​
My younger sister was pregnant at eighteen. It was no surprise. Airy-fairy, dopey Stella was innocent but deluded. She refused to tell anyone who put the baby in her belly. When Astrea was born, I said, “Come on, Stell. You can trust me. Who’s the daddy?” She shook her head and turned away. She was a frightened kid, so I didn’t press it.
           
She was too gullible to take care of herself, and the father, whoever and wherever he was, didn’t offer, so I did. We’d been brought up in a council care home and we had no other family, so I was lumbered. I was around while Astrea was growing up; growing teeth; growing curious; and I was around when she asked the big question: "Mummy, where did I come from? How did I get here?”
           
Stella pulled a clean-ish handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped the snot from her six-year-old daughter’s face. “Okay, baby,” she said. “This is a magical story, but it’s true.” I guessed we were about to be fed a stomach full of trippy-hippy candyfloss. “About fourteen billion years ago, which is not such a long time, the whole universe was packed inside a tiny speck, smaller than your fingernail.” Here comes the cosmology lesson, I thought. “Then it exploded, sending a shower of dust flying out into the darkness.” She waved her arms around in a fair-to-middling demonstration of the Big Bang. “It made the sun, moon, planets and every star in the sky. When one of them blows up, more dust flies out. We’re all made from it, even you. You come from stardust.”
           
Pass the sick bucket. I wanted to scream, “Tell the child who fathered her,” but the little girl gave us a gap-toothed grin, and appeared to be well impressed.
           
When Stella was twenty-eight she disappeared, leaving me to raise her ten-year old speck of cosmic debris. The police came up with nothing. They said if she chose to run off and abandon her daughter there was nothing that they could do. We’d have to suck it up. 

Astrea’s a young woman now. She spends a lot of time gazing out of the window at the night sky, playing Stella’s album collection and singing along with The Doors and Joni Mitchell. She’s stardust and she’s looking for the garden. I wish she could feel at home on earth, but she has no anchorage.
           
“Close the curtains on outer space, Astrea,” I say. “You won’t find Eden up there. You belong here, stardust or not.”

“Nothing here is real,” she says. “Flesh is an illusion. I’m trapped in flesh but I’m more than that. I was sired by a star.”

“You sound like your mother”

“I don’t look like her though. Do I?”

She stares into her mirror, searching for her lineage in the contours of her own face. I can’t bring myself to say it, but although he was long dead when she was conceived, she looks a lot like Jim Morrison.


​
* UK-based Maureen Bowden describes herself as "Just an old fashioned girl who writes stories." She's now had over 60 poems and stories accepted by paying markets and last year Silver Pen publishers nominated one of her stories for the 2015 international Pushcart Prize. 

It's been a while but we're back with a great selection of new scifaiku by Ash Krafton + Pat Tompkins + John Hawkhead + Francis W. Alexander + Christina Sng + Guy Belleranti...


By Ash Krafton...

Thus With a Kiss
galaxies too great to survive an encounter
a pair of star-crossed lovers
engage in a fatal dance
 
 
Seek the Undiscovered Country
navigation failed, fuel cells depleted
undocked adrift
the traveler cannot return

* Ash Krafton (@AshKrafton) writes speculative fiction and poetry. She lurks in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal region but can be spotted at www.ashkrafton.com Both these 'ku start with quotes by Shakespeare.


By Pat Tompkins...

photographing
the Milky Way
she sees fractals
 

like the Pacific
the Sea of Tranquility
may be mislabeled

* Pat Tompkins is an editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her short sci-fi poems have appeared in several issues of Dwarf Stars. She adds "I'm not quite a Luddite, but I don't do social media or have a blog or website."


By John Hawkhead...

passing the last star
into the limitless void
cascading matter
 
* John Hawkhead is a writer of haiku and other short poetry forms. His work has been published all over the world in small press magazines and the Internet. His book of poetry and haiku Witness is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.


By Francis W. Alexander...

her last wishes  –            
a lone ship heads into  
the Flower Nebula     

* Francis W. Alexander was born and lives in Sandusky, Ohio. Besides caring for his cats, he is teaching himself web design. He has had stories and poems published in The Martian Wave, Night to Dawn, Scifiakuest, Space and Time, The Drabbler Anthologies; A Robot, A Cyborg, & A Martian Walk Into A Space Bar, the Zombified II Anthology and other publications.  


