cheerios too. All were charmed, but after only fifteen months of frisky life she chewed through wires behind her observation monitor and shockingly, died. Who will scamper through our mornings now? they chorused.

Undaunted, field biologists claim they have discovered genetically viable human hair lining a porcupine den under a boarded up barber shop.They hope it’s a boy.  


* Richard Manly Heiman lives in a hollow log on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, California. He works as a substitute teacher and writes when the kids are at recess. He is completing his MFA with Lindenwood U. and his work appears in Bop Dead City, After the Pause, Dappled Things, and elsewhere. His website is at www.poetrick.com.


And They Both Lived Happily Ever After
by Alexandra Grunberg

Prince Charming and his lady stopped riding off into the sunset, watching as the gilded print of “The End” faded behind them with the whispered turn of a page. They held their places for a few seconds (sometimes there was an epilogue, crinkled on the parchment, rushed in a splatter of ink, always unnecessary), but the book closed with its echoed thud and they relaxed away from their lovers’ embrace.

The lady slid down from the horse’s back and kicked off her heels, submerging her feet in an illustrator’s watery blue. The prince pulled off his helmet, gasping, the thick coils of grey and black more smothering than the tight grasp of pulp and binding glue. 

For a while they could rest. They could flit through the pages, revisiting their favorite scenes, skipping over the sappier moments. Or they could recede into the ink, separating out until they were just words or ideas, from the inspiration to the theme, leaving the plot behind them. She could wrap herself up in ripped edges and play as a villain deemed too mature for a children’s book. He could nap in the dog-eared corners, losing himself in the enchanted sleep that princes were never cursed with, the rest that eluded them on their never-ending quests. 

They could try to find the character in each other, hidden somewhere in simple sentences and dramatic, generic, declarations of love.

Maybe if it was a chapter book they could have really been meant for each other. An author with more time and integrity could have given them a tragic backstory and the promise of a beautiful future. Maybe if it was a novel they would learn why their stories were destined to intertwine. 

But characters named simply “Prince Charming” and “his lady” were not afforded an analysis. They could only wait within the bright colors and smudges from children’s snacks, nestling in the larger fonts and dissolving into the more detailed illustrations, until a little voice clamored for another “Once upon a time.”


* Florida-based author, screenwriter, and actress Alexandra Grunberg's work has been been published in Daily Science Fiction, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Flash Fiction Online, and Grievous Angel. She is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.  http://alexandragrunberg.weebly.com/ + @alexgrunberg