Two new microfiction stories – Water by Brandon Crilly and Equivocation by Theresa J. Barker – one more fantasy, the other science fiction however both hinge upon on the strange and unpredictable behaviour of people.


Water
by Brandon Crilly

They sometimes sent other people to the Grove. There was no pattern; I tried to time it, until I got bored. No pattern to the people, either. 
    
The latest was a guy, looked mid-twenties, like me. He spent hours circling the Grove, trying to get a signal on his smartphone. He talked at me a bit, but it wasn’t like I had figured out much since I got there.
    
“I’m guessing that’s safe to drink, right?” he asked me after a few days, or a few hours, and pointed at one of the little pools that dotted the Grove.
    
Not an original question. I shrugged and said what I always said: “Just be careful it doesn’t drink you back.”
    
He gave me a weird look – yeah, because I’m the weird one here – and crouched over the pool.
    
Fast as last time, the water shot up like a geyser and fell over him. It always looked to me like the person got flattened into the ground or erasered away or something. There was never anything left behind, either way.
    
I tossed my bucket made of leaves into a different pool and tugged it gently back toward me using the vine I attached. Then I sat down to wait for them to send someone else, and wished the water wasn’t quite so warm.


* An Ottawa teacher by day, Brandon Crilly has been previously published by On Spec, The 2017 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, Third Flatiron Anthologies. He contributes regularly to BlackGate.com and is the Assistant Editorial Director of TEGG Games. You can find him at http://brandoncrilly.wordpress.com + on Twitter https://twitter.com/B_Crilly. His first TEGG short story Wizard-sitting is now available at http://onderemporium.com.



Equivocation
by Theresa J. Barker

We all borrowed bodies from the loaner pool. There were the 10K runs, the red carpet evenings. The pregnancies. The power trip weekends and the all-night raves. We all borrowed bodies and they were starting to wear out.

Tereza got the idea of starting a swap with the folks in Lakeland down the road. Let's face it, Lakeland was a much smaller community, less affluent, and they could use the extra income, we figured. So the deal was made. It was a win-win interaction.

Only it didn't quite work out as we expected. For one thing the bodies we borrowed from Lakeland were new to us, and they didn't behave like the ones we used from the loaner pool in our own community. They were a lot harder to command. You'd want to go water-skiing in the gulf and instead find yourself in a soup kitchen helping the homeless. You'd start to get dressed up for a night on the town, all diamonds and Valentino or Alexander McQueen, but then somehow you'd be reading to children in a schoolroom instead.

The final straw was when the mayor, who prided himself on his all-hedonic platform in the last election – spent a week in a borrowed body putting up a tent city for refugees from the Middle East.

In the end we gave up the agreement with Lakeland and went back to our own loaner pool bodies. No thanks, we said. We'll just keep on like we always had.

But now some of us still find ourselves down at Lakeland on a Wednesday night Gospel singing, or up at the state park on a Saturday afternoon doing litter cleanup. It's unexplainable.

​We're hiring an expert to come in and straighten the whole thing out.


* Theresa J. Barker has always longed to live in other worlds, which she accomplishes through her writing. Theresa writes science fiction. Her  fiction has appeared in Shaking the Tree (an anthology of Not One of Us), Keen Science Fiction, and The Pitkin Review. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and co-curates the Two Hour Transport SF&F reading series in Seattle. Find her at http://www.theresabarker.com + https://twitter.com/theresajbarker +
http://www.tjbarkerseattle.wordpress.com

We've new short-form poetry and tanka for you now, proving that less is more, from four writers: Soren James (UK), Lisa Timpf (Canada), Bruce Boston (USA), and DJ Tyrer (UK).


Time Travel No 7
by Soren James

Of the eighteen techniques of time-travel, 
seven's the fastest: constricting
space, time, and potential (to lower 
awareness of life's passing), 
and shuffle you swiftly to death – 
without dent 
or incident.

It's the passage of choice in lush,
over-stimulating environments.