By Christina Sng...

grandmother's old house
left to me
the attic ghosts smile

* Christina Sng (@ChristinaSng) is a Rhysling-nominated poet and writer. Her work has received several Honourable Mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She is the author of three chapbooks and her first full-length book of poetry A Collection of Nightmares from Raw Dog Screaming Press arrives late 2016. Find her at www.christinasng.com


By Guy Belleranti...

lovely alien 
her beauty blows him away
so does her sneeze


wedding day bliss
ghoulish groom and bloody bride
exchange ring fingers


gifted doctor
perfect bedside manner
even the dead smile

* Guy Belleranti writes poetry, fiction and more. His poetry has appeared in Scifaikuest, Midnight Echo, Trysts of Fate, Grievous Angel, Spaceports & Spidersilk, Beyond Centauri and the book Anomalous Appetites as well as many other places. 

Here's the fourth of the shortlisted runners-up for our 2016 SCI-FI-LONDON 48 Hour Flash Fiction Challenge – Walls End by Jack Flynn, In a world where everyone has their own AI virtual assistant, could they be used for an alibi? 

Jack Flynn is a father, amateur writer, and avid gamer. If he's not working on his stories, coming up with new ways to torment his players, or replaying Mass Effect, he's probably watching his girlfriend play Roller Derby or talking anime with the twelve-year-old that's his daughter in an alternate universe. He's also looking forward to welcoming our future zombie robot ninja overlords (or Cthulhu, whoever gets here first).


Walls End 
by Jack Flynn 


“What’s his name?” 

“Weaver,” Vince replied, handling Kelsey the victim’s ident-card. “Richard Weaver, MD.” 

“A doctor, huh?” Kelsey waved away the ident-card and knelt by the corpse, careful not to step in the blood. “You’d think he would’ve been smart enough to find a less painful way to do this.” 

She gestured at the archaic kinetic weapon on the floor near the body. “I’m curious where he found ammo for that thing.” 

“Yeah, not easy to come by.” Vince walked around the perimeter of the room, looking around. “Doesn’t really look like a history buff. Family heirloom?” 

Kelsey didn’t reply. She stared at the gaping exit wound in the back of the victim’s head and thought about the bottle of pills on the table back in her apartment. The whiskey would be watered down and warm by the time she got back. It seemed like such as waste to buy a new bottle that she’d never finish, even assuming she could even find an open shop at this hour. She didn’t want to wait another year but she wanted good whiskey to be the last thing she tasted. 

“Hello? Kels?” 

She shook her head, tried to focus on the scene before her. “Sorry, didn’t hear you.” 

“Whatever. We done? Self-inflicted, right? We ready for the meds to come fetch him?” 

Kelsey stood up, her mind back on the here and now. “Anybody talk to his familiar yet?” 

Vince picked up a wristpiece from the ornate desk and tossed it to her. “I tried to link into it but looks like Weaver scrubbed it before he died.” 

She gave it back to him. “Show me.” 

“Where’s Matthias?”

“I rushed out the door,” she lied. “I took him off to shower and forgot to put him back on when I got the call.” 

If Vince noticed that her hair was still gelled in the same style that it had been when they’d left the station earlier, he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he sighed and held the doctor’s wristpiece near his own and said, “Ripley, wake it up, please.” 

His AI chirped twice, lighting up as it followed his directive.  The victim’s tech cycled on and chirped twice, an echo of the other. A few seconds later, a tiny holographic woman in a business suit appeared, hovering over the portable artificial intelligence unit. 

“Hello.” She looked up at Vince. “Are you my new owner? Until you name me, my designation is Sierra. May I have yours, please?” 

It was definitely a high-end model – the voice had no trace of distortion or artifice to it, and there was no lag. Matthias was always a hair off; it was as bad as watching a badly dubbed vid. 

“See?” Vince handed the device back to Kelsey.

“Factory settings.” 

The six-inch woman looked up at her. “Hello. Are you my new owner? Until...” 

“Be quiet, Sierra.” The familiar’s immaterial mouth closed and she smiled patiently. The hologram blinked out of existence as the inspector accessed the physical device, the screen lighting up at Kelsey’s touch. She began tapping in commands, rapidly moving through a series of screens. 

“You’re a techhead now?” Vince looked over her shoulder. “What’re you doing?” 

