Meet Holly, a thoroughly modern witch you really don't want to cross. The author is Alexandra Grunberg, a South Florida-based author, actress, and screenwriter. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Flash Fiction Online, and more. This is her third story to be published in Grievous Angel. In the fall of 2017, Alexandra will be pursuing her masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. You can find Alexandra online at http://alexandragrunberg.weebly.com and at Twitter @alexgrunberg


​​When Holly Came to Visit
by
Alexandra Grunberg

Holly came from far away, across the ocean on a plane that dropped her into their backyard, adding a touch of fiery red cheeks and dandelion yellow hair to a land blanketed in blinding white snow. She came with a voice that grated their ears and a stature too tall for their stone archways and wooden pubs.
    
“I’m not here to make friends, and I’m not here to make enemies,” brayed Holly. “I’m here to keep to myself.”
    
And she did keep to herself, but the people wondered about her. How did she get by, all alone, taking no visitors? How did she get money by honest means if she had no job to go to, nothing to sell, no talent to offer the community?
    
“I do my business online,” explained Holly. “I write articles, I dabble in graphic design. It’s the perfect job for a loner. And I like to be alone.”
    
Yes, she did like to be alone. She did not look at the boys in town, and during the day, they did not look at her either. She was too much, too bright, too loud. But there were rumors about the nighttime, rumors that she changed in the darkness, that the stars and moon smoothed out the harshness of her colors, blending her in with the woods and the wintertime. She was too beautiful in the night, it made grown men cry to look on her. Beholding her naked form as she dressed by her window was akin to beholding the sun during a solar eclipse: You did not realize how much she burned into your brain until she was gone, and her image remained on the back of your eyelids, turning your dreams to dark lusts. 
    
“It sounds like this town has a Peeping Tom problem,” Holly complained. “I’d be more concerned about boys peering into women’s windows than how pretty I look in my pajamas.”
    
The women said they saw green sprouts popping out of the frozen ground in her garden. They said the wind blew warm across her doorway. They said when she waved her hand, the ice would melt on her driveway, and when she glared at the snow on the windowpane, it fell away in shame.
    
“You really see the effects of climate change this far north,” sighed Holly. “It’s really terrible how we treat the environment.”
    
A young boy said he saw her turn into a swan by the river, bathing in the running water, surrounded by floating lights that chittered like birds, before shedding her feathers and returning to the shore. An old woman said she saw her snap her fingers at a dog that bit at her ankle, and the animal turned to ice and broke into a million pieces. The priest said he saw her talking to a man as black as deepest midnight, with a cloak made of green leaves and red feathers, and a smile full of sharp teeth, and they whispered of the death of mankind and secrets beyond the grave.
    
“You guys really like to gossip, don’t you?” Holly laughed.
    
It was decided that she was a witch, and a witch had to burn.
    
“You do realize this isn’t the sixteen hundreds, right?” Holly scoffed.
    
Some people say a great storm came down that night, burying the buildings in a snow that froze all the townspeople before they could light the pyre. Some people say giants came down from the mountains and crushed the townspeople before they could even scream. Some people say Holly whispered a word that made the men go insane and the women wail, and the word called a man made of shadow who stole the townspeople away, body and soul. But people can only talk, because the only person who walked away from the attempted witch-burning was Holly, and she does not like to talk about the incident.
    
“You would think that superstitious people would prefer to be safe, rather than sorry,” Holly shrugs, when pressed for details. “But those folks ended up very sorry, indeed.” 

A selection of short poems, tanka, and even a scifi limerick for you now from a mixture of new and regular Angel contributors: Gabriel Smithwilson, Christina Sng, Irving, Jessica Jo Horowitz, and John Reinhart.


The Open Door

Much to the surprise
Of those maybe
Passing through
All that lays beyond
Is the universe unchained
And pigeons
Wanting bread

by Gabriel Smithwilson – Gabriel says "I live in one of those cities that's close to being the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a lot of somewhere. I am an aspiring poet, player of various musical instruments, and big fan of Ray Bradbury, Marc Bolan, Gene Wilder and other random artistic geniuses."


# # # # #


seconds before
the asteroid hits
he finally tells me
he loves me
eye roll


yellow bricks
on this road
she takes
the ruby express
instead

by Christina Sng – Christina is a poet, writer, and artist. She is the author of several collections, including A Constellation of Songs (Origami Poems Project, Allegra Press), Catku (Allegra Press), Astropoetry (Alban Lake Publishing), and A Collection of Nightmares (Raw Dog Screaming Press).


# # # # #


Morning

Cold breakfast. 
Nearly silent hiss of air 
across immaculate filters. 
In the airlock, 
nothing.

by irving – irv is a web developer who writes in the spare time brought about from living in the tundra near Lake Ontario. His poetry has previously appeared in Dreams & Nightmares, From the Asylum, Niteblade, Paper Crow, Star*Line and other fine publications.


# # # # #


Lullaby

in the darkness of the bridge
the computer sings in analog
and I tell it stories
to soothe us both to sleep

by Jessica Jo Horowitz – Jessica Jo is Korean born, living in New England and is probably cold right now. Previous publications include ChiZine, Star*Line and Eye to the Telescope. 


# # # # #


engraved on the seats of the shuttle
when it was finally removed from the rubble
were rude cartoons
from far distant moons
of zero-g sex & its trouble

by John Reinhart – John is frequent contributor at the Songs of Eretz, Poetry Nook editor, and recipient of the 2016 Horror Writers Association Dark Poetry Scholarship.

Today's flash fiction – Postcards by James C. Bassett – offers a glorious foray into a 'what if'  world of mystery that is just out of reach – or is it? James C. Bassett is an award-winning stone and wood sculptor who lives in Galway, Ireland and in the American Pacific Northwest. He is the co‑editor (with Stephen L. Antczak and Martin H. Greenberg) of the anthology Zombiesque (DAW Books, February 2011) and (also with Stephen L. Antczak) of the anthology Clockwork Fables (ROC, June 2013).
www.jamescbassett.com 


​Postcards
by James C. Bassett

I don’t know where they come from, the postcards, or who sends them. They arrive without stamp or postmark, without description or explanation, without a signature, with only “Wish you were here” written on the back. On the front, the pictures give no clue to their location: natural scenery, majestically beautiful, unspoiled, never so much as a building or a road or any sign of human interference to give any hint, nor do I recognize any of the features: the mountains, coastlines, forests, rivers, skies.

These scenes are always unlike anything I have ever seen, anyplace I have ever been. They might almost be of another world, or of a place that doesn’t exist at all. Even so, I feel drawn to them.
    
And the images themselves are somehow otherworldly as well. In the same way that old photographs were printed with colors too vivid, making them subtly but obviously unreal, something about these pictures is just too . . . something. Perhaps the colors are just ever-so-slightly off – or are the pictures somehow so preternaturally sharp as to be practically real? Just as old over-saturated postcards automatically look like they come from a different time, these postcards too convey a sense of anachronism, as if they come not from the past but somehow from the future.

I have a drawer full of them, these postcards. They arrive irregularly, without warning and always without explanation. I long ago gave up any hope of understanding this mystery. Will I ever find my way to these places? It seems unlikely.
    
Yet as I stare at the latest card to arrive, it occurs to me that “Wish you were here” may be not an expression of affection but an instruction – an exhortation.

If I wish hard enough. . . .