​
* Soren James is a writer and visual artist who has been previously published in Grievous Angel, Cafe Irreal, Freeze Frame Fiction, and Nanoism. https://sorenjames.wordpress.com


Nuclear Winter
by Lisa Timpf

scarcity triggers
a nuclear winter –
"Ha!" the skeptics sneer
"I told you global warming
was a myth."


* Ontario-based Lisa Timpf is a retired HR and communications professional whose writing has appeared in New Myths, Third Flatiron, The Martian Wave, and Scifaikuest.


Vampire Fortuneteller
by Bruce Boston
 
She reads the veins
in your throat
and only charges
a few drops.


* Bruce Boston's most recent collections, Sacrificial Nights, Visions of the Mutant Rain Forest, and Brief Encounters with My Third Eye, are available at Amazon.


Killing Grandpa
by DJ Tyrer

Pile of blunted razorblades
Broken knives, jammed guns
Provide mute testimony
As Grandpa swings back and forth
Growing annoyed to be kept hanging
No neck snap, poison ineffective
As the Grandfather Paradox
Proves a fleeting mirage


The Neptune Adventure
by DJ Tyrer

Spaceship in Neptunian orbit
Capsized by solar storm
Flipped upside down
Thanks to artificial gravity
Nobody notices nor cares


* DJ Tyrer runs Atlantean Publishing, placed second in the 2015 Data Dump Award for Genre Poetry and had a poem in The Rhysling Anthology 2016. His website is at http://djtyrer.blogspot.co.uk/ and Atlantean at http://atlanteanpublishing.blogspot.co.uk

Today's story – An Absence of Children by Nick Manzolillo – offers an eerie slice of American Gothic folk horror reminiscent of Ray Bradbury. As for our contributor, Nick Manzolillo is a content operations specialist for the news app TopBuzz, and recently received his MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University. His writing has appeared in over thirty publications including Thuglit: Last Writes, Monday's Are Murder, Lovecraftiana and the Tales To Terrify podcast. He lives in Manhattan with his girlfriend. You can follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Manzi24


An Absence of Children
by Nick Manzolillo
 

One child missing is a tragedy.

Two children missing is a coincidence.

Three children missing becomes a crisis.

Four children missing means the rural town of Badgewater gets help from the FBI.

Five children missing ushers in a curfew and Claire, the teenage sister of the first, takes matters into her own hands while the detectives and trackers flounder about, uselessly.

Six children missing causes Claire to begin crying in the middle of her brother’s bedroom, while studying his assortment of knickknacks found in the forest; woodchips shaped like birds, mineral flaked rocks and a musical pipe shrouded in moss.

Seven children missing means the FBI hauls in every potential suspect, no matter how flimsy the evidence; from parents to recent parolees, bus drivers, teachers and bums.

Eight children missing means the local school is closed, the library shuttered, a local lake dragged and the gate around the park and playground, locked.

Nine children are missing when Claire sneaks out, having discovered one of her brother’s drawings that to her desperate mind may very well be a map; to a special place, tucked away in the forest.

Nine children and a teenage girl, are reported missing, which means the national guard is called in turning Badgewater into a vortex of chaos and confusion, resulting in local trapper Neil Fischer fleeing to the forest to seek solitude.

Ten children and a teenage girl are reported missing by the time Fischer hears the eerie piping of a flute in the wind from his campsite. He spots a child walking through the woods, barefoot, eyes wide and a smile plastered over his lips. Fischer follows the child, who in turn follows the piping.

Ten children, a teenage girl and a local trapper are reported missing.

The eleventh and twelfth child are reported missing while eight-year-old Daisy, the twelfth, follows her twin brother, the eleventh, into the woods where he often plays. He woke up in the middle of the night and left, without speaking to her, as if in a trance. She follows him through the woods, to a clearing choked by tall grass. Before them lay the remnants of an old carnival several search parties have combed over to no avail. Among the ruins of con games, a swing set and what may have been a small train, there is a carousel, its horses, tigers, wolves, unicorns and bears mutated by rust. The animals’ painted grins have become snarls. In the center of the carousel, looping gently between the poles and carriages, something hooded in a cloak of leaves plays a pipe while Daisy’s brother boards the ride.