She didn’t immediately reply, not sure how to explain that she’d cleared Matthias’s history herself an hour or so earlier. Before she had to make up another lie, they both heard a noise, the faint sound of laughter from across the room. 

Putting the device into her coat pocket, she unclipped her NLSD from her belt and primed it. Vince fell into step behind her as she crossed the room. It was muffled but they could definitely hear voices, which should’ve been impossible – all there was at the end of the room was a desk, chair, and bookshelf; the entire apartment had been cleared; the only people inside were Kelsey and Vince. She glanced back at Vince and then his NLSD, still on his belt. 

“Sorry.” He winced as he drew the subdual device. 

Slipping around the desk, Kelsey realized she hadn’t been close to this much paper since she’d visited the North American History Museum as a kid and the smell was unnerving. The desk was impeccably laid out; the tip of the stylus flush against the corner of the tablet, the digital frame sitting at a precise forty-five-degree angle to the corner of the desk, mirroring the commscreen on the other side. She pushed the chair – real leather, a year’s salary for her, at least – under the desk and examined the bookshelf. The voices were still indistinct but louder. 

“Kelsey?” 

​She continued to ignore her partner. Most of the books on the shelf were medical texts or journals, but one wasn’t. 

“Kelsey!” 

The Stephen King novel slid forward effortlessly. There was only a faint click as the bookshelf slid up, the whole section disappeared into the ceiling to reveal a small, well-lit panic room. A young girl, eleven, maybe twelve, sat in a plush chair, watching a vid on a wall-sized 
screen. She turned and, at the sight of an armed woman, squealed, jumping out of the chair and ducking behind it. 

“It’s okay,” Kelsey said, holstering the NLSD. “I’m not going to hurt you.” 

The kid peeked over the arm of the chair and Kelsey gasped. She’d seen the girl’s eyes before. 

“Damn it, Kelsey.” The ominous click that accompanied her name sent a chill up her spine. 

She hit the red button on the panic room wall and backed out as the bookshelf descended. Slowly, she turned to face her partner. 

“I really wish you hadn’t done that, Kels.” The gun had looked awful on the floor but it looked twice as ugly pointed at her. “Put your subber on the desk.” 

As she unhooked her NLSD and tossed it on the desk, there was a double-chirp from her pocket. Deliberately, she reached in and took out the doctor’s wristpiece. She ran her finger across the screen and the hologram appeared. 

“Why, hello there.” Now wearing a lab coat instead of a business suit, she regarded Kelsey. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met. You may call me Amanda. Where is Richard?” 

Vince glared at his partner. “How’d you do that?” 

Kelsey tossed the wristpiece to Vince; he caught it without thinking but Kelsey didn’t try to take advantage of the distraction. 

The AI looked up at him. “Oh, hello, Vincent. I must have fallen asleep. How was dinner?” 

“Amanda, play last thirty seconds recorded prior to sleep mode. Audio only. Security override, nine-nineteen, authorization Walls, Kelsey.” 

“Confirming.” Amanda disappeared. 

“To fully scrub an AI, you have to do it from the hard drive, not the portable.” Kelsey tapped the viewer on the desk and it flashed on, rendering a photograph of the little girl and her dads standing on the steps in front of the North American History Museum. She had Richard’s chin but Vince’s eyes. 

Kelsey sighed and looked at her partner. “Three years and you never told me?” 

The wristpiece screen flicked back on. “Override confirmed,” Amanda said. “Playback beginning.” 

Vince’s voice came out of the tiny machine. “…bring this with?” 

Another man’s voice replied, “No it’s okay, leave it, I’ll save this for later. Let’s finish this. I have things to do.” 

“Where’s Stevie?” Vince’s recorded voice was tight. “She’s in there, isn’t she?” 

The other man sounded bored. “Just stop, okay? You know.." 

The sound of the gun going off was tinny, too much for the wristpiece’s system to handle, and then the screen went dark. 

The gun shook in Vince’s hand. 

“I’ve fired one of those before. They have a lot of kick. Can hurt your wrist if you’re not careful.” Kelsey turned the viewer so Vince could see it. “Why’d you do it?” 

“He was going to take her. He had the money, the lawyers. I’d never see her again.” He lowered the gun, wiped at his eyes with the other hand. “You of all people should know how it feels!” 

“I do,” she agreed. “But you’ll still never see her again. You know that, right? Even if you shoot me, Sato’s outside. It’s over.” 

