Grievous Angel Poetry & Fiction

New Flash Fiction: There's a Vampire Dragon in the World Tree

30/11/2014

Our latest story is in intriguing mix of Nordic myths meets more modern fantasy tropes by Vajra Chandrasekera, who lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka - and on Twitter as @_vajra. His fiction has been published in Clarkesworld and Black Static, among others. Check out his website vajra.me

NÍÐHÖGGR
by Vajra Chandrasekera

The dragon Níðhöggr sleeps at the foot of the world-tree Ygg-drasill, which is time. You know this because you've seen movies. We know this because We've been there. We run down the world-tree sometimes to watch over him while he sleeps. We miss him. He was Our playmate.

You do not know that the dragon is a vampire with fangs taller than you. We know this.

We know this because We made the dragon.

We made him from a kit. We stole it from a place high in the world-tree, from a moment when you had learned to make dragons.

# # #

Ygg-drasill is time because time is the great branching tree that links together the many-worlds. You know this. We know this.

We made the dragon in the future at the end of all things, at the top of the tree where We live.

Who are We? We have been eloi and morlock, light elf and dark elf. We are god, child, bound in time. We made the dragon, you understand, because We had always made the dragon, and because We chafe from restriction. We can only run up and down the tree. Father-Mother Hræsvelgr will not allow Us to leave time. They say We are not mature enough.

We are Ratatoskr. We run wild. We make mischief. We make dragons.

We were you, once. So in a way it's all your fault.

# # #

We made the dragon but We couldn't keep him. Mother-Father Hræsvelgr wouldn't let us keep him.

"You can't feed him," Hræsvelgr said, in Their aspect as Father. "He's an apex predator without a pyramid."

"We'll take him down the tree and feed him," We protested. "We'll take such good care of him, We promise."

"He's too much responsibility for you," Mother-Hræsvelgr said.

We had to let him go, They said. So We took him down the tree and dropped him off with the dinosaurs and wept.

"Run and be free, vampire dragon," We said, as We scampered back up the tree. Mother had said We had to be home by Götterdämmerung.

# # #

We watched over him anyway. We watched him.

Níðhöggr gamboled through the Mesozoic with zeal and abandon. He loved the diplodocus for their virginal neck, so sinuous and pure. He loved them, knee deep in the swamp, bellies low in the water, the way they twined and nuzzled against him, the thunder when they fell to earth.

He loved triceratops, the way they lidded their eyes and dropped their heads. Beneath the placid vegetarian exterior, beneath the frills, they were hot for him and he knew it. We knew it. You know it.

He loved the great icthysosaur leaping in joy from the waves.

He loved the therapods the most because they were the most like him. He clasped T-Rex to his breast and kissed their thick neck while their tiny, useless hands waved weakly in protest.

He had so much love to give.

# # #

By the time he had loved them all to dust and only the rats were left, he had grown so fat. So full, so hungry, so endlessly hungry. He was bored. The earth developed a wobble on its axis from his restlessness.

We ran down the tree to calm him and put him to bed before Mother-Father Hræsvelgr noticed that anything was wrong.

We sang him to sleep, and covered him gently with continents when We left.

We can't take him back up the tree with Us. He's too big now. But We know what to do.

We are sneaky. Father-Mother Hræsvelgr will have no choice but to love him when they see how beautiful he is. And We know he will love them too.

Until then, We leave him to sleep under the earth, to sleep and dessicate for millions of years, taking the long way home.

That's where you come in.

# # #

You know how he wakes because you've seen movies. All a dry vampire needs is blood. We know how he wakes because We've been there. In your billions, in your trillions all the way up the world-tree, you are the blood and the life. You are all Our little renfields and We love you.

We know and now you know, when enough blood is spilled on the earth at last, when you have done your best to serve him, to feed him, that the dry cells of his body will shiver to new life, and he will upend continents when he raises his great wings and yawns and takes a bite out of the moon.

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New Flash Fiction: Glass Hearts

22/11/2014

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Today's story - Glass Hearts by E. E. King - could not come at a better time, what with the trailers for the upcoming new Kenneth Branagh movie version of the fairytale Cinderella just hitting the cinema screens. Our story today however is seen (well that's precisely the wrong word, as you will soon appreciate) from the perspective of one of the "Ugly Sisters". And, in case you don't recall this version of the story from your childhood days, this tale is based on the Brothers Grimm version of the Cinderella fable - they called it Aschenputtel - and it is much, well, grimmer!

About our author: E.E. King is a performer, writer, biologist and painter. Ray Bradbury called her stories “marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.” Her books include: Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife, Real Conversations with Imaginary Friends, The Feathernail and Other Gifts and Another Happy Ending. Her newest novel Blood Prism will be out shortly.

She has won numerous awards - the most recent is the Gemini Flash Fiction Award - and she is a member of SFWA. She has worked with children in Bosnia, crocodiles in Mexico, frogs in Puerto Rico, egrets in Bali, mushrooms in Montana, archaeologists in Spain and butterflies in South Central Los Angeles.

elizabetheveking.com

Glass Hearts
by E. E. King

I can feel the sun on my face. It’s hot. Beads of salt sweet sweat chase down my face like tears. I am surrounded by darkness in day - sore from heel to toe. Some would say it’s what I deserve. Some would say I chose my own punishment. I say it’s not so easy to know the hidden pathways of the heart. I say you don’t always get what you deserve even if it’s what you ask for.

You grow up too tall, fat, ugly and over looked. If it suddenly seems you might just have a shot at happiness, a chance for success. Is it wicked to try to grasp it?