Standing back, hidden among the tall grass, Daisy watches as the ancient carousel begins to spin, brought to life by the hooded one’s melody. Slowly, with her brother as the sole rider alongside the piper weaving through the platform, the carousel completes three revolutions. The empty seats become full. The trapper, an older girl and ten other children appear, each riding a beast of their own, their faces brimming with delight. In a series of ugly, off key musical notes, the carousel completes another revolution and its riders vanish. The wolf Daisy’s brother road upon becomes once more passenger-less, hungry, the rust in its eyes begging her to climb aboard. The hooded piper of dead leaves, its instrument silent, stares at Daisy, twitching, before she runs away.

The twelfth missing child is found. Upon hearing Daisy’s story, law enforcement flock to the remnants of the carnival. No clues are discovered. Guards are set up. Rangers prowl the woods. Weeks go by and while no more children go missing, none are found. Daisy tells her story about the carousel that’s been eating people over and over. Nobody believes her. Eventually, a couple locals with too much time on their hands haul off the carnival scraps piece by piece. At a junkyard two towns over, the carousel is sold to a wealthy buyer, eager to refurbish the machinery as quickly as possible.

Thirteen people remain missing. Somewhere in the world, a song carries through the empty places, waiting for a child to listen and come feed the empty things.
  

Poetry today by a couple of the Angel's regular contributors Ken Poyner with Curtain, and John Grey with Poem for Wendy – and we are definitely heading into the realms of the Weird with these tales of demonic schoolgirls and trollish ballerinas!


​Curtain
by Ken Poyner

This dance is entertaining
Only because it is done
By trolls.  Elves, fairies,
Ordinary ballet company staff,
Would make nothing of it,
And we would be crying
That the orchestration is too lean,
The choreography a crime,
And the intermission’s pacing
Too optimistic by far.
But as the trolls go about
Their pitiful leaps and their leather-backed,
Stiffening swoons – each greedily feathering away
From incapable partners, each flailing
A moment on pointe like a
Brick house on fire - we warm
To the message being played to us,
The character of the embedded art:
You are not these, these are not you.
Be glad.


* Ken Poyner’s latest collection of short, wiry fiction Constant Animals, and his latest collections of poetry - Victims of a Failed Civics and The Book of Robot - can be obtained from Barking Moose Press www.barkingmoosepress.com. His poetry of late has been sunning in Analog, Asimov’s, Poet Lore, The Kentucky Review; and his fiction has yowled in Spank the Carp, Red Truck, Café Irreal, Bellows American Review.  www.kpoyner.com.


​
Poem for Wendy
by John Grey

She cast a shadow on Junior High,
black blouse, black skirt, black shoes,
black lipstick, the blackest of blacks
circling the eyes like adders.
She seldom spoke.
Classmates and other students shunned her.
Teachers gave her wide and fearful berth.

Horrific stories were written in whispers.
Tales began with a child of gypsies.
and worked their way more evil from there.
Her old man was certainly Beelzebub,
her mother, the Witch of Endor.
She called up demons late at night in the graveyard,
feasted on the blood of virgins.
All this, plus Iron Maiden groupie.
And yes she kept her little brother's skull in a drawer.

But, in her Junior year, came reformation.
Black hues gave way to colors.
Silence begat conversation.
Peers took to her.
Teachers installed her as pet.

No more twisted inventions.
Now, the narrative differed sharply.
Her parents fairly reeked of normal.
She was an avid churchgoer.
And Iron Maiden? Please.
Maroon 5 most likely.
As for her little brother...
why, they went everywhere together.
Why else was her pocket book so heavy?


* John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Cape Rock and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Poem and Spoon River Poetry Review.