Urban Fantasist
Menu
Picture
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Poetry & Fiction

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

17/7/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
​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
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Welcome to the Grievous Angel – fresh free-to-read science fiction and fantasy flash fiction and poetry, including scifaiku and haiga.

    ISSN 2059-6057

    Quote, Unquote

    "We need more excellent markets like Grievous Angel" ...award winning Canadian author

    "Thank goodness for guys like you, who devote so much time to these things" ...Elizabeth Crocket

    "Thank you for giving us such a cool and unique e-mag" ...Mandy Nicol

    "Thank you for your kind words and making my weekend uplifting and bright. I'm excited to be published alongside other wonderful visual and textual works in Grievous Angel" ...D.A. Xiaolin Spires

    "Love your magazine. Keep up the good work! I've read bits and pieces of so many magazines that are so boring, I'm donating to yours because everything you publish is fascinating" ...Laura Beasley

    "I want to be a part of any project named after Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris" ...poet, writer & journalist Andrew Darlington

    "I really love your site and the wonderful eerie fiction you publish. Unlike a lot of work, most of what I read on your site stays with me - like a flavor or a scent, slightly tinting the world" ...performer, writer, biologist and painter E.E. King

    Categories

    All
    Flash Fiction
    Haiga
    Haiku
    Poetry
    Scifaiku
    Tanka

    Archives

    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014

    RSS Feed

Picture
Copyright © Charles Christian 
& Urbanfantasist Limited 2022


[email protected]

Fuelled by Green Tea & Rosé Wine

  • Home
  • * Latest book *
  • Weird Tales Videos
  • Charles Christian Bio
  • Manifestations
  • Books & Reviews
  • Weird Tales Radio
  • Donations
  • Writing: Nonfiction
  • Writing: Fiction
  • Writing: Poetry
  • Old Americana
  • Old Grievous Angel
  • WoldsCover
  • Home
  • * Latest book *
  • Weird Tales Videos
  • Charles Christian Bio
  • Manifestations
  • Books & Reviews
  • Weird Tales Radio
  • Donations
  • Writing: Nonfiction
  • Writing: Fiction
  • Writing: Poetry
  • Old Americana
  • Old Grievous Angel
  • WoldsCover