Two Stories by E.E. King

It's Black Friday and we've two pieces of microfiction for you now – both sharing the theme of artistic creativity – by E.E. King. E.E. King is performer, writer, biologist and painter who was described by Ray Bradbury as "Marvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought provoking. I cannot recommend (her stories) highly enough."

A recipient of biological research and art grants, she has painted murals in LA California and Spain, worked with children in Bosnia, crocodiles in Mexico, frogs in Puerto Rico, egrets in Bali, mushrooms in Montana, archaeologists in Spain, butterflies in South Central Los Angeles and lectured on cruise ships in the South Pacific. In her spare time she gardens and raises egrets, kittens or whatever small creatures happen her way. Our illustration uses her painting The Birds Rose Into TheAir

Her novel Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife (all you need to know to choose the right heaven) has recently been issued. You can find out more at http://www.elizabetheveking.com and follow her on Twitter at @ElizabethEvKing


How Novels Grow

Samantha Green was walking by the library one early spring afternoon, when a short story ran from the building, grabbing her by the leg. “Shoo shoo,” she cried, trying to shake it off, but in reply the story merely growled. It clung to her with sharp, pointed metaphors, piercing her tweed trousers, her socks and possibly her heart.

“Go, she cried. “Go back where you belong!” But the story held her fast with a plethora of adverbs, lurid description, purple prose and superfluous adjectives.

Samantha was a plain, mousey spinster, who always wore her grey brown hair pulled taunt in a sever bun, shoulders hunched beneath her threadbare sweater. Her eyes were dwarfed behind large, rectangular horn rims. But now, bettered by bromides, her hair unwound. Curling, golden locks cascaded down her now lithe, straight back. Her glasses melted and luminous, double-lashed eyes gazed, two crystal, violets at the leaf green afternoon.

Birds twittered around her, occasional taking the stray end of a strand of golden hair in their beaks and flying it away from her valentine, fragile face.

“Don’t…. Stop…” she protested weakly in dulcet, tones.  The story gave another firm shake, and Samantha’s once bitten nails grew long, pale pink with ivory moons.

With a final toss, similes, and analogies flying like sweat, it opened wide a gaping red tunnel of analogy and swallowed her whole. Giving a satisfied burp, it strode off in search of a hero. 


The Furry and the Damned

Gerald was a sculptor, gifted with the fires of creation, cursed with fathomless canyons of despair. Unable to extricate himself from a lightless, twisting passage somewhere in his frontal cortex, he shot himself.

He’d come back as a graceful tortoiseshell cat. The thing was... (it was after all, the Island of the Damned) he knew he still had it in him – the ability to mold a hunk of clay into something beautiful, something alive …if only he’d had opposable thumbs. 

Many were trapped on the island – the furry and the damned – artists, poets and painters. Now thumbless and voiceless – transformed into dogs and cats they foraged the island for rats and other prey. They dared not consider who inhabited the rats? What undiscovered Milton lay behind sharp, yellow incisors? What Michelangelo peered from small rodent eyes? It was bad enough not to create…but to destroy by dinner was both horrible and banal. Once, after picnicking on a particularly feisty mouse, Gerald remembered that the mouse had been missing its left ear. He could not sleep. Not only did he suffer indigestion, he was sick with other pain….What if he had just eaten Van Gogh? Gerald had always worshipped Van Gogh’s use of color. His mad, vibrant brush strokes, his almost sculptural dimensionality.  

The mouse had been wild. Gerald recollected a crazy, starry look in its eyes… He lay awake on the cold gritty sand, stomach and heart aching. The next day he was a wreck. He needed at least fifteen hours of sleep a day just to feel feline. He tried existing on sea grass. But he grew hungry and his vision dimmed. Gerald recalled reading  – when he was still able to read – that cats lacking the taurine, found in seafood and meat, go blind. He began to catch the occasional minnow, hoping that the hollow eyes of fish hid no inner spark – but it was no use. His eyesight was definitely worsening. Gerald had always feared blindness. His whole world was form and light, structure and color. He must again become a carnivore – Milton and Michelangelo be damned. Besides, sea grass made him vomit. 

Limping on cooling sands at twilight in search of sustenance, Gerald did not hear the soft padded footsteps behind him. He was grabbed so quickly and was by then so weak, that at the first pierce of needle teeth, this heart gave out. He did not even have time to notice, before final darkness descended, that the hungry, red furred, coyote who snatched him was missing its left ear.