Grievous Angel Poetry & Fiction

New Flash Fiction: Between the Bridges

31/7/2014

We go back to the days of gaslamps and hackney carriages in old London town in our latest flash fiction. The tale is by Sandra Unerman, a fantasy writer, with short stories recently published in Legends and theBFS Journal. She is a member of the London Clockhouse Writers Group.

Between the Bridges
by Sandra Unerman

On a cold autumn evening, in the days of gaslamps and hackney carriages, two men rowed a boat upstream between London Bridge and Southwark Bridge.

Inside the boat, a quarrel smouldered.

‘We should have taken a couple of nags,’ said Bill, at the rear oar.

‘Horses bite,’ answered Jim from in front. ‘And they kick.’

‘At least we’d be on our way by now.’

‘Not if we fell off.’

They spoke slowly, between breaths as they pulled at the oars. But their struggles only just prevented the boat from being swept downriver.

* * *

Under London Bridge the trolls lurked, great nodules of blackish grey. As the daylight dwindled their bodies quickened and they grew faces, eyes red and small, mouths black and jagged. Their voices were hoarse and thick.

‘When does the tide turn?’ asked the oldest.

‘Too late for them,’ answered the biggest. ‘They’ll weaken soon and the current will bring them to us.’

A third said, ‘Not much flesh on them though.’

‘Better than nothing,’ answered the biggest. ‘And we can crunch up the boat for afters.’

* * *

Bill said, ‘My hands are blistered.’

‘You told me you could row.’

‘I rowed at school, I said.’

Jim half turned round, glaring at Bill and at the way they wanted to go. The boat lurched sideways. ‘Don’t stop now. The tide must turn soon.’

‘If the police don’t get here first. What if the Bank has secret watchers?’

‘They’d have picked us up when we lifted the gold. Keep rowing.’

* * *

Under Southwark Bridge the ghosts gathered as the night thickened. In the shadows they built up the memory of their bodies, swollen and drowned, nibbled by fish or gashed by knives. Their eyes glittered and they spoke in cold whispers.

‘When does the tide turn?’ The Lady had once been a leader of fashion, elegant and wild, before her lover deserted her.

‘Before midnight.’ The Roarer had been a sailor, rumbustious and strong. ‘Once the tide turns, they’ll come close enough for us to grab.’

‘We don’t need to grab,’ the Lady said. ‘We can tip the boat over and watch them drown.’

‘Harry Hunks wants to grab them and sink his claws in, don’t you, boy?’

Beside the Roarer lay the ghost of the great bear, bigger than he had ever been in life, when he fought in the bear pits of Southwark. He lifted his head and growled.

* * *

Bill said, ‘Someone’s bound to spot us out here.’

‘Two swell coves in a filthy boat? They’ll think we’re drunk.’

‘My feet are wet.’

‘Keep bloody rowing!’

* * *

The trolls said, ‘Not much longer now.’

The ghosts said, ‘Hurry up.’

The boat began to sink.

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New Flash Fiction: The Doris Configuration

24/7/2014

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We go all post-Apocalypse for our latest flash fiction. It's by Marc Shapiro, a published fiction writer, comic book writer, poet and the author of approximately 50 unauthorized celebrity biographies. His collection of short stories entitled High Strangeness (Chupa Cabra House) is available on Smashwords. His collection of poetry entitled Melancholy Baby (Chupa Cabra House) is also available now. Marc Shapiro actually does this for a living. Don't tell the authorities. (We won't but we can't speak for the NSA! ..Ed)

The Doris Configuration
by Marc Shapiro

History has recorded that thirty seconds before the Apocalypse, Doris Yang vacuumed up a tribe of bed bugs and dust mites. Doris did not survive. But two years after the blast a new species, equal parts bed bug/dust mite, kicked open the vacuum canister and emerged as the only surviving species on the planet. Everything looked peachy for the future of earth until history would further note that Doris, prior to unknowingly creating a new species, had captured a handful of cockroaches for her son’s science project and put them in an ice chest for safe keeping. They also got out. Thanks Doris.

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New Poetry: Verse + Two Prose Poems

17/7/2014

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Back to poetry today on Grievous Angel and we have three poems (two of which are prose poems) in total from three writers. The debate about the boundaries and distinction between prose poems and flash fiction is a topic for another day...

• We start with The Likely Failure of a Marriage, a fantasy piece by Marge Simon. Her works have appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Dreams & Nightmares and she has won several Stokers for poetry collections.

