Three Selections (Short Shorts and a Poem)

When I started this project of posting a story a day for every remaining day in the month, my idea was to focus on my short stories in order to show prospective patrons what I have to offer in that area, to give you the reader an idea of what you’d be getting if I offered you one new short story every month for supporting me on Patreon.

But the thing is, short stories aren’t all I have to offer. Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit of “flash fiction”… short stories of a few hundred words. A lot of it is collected on the website Fantasy In Miniature. I use flash fiction as a writing exercise, a way to spin out ideas or get words flowing. Interestingly, a number of my poems started life as a flash fiction experiment, and vice-versa. It was the poetic quality of some of my shorter flash pieces that convinced my poetry mentor and all around superfan Elizabeth McClellan that I had more poetry in my soul than I had ever let on.

So today’s example of my short fiction consists of two of my pieces that straddles the line between flash fiction and a short, and a poem that tells a story.


Who Said Life Was Fair?

By Alexandra Erin


“So, you’re after the fair folk, are you?” the old lush said to me.

I’d been pointed his way as part of my quest. I had been told not to expect any information about where I needed to go or what I needed to do, but that I needed to hear what he had to say, all the same.

“I am,” I said.

“Then you need to hear my warning,” he said.

“I’ve heard lots of warnings,” I said.

“About accepting gifts, or refusing gifts, or eating food, or declining it, right? Things like that. This is a different sort of warning,” he said. He paused, then threw back his glass, draining the last of the beer from it. “I met just one fairy in my life. Saved its life, by its own admission. Three wishes it offered me… three wishes. Said it would come back on the new moon to hear and grant the first of them.”

“Did it?”

“I full-on expected it wouldn’t… I worked hard to resign myself to the notion that my one and only encounter with the wondrous was all I would get out of it, and to be happy with that. But as the month wore on and the moon waned, I started to feel a flicker of hope and yearning. You see, my father had died of a bum ticker when he was three years younger than I was, and I had a certain recollection that his father had also died young in a similar fashion… so it had often been in the back of my mind that a similar thing might happen to me.”

“You wished for a good heart?”

“Good health in general,” the old man said. “So of course the blasted thing came back, and it heard my wish… that my heart and liver and other organs and parts should be strong and healthy until the day I die. And no sooner than the words were out of my mouth than it struck me that the quickest route to fulfilling that one would have been to kill me on the spot, but no, the fairy just crossed its arms and said ‘It is done’ and damned if I didn’t feel the difference right away, and double-damned if I haven’t felt it since. So, the fairy told me it would be back in a month for the second wish.”

“What did you wish for?”

“This time I knew it was on the up-and-up, so I started to plan ahead. I had my health, and could expect to live a good long life, barring misadventure… as a fit man, I could look forward to a few more decades more of hard labor followed by a miserly retirement. So I decided what I really wanted was a certain measure of comfort, security, and leisure to live out my life in style. That’s not one wish, of course, but the thing that secures all of that is. I decided to wish for money. A million dollars. That’s a chunk of change with the power to change lives today, but back then… well, it was a sight more than it is now. I could have wished for more, but I didn’t want to abandon my old life. A million dollars could be explained. It seemed like a credible windfall.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, the fairy returned, and heard my wish… which was for a million dollars to come to me in some fashion that was legal and brought no misfortune to anyone else… and it suggested I spend the next afternoon removing a certain stump from my property. Under there was a cache of old coins, worth just over one million dollars even after the tax man took his share. And I went a little wild with it, for a while, though my brother-in-law was a banker and he invested the lion’s share of it for me, and I’ve done quite well by him over the years.”

“So two wishes worked out well,” I said. “What happened with the third?”

“Well, the fairy again said it would be back when the moon was new. And I had health and I had wealth,” the old man said. “So for my third wish I wanted something special, something extraordinary… something that couldn’t have been come by any other way. I didn’t know what I wanted when the fairy left, but as the weeks slipped by I thought back to all the times in my life I’d been thirsty and couldn’t beg up a drop of drink to wet my whistle. I knew my liver was good for the duration, so I decided to make sure that never happened again.”

“You were rich,” I said. “You could have bought beer anytime you wanted. You could have bought a brewery.”

“Right,” he said. “But the same could be said for nearly anything I might have wished for. Besides, I said I wanted something special. So I made up my mind to wish that I had but to snap my fingers and the glass nearest to me would fill itself up with whatever I wanted most to drink, the best quality. I had a good week and a half to fix this wish in my mind, to think on the possibilities… the exotic liquers I could try, the fond remembrances I could relive. I could sample thirty-year scotches and the greatest wine collections the world had ever known. And if ever I met a man who didn’t believe my good health and great fortune were a gift from the fairies, I could strike them dumb just like this.”

The old man gave a loud snap with his fingers. I looked at the glass he’d set on the counter, but it remained empty and inert.

“…what happened?” I asked.

“The little devil never showed up!” the old man said. “That was its trick, you see.”

“It gave you perfect health and more money than you needed?”

“It made me believe,” the old man said. “It made me hope. It made me wish… those first two things, they were things I wanted. They were things I asked for. But they weren’t a wish like this was a wish. I’d never felt a deep-seated yearning for a million dollars, you see. I’d prayed for health, in the off-hand sort of way that you do, but I had never fallen to my knees and begged for it.”

“You still had your money,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “If it had said two wishes, I would have been satisfied. If it had said two wishes, I would have walked away perfectly happy. I wouldn’t have been disappointed if from the start it said I could have one wish, or it offered its thanks and went on its way. But it promised three wishes, and it spread them out so I had time to get used to the idea, to come round to the way of thinking that this was how things worked.”

“But have you ever in your life since then actually gone thirsty?”

“No,” he said. “Not thirsty, exactly. Not for lack of drink.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I said.

“But you still mean to press on.”

“If I’m offered three wishes, I’ll know what not to do,” I said.

“If you’re counting on two, you’ll get one,” he said. “Or three but something else will go wrong. Or you’ll be offered something else, something that isn’t wishes. You see, the lesson here isn’t how it played out with me. The lesson is about what happens when you trust a fairy.”

“I think I could manage a long, rich life,” I said.

“You think I don’t feel lucky?” the old man said. “I do, if only because I’ve heard from others who’ve had their dealings and come away much worse for it. But no matter how lucky I am and how lucky I feel, I also feel cheated… and I’ll always feel cheated. It’s a bigger thing than you