For our latest flash fiction, we have a story that is a much darker than our normal fare and has echoes of the tragedy unfolding in parts of Syria and Iraq. Our author is Day Al-Mohamed and her first book, released from Dark Quest in September 2014, is a young adult novel Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn. In addition to speculative fiction, she also writes comics and film scripts. 

Her most recent publications can be found in Daily Science Fiction, Crossed Genres anthology Oomph - A Little Super Goes a Long Way and GrayHaven Comics' anti-bullying issue You Are Not Alone. She is a member of the Cat Vacuuming Society Writers Group of Northern Virginia*, a member of Women in Film and Video, and a graduate of the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. (*Based on the theory that writers would do just about anything but write, including clean the house. To the point that after vacuuming everything, the idea of vacuuming the cat to get the hair BEFORE it ends up on the carpet sounds appealing.) You can find her on the web at www.DayAlMohamed.com and on Twitter @DayAlMohamed



Death’s Witness
by Day Al-Mohamed


Qasim Al-Mafqoud stood on the edge of the grave. He was tired. It had taken many days of pain and heartbreak to bring his tribe to this place for burial – Mother, brother, father, uncles, cousins, wife…and children. His back ached from the work; his hands raw from scooping away harsh desert sand to make a place for them. “La Illa ha Ill-Allah, wa Muhammad al-rasul Allah.” There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger. 

As the sun set and the air cooled, Qasim wrapped his stained jalabiya more tightly around him. He blinked, but he had no tears left. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his gaze panning the desolate horizon, seeking someone. Some thing. 

Less than a score of years and already Qasim felt like one of the old men who sat in Abdul Rasoul’s shop, drinking sweet tea and smoking shisha while children played in the dust of the street. The old men laughed and reminisced about companions long gone, yet Death was at their left shoulder and in their dark eyes there was fear, for every man faces Death alone. As inevitable as the shamal winds that blew down from the North during the dry season. Yet, Qasim had prayed, for years, to no longer see the white-robed figure.

As a boy, he sat vigil with the men by the great sheik’s bed, and watched patient Death who waited with them, unseen, as the old man coughed and shivered with fever. And Qasim had cried. Seven hundred and forty tears for an old man who had led his people away from war, to the oasis in the El-Kharga desert. As a young man, Qasim had seen Death follow his little sister, Fatima, for days before finally embracing her. And he had shed helpless tears, three thousand, two hundred and eighty five tears, one for every day of her life. As a father, he had shouted to the Almighty when he had seen the same Death with its hand upon his baby daughter’s breast. One hundred and fifty-one thousand and two hundred tears, one for every breath she took in her short life. But his burden was too much the day he awoke and Death had left its shadowy handprint across his village.

Everywhere he looked it was there – on shoulders, on brows, on arms and chests; on women and men, on babies and even  animals. He ran and shouted, and screamed, and cried at them until they feared him mad. Thousands upon thousands of tears. Perhaps he had been a little mad, perhaps that was why he was locked in the tiny spring house on the edge of the village when the raiders had come. 

Qasim wiped the mud and dirt and blood from his face as he stood unsteady but dry-eyed at the mass grave. Now, there was just him. And Death. Death looked down upon the clutter of bodies and for the first time, Qasim could see Death’s face. Death too wept. 

Two interesting short – one is very short – flash fiction stories for you now. Both involve men searching for something elusive – and in the process missing something more important. 

Our first story – The Bigfoot Hunter – is by Christopher DeWan. He is author of the book Work and Other Essays, and has published over 30 stories in journals including A cappella Zoo, Bartleby Snopes, DOGZPLOT, Jersey Devil Press, JMWW, Juked, Necessary Fiction, and wigleaf. His fiction has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and you can find him at http://christopherdewan.com

Then we have The Collector by Suzanne Conboy-Hill, a British writer "with no genre allegiance". Her flash fiction and short stories have been published by Fine Linen Literary Journal, Full of Crow, Zouch Magazine, and Cut A Long Story amongst others. She was a finalist in the Lascaux Short Fiction Prize 2014 and she once met Isaac Asimov and can be found at http://www.conboy-hill.co.uk


The Bigfoot Hunter
by Christopher DeWan


There’s a Bigfoot hunter in the woods, stooped over what he thinks might be a footprint in the mud. He kneels and squints at his tape measure. He’s looking for proof. He’s been days tracking, making his way up the Duwamish River estuary and through to the watershed at Kanaskat, alongside cliff faces carved out, the hunter knows, by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, 15,000 years ago. He’s deep in the heart of what was once Salish country – the Salish, who were well acquainted with his famous, elusive quarry: they called it Sasq’ets the Big Man of the Mountain – Sasquatch – and they saw what the hunter himself cannot see:

That while he crouches in the mud, measuring the indefinite imprint, assessing, cataloging, labeling, he himself is at the center of a valley of rock, hundreds of feet deep, thousands of years old, its walls carved out by ancient violence, magma flowing under its skin, and shaped—though he cannot make this out from his vantage—exactly like a human foot, arched, five toes, and bigger, older, more colossal, more magnificent, more dreadful than the man can possibly imagine.  



The Collector
by Suzanne Conboy-Hill


‘Only Art is immortal,’ she says, her arms umber-stippled ribbons, lithe in the firelight. ‘Humans are not.’ Alia dances with cognisance, knowing every fluid move and bringing each one to him where he sits, red and heavy, in the warm desert sand.

‘My passion is immortal,’ he says to her. But he is a collector and he is thinking of how appreciative his friends will be of her exoticism. She will dance for them and their eyes will glow hot under the cold northern skies.

She makes an ululation, ‘Humans grow old and they die,’ she sings. Her words are bells somewhere within him, drawing together the scent of the smoke from the men’s pipes, the bitter taste of the coffee on his tongue, and the pungency of the pack animals nearby. She is exquisite; he has bought her; he will take her home.

‘There is another thing.’ An older man, his breath smelling of liquorice, brings his face close so that his iron beard almost brushes the other man’s sgraffito complexion.

‘I have paid,’ the collector replies, ‘the contract is signed.’ He slides a slow blink.

‘A small ritual; our custom.’ The old man inclines his head, smiles and weaves deference into the air with his hands. ‘You will come?’

The night is filled with the heaviness of desert scents and the collector’s mind with thoughts of Alia dancing to command. ‘As you wish,’ he agrees. So he, the old man, and Alia move away from the fire to a small tent; low hanging, tasselled, and lit with oil lamps. A bowl deep with henna sits in the centre and hollow brown pens surround it. A tattoo, he thinks. Well that can easily be removed.

But it is not for him. Alia turns away, letting her tunic fall to her waist, and now he sees that she is the embodiment of fine design – brown on gold, darker on dark, curving with her curves and extending tempting tendrils beyond the soft folds of her robe.

‘Your likeness will appear here.’ The old man indicates virgin skin towards the centre of Alia’s spine and the collector leans close to look, excited by the intimacy of it. As he does, faint lines begin to appear – an outline, some shading – but with no stylus supplying the ink. He sits back: the drumming outside, the smoke, the spiced coffee – those things, he thinks, are playing tricks. He leans forward again, and now he notices human forms in the patterning. They are beautiful, but as he watches there is movement: eyes pleading, hands reaching out. Fear catches him and he sweats. Trickles of rose pigment erupt from his pores and fade to blush in salty streams, draining down from pastel shoulders, and bleaching the faint ink sketch that he is becoming until it holds nothing of him.

The new eyes on Alia’s back deepen and plead. ‘I told you,’ she says, ‘only Art is immortal.’

We're staying with poetry and today we have three writers using three different poetry forms.

We start with Bethany Powell with Hiding Mirrors – this is a haibun, which loosely translates as a prose poem with accompanying haiku to provide emphasis. Oklahoma-based Bethany has seen her work appear in SF magazines such Through the Gate, Inkscrawl, and Kaleidotrope.


HIDING MIRRORS
by Bethany Powell


My love is gorgeous,
his hair and eyes dark as dreams
 – any woman knows.

Yet, with such reason
for vanity, he shuns glass,
mirrors, still water.

We met first at at a time of carnival – in a good year, with high corn prices down in the city to make us breathe easy. Everyone's pies looked unskimped-on, and I won several prizes for my flowers. He was the big dark stranger at the rodeo, but with a boy-like smile for the mutton-buster children. He chose me, but also I chose him – a direct smile into his hot-coal eyes, before he sat down beside me. We keep house and he is good with the animals. He's built me hen-boxes, cattle-gates, and bookshelves. Our pottery dishes are pretty and hiding my mirror in the medicine cabinet is no trouble. And yet, it bothers me.

I fear that someday
gone cat-curious, crazy,
I will find out why.



Next up we Rhonda Parrish from Edmonton, Canada with a scifaiku In Space No One Can Hear You QQ. Rhonda can be found at  www.rhondaparrish.com and is also the editor of www.niteblade.com


In Space No One Can Hear You QQ
by Rhonda Parrish


Aussie latency
ain't got nothin' on
the lag from Earth to Mars



Finally, we have The Reading by Los Angeles-based 
Samson Stormcrow Hayes. This is one of those increasingly rare creatures: a rhyming poem that works. Samson (great name – one of my great, great uncles was a Samson Christian) is the author of Afterlife, a critically acclaimed graphic novel Joe Haldeman called "...good dark fun, a fascinating story well told."  He had a story accepted into a zombie anthology being published later this year, and was a contributing writer to the documentary, Clouds Over Cuba, a 50th anniversary look at the Cuban Missile Crisis commissioned by the Kennedy Presidential Library. He is also a member of the Horror Writers Association and can be found at  www.StormcrowHayes.com  and http://stormcrowspeaks.blogspot.com


The Reading
by Samson Stormcrow Hayes


At first she seemed so very calm,
As tarot reader took his palm.
She searched the lines and saw a sign,
Something dark and most malign.
What she saw, she would not say,
Abruptly she urged him on his way.
 
Once he left, she closed her shop.
She hurried home, she dared not stop.
From darkened alley a hand reached out,
And snapped her neck without a shout.
One by one he killed those who see,
So he'd remain forever free.