The Likely Failure of a Marriage

The wife and I have double sinks in our bathroom. It was her idea, and we paid well for the renovation. I don't find it a welcome thing. I can see her every morning as she really is, without makeup, baggy-eyed, preening her oily feathers right beside me while I pluck the locusts from my moustache. When she watches me remove the leeches from my neck, invariably one of them falls on the floor. This always causes an argument.

• Next, it is the turn of New York writer Lorraine Schein with our second prose poem of the day Ultimate Feng Shui. Lorraine's work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Hotel Amerika, Mad Scientist Journal and elsewhere, and recently in the anthologies Phantom Drift, Wreckage of Reason and Drawn to Marvel. Her poetry book The Futurist’s Mistress is available from www.mayapplepress.com

Ultimate Feng Shui

She hired a Feng Shui specialist, and did all he said. She moved her bed and desk away from her door to face more favorable directions, hung mirrors and chimes to misdirect bad luck, added plants and installed small fountains of water to increase cash flow, and painted her rooms in different colors to attract chi.

Finally, all was in place - there was nothing left to do. She went to sleep in her new, perfectly aligned apartment.

When she awoke, she found herself outside on the pale square of ground where her building had been.

Everything had been so perfectly positioned that it had ascended to Heaven, where it belonged, leaving her behind - aligned with nothing.

• Finally, it is over to Arizona writer Beth Cato with suddenly, a unicorn. Beth is the author of THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER, a steampunk fantasy novel from Harper Voyager. Her website is www.BethCato.com

suddenly, a unicorn

steps into the headlights
white coat set aglow
horn a perfect golden spiral
mane matted by brambles
his head turns to face

the car as you slam on brakes
vicious gush of the airbag
crunch, dust, blood trickles to lip
windshield rippled like
stones in a pond

smear of red across the glass
you stumble outside
the unicorn is gone
a few white hairs snagged on shards
you call home: "I hit a deer."

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New Flash Fiction: Witness Tampering

8/7/2014

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Our latest piece of flash fiction is proof that sometimes less is more. It is by Tom Breen, a former Associated Press journalist currently living in southern New England, where, he adds "it is my hope to one day see a wild moose!"

Witness Tampering
by Tom Breen

 It was the largest tongue any of us had ever seen. It was wide as a man’s hand, gray and dry.

“Cow tongue,” said Detective Marquez. “Or ox, maybe.”

Maybe. None of us had ever seen an ox.

A woman on her morning run had found a box sitting on a bench across the street from the courthouse, and inside was the tongue.

Nails had been driven through it, and pins, one of which fixed in place a picture of a pretty Latina that looked like a Facebook profile photo.

The inside of the box was caked with dry wax, and there were chili peppers and bent nails strewn everywhere.

“We have to find this woman,” Detective Marquez said.

We put the box in the evidence locker, with all the others.

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New Flash Fiction: Rainbow Man

2/7/2014

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Here's our latest flash fiction contribution - it's by Christine Purcell, who descibes herself as a coffee aficionado and Scrabble demon. Her first novel The Emerald Key is due out this year (Ticonderoga Publications). Her shorter works have appeared in White Cat Magazine, the Fem-Fangs Anthology (Pill Hill Press), House of Horror, Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal, Metro Baby, ESC! Magazine, The Copperfield Review, The Loch Raven Review, Third Reader and other venues.

Rainbow Man

He doesn’t want to get caught inside the Anderson’s house. He presses his lips to the cotton dress and sucks the color from the mossy-green fabric, then moves on to the lichen-flavored pink polka dots.

The children call him Rainbow Man. Sometimes they find him inside the Nowhere Shed, where he sleeps, among piles of colorless beer glass and achromatic garden tools. They throw rocks and chant: “Hide your toys and hide your eyes or Rainbow Man will suck you dry.” He can’t help himself. He takes a book from her nightstand, licks the cover, and swirls the umami blend in his mouth. Delicious, but he craves something richer.

A thud comes from the next room and his heart races. No one is supposed to be home. The exit is down the hall, past the sound. He tiptoes. When he reaches the bathroom, the door is open. She is on the floor, a slash along her wrist, filet mignon red pouring out.

He wishes he were someone else, someone who would save her.

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

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New Flash Fiction: Between the Bridges

New Flash Fiction: The Doris Configuration

New Poetry: Verse + Two Prose Poems

New Flash Fiction: Witness Tampering

New Flash Fiction: Rainbow Man

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