I doze, lids drooping over empty sockets. I’m so tired. Eunuch wolves howl outside my prison each night keeping me awake. Maybe they were once princes and resent the change.

Day and night are the same to me; it’s only the temperature that fluctuates. I used to think that sunset was God’s way of teaching us perspective - all lines converging from a single point below the horizon and spreading off into eternity – but I have lost my sense of proportion.

I sit trapped in darkness - chilled with an interior cold. Tiny frigid fingers curl around my bones. My body is a coffin.

My punishment for being ill to look on is also my reward - I no longer have to view my ugliness - to see men’s glances slide over me like raw eggs. To notice mothers stare with pity, children with scorn and old women with distaste. I can no longer see my foul face and compare it to my lovely sister’s. Of course I can no longer see my sister either, or anything else. Not even grey shadows break up my night. The blackbirds did their job well.

My punishment for being too tall is similarly fitting. Snip-snap a chop of heel and toe and I am no longer towering and straight. In fact I can barely stand - cowering like an old woman, hunched like a mole hill, even though I am but twenty-five.

My surer, tiny and perfect-as-a-glass- slipper sister will be punished too, though she cannot see it yet. I may lack sight, but I have vision. It stretches above appearances, through facades, behind exteriors and beyond walls. I can see that princes are rarely charming and if they are, they are likely gay or gallivanting.

Some might say it’s sour grapes, my vision, tainted by bitterness, darkened by envy. But I say who’s to know that it is not the truth? Rose colored glasses also tint reality.

Some say I was evil, but I did not choose to be ill favored and fat, nasty natured and sour.

Society scorns you-curls your finger around a trigger and acts scandalized when you pull back. You are startled too - after shock is jolting. Gun powder makes you weep. Perhaps I was mourning the soon to be loss of my eyes.

It’s possible I have been blessed. Unlike my lovely sister I will not have to see my beauty fade and my prince stray. I will not have to watch the inevitable journey into the dark.

I sit, almost in peace-if not for the pain in my feet-which hurt even when elevated.

I have heard of mermaids who traded fins for love - exchanging the freedom of weightless blue seas for false hearts and were similarly rewarded. Receiving sorrow and silence in spite of good intentions and faith... But perhaps it was because they had no souls. Mermaids never do, no matter how good they are. Is that justice?

Now I sit in the dark sun while the birds eat dried remnants of jellied eyes off my cheeks. The soft caress of feathers and sharp peck of beaks offer a strange comfort. They show me I am not alone in this darkness. Or at least no more than we all are.

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New Flash Fiction: Electric Sheep

11/11/2014

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We have an intriguing piece for you today, taking a little look into the far distant future to see what Wikipedia might be saying then about the way we live now. Called Electric Sheep, this is by M M Jordahl and has been formatted to look like an entry on Wikipedia. To recreate the effect, we've published this story as an image file rather than as text.

Electric Sheep
by M M Jordahl

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New Flash Fiction: One Summer Evening

7/11/2014

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The nights are drawing in and summer seems a long way off now. For Josh Whittaker, in this short story by Daniel Lamb, it is even farther away! But, before we embark upon the story, let's meet its author. Daniel Lamb describes himself as a 22 year-old biped humanoid with a good memory and a vivid imagination. He has always wanted to be a writer.

Actually, there was a brief period of time in his youth when he wanted to be an actor, and an even briefer period of time when he also had aspirations of rock superstardom. In a way, he considers writing to be a form of acting anyway and has thus decided that he is killing two birds with one stone. He lives in a small village in the North West of England where nothing much ever happens and he has to make things up instead. He recently graduated from university and is still coming to terms with living in the real world.

One Summer Evening
by Daniel Lamb

Josh Whittaker said he saw the Devil once.

He said he saw the Devil while he was out riding his bike one summer evening. He said the Devil appeared to him at the bottom of Seven Drive, right in the middle of the road. First, the sky turned grey and cloudy and the world went silent as though someone had just pressed the mute button on the remote control of life. And then the Devil was standing there in front of him. Josh didn’t describe what the Devil looked like, even when we asked him. He just called him the Devil, and in a way that was enough. He said the Devil spoke to him and tried to hand him a strange pinprick of silver light. After that, Josh rode off as fast as he could and didn’t look back.

We all got a fright when Josh told us his story in school the next morning, but it was a safe sort of thrill, removed from the actual peril of the experience, and not the genuine terror with which Josh recounted it. I could tell he wasn’t lying. Whether he’d actually seen the Devil or not, he believed he had. And he made us believe it, too.

For weeks afterwards, Josh’s story stuck in my mind and I would find myself imagining what the Devil had looked like. Thick protruding horns, huge and gnarled and twisted; small angular eyes filled with red malevolence; a knowing grin revealing sharp stubby parchment yellow teeth, teeth which had rent flesh and drawn blood, and a slithering snake-like tongue, forked at the tip, which had surely tasted it. This image would come to me unbidden as I lay in my bed at night, with the wind rattling against my bedroom window, and tried to drop off to sleep. And, of course, sleep would not come easily.

Josh did not tell us the story again. He died shortly afterwards. He was hit by a car whilst out riding his bike one summer evening. Allegedly, he swerved wildly into oncoming traffic. There no warning. No avoiding him. Seemingly no good reason at all for him to do so. But I often wonder. I have wondered for nigh on thirty years about what really happened to Josh Whittaker.

And I am not sure I ever want an answer.

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New Flash Fiction: There's a Vampire Dragon in the World Tree

New Flash Fiction: Glass Hearts

New Flash Fiction: Electric Sheep

New Flash Fiction: One Summer Evening

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