“I know,” he said, raising the gun and pulling the trigger. 
The noise was louder than Kelsey expected. Kelsey closed her eyes for a moment before turning and pressing the King book. As the bookshelf ascended, she fought to control her breathing. 

The girl – Stevie – Stevie was still huddling behind the chair as Kelsey stepped into the room. As she saw her partner’s eyes looking back at her from the girl’s face, she knew that she’d have to find a shop open on the way home. She didn’t have anything for breakfast at her apartment. 

​“Hi, Stevie,” she said. “I’m a friend of your dad’s.” 

We welcome back another regular Grievous Angel contributor: Arizona-based Gary Every, with a tale of everyday life, weirdness and feathers in Sedona. Gary's work has been previously published in Tales of the Talisman, Dreams and Nightmares, Mythic Delirium and many others including five nominations for the Rhysling Award for Year's Best Science Fiction Poetry.


Sedonuts and Feathers
​by Gary Every
 
I realized I had really moved to beautiful, eccentric Sedona at the intersection of Harmony and Moonglow streets, looking for a trailhead that began at the end of Little Elf Drive. I was full moon hiking with Dale and we parked just as the last daylight faded. 

A small group of people approached. They were wearing orange robes, carrying drums, had feathers in their hair, and were wearing face paint. In Sedona such gatherings of furry freaky people are not unusual. Dale and I did not give the robe wearing, drum carrying Sedonuts another thought. We stomped into the forest, the glorious moon already rising high. The Sedonuts chattered among themselves. 

“Did you see that?” one whispered. “They are just now starting their hike.”

“Won’t they get lost in the dark?” wailed another.

One of the Sedonuts, who was carrying a bigger drum, and with more feathers in his hair, (the head Sedonut), commented. “They must be hiking under the moon.”

“How magical!” said the first.

“I wish I could do that.” Cried the wailer.

As we entered the forest Dale noticed. “Those people were wearing robes, feathers, and face paint but they thought we were the crazy ones.”

“You mean in their eyes – we are the Sedonuts?!”
 
* * * * *
​
We hiked into a box canyon. As the canyon walls closed in the shaft of moonbeams no longer penetrated. The shadows became darker, more encompassing. There was an explosion of wind as a burst of feathers spread out from the shadows into impossibly wide wings. A large bird flew directly at my head with talons extended. I screamed and ducked as the owl flew over my head. My shrieking echoes continued long after the owl had fled.

Dale laughed.

Then I saw a black and white striped owl feather. After the hike was over, I placed my new feather in my automobile dashboard, beside the other feathers, nestled in snugly besides a battered blue jay feather and a beautiful bronze colored plume.

“What is the brown feather from?” Dale asked.
“A turkey,” I replied. “They are like the ghosts of Sedona.  I keep finding the feathers but I have yet to glimpse one here. All these crazy Sedonuts searching the valley for UFOs should try and find a wild turkey. That is one elusive mythical beast.”
 
* * * * *

The next morning I was standing in line at the local store buying gas when a voice blurted out “I love your feathers.”

I turned around to face a beautiful woman with wild hair and gypsy hippy clothing. “Where do you find them?” She asked. “I am looking for an eagle or hawk feather.”
I warned her. “It is a federal felony to pick up the feathers of birds protected by the migratory bird act.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed.

“If you want you can take one of mine.”

She followed me to my car and leaned her fine feminine form inside, clothes shifting to reveal glimpses of scandalous tattoos. She closed her eyes and held her hand over each feather in turn.

“I am trying to feel their aura.”

Her hand lingered over some feathers more than others.  She snagged the bronze colored feather.

She hugged me enthusiastically. “Thank you so much. I have been asking the earth mother for a feather for the longest time.”

During my long life I have been called many things but that was the first time I have ever been called an earth mother. 

She bounced away with her feather, “I am building a wand.”

I did not have the heart to tell her she had not selected an eagle or hawk but had grabbed the turkey feather.  

I buy gas somewhere else now and always keep a wary eye at coffee shops. Perhaps she blames me for her miscast magic, searching Sedona seeking vengeance. When she sees me, she will use her homemade wand to turn me in to a toad. Except, because she is using the wrong kind of feather, her spell will go awry. Instead of a toad, maybe she will accidentally turn me into a salamander or a giraffe or heaven forbid…. a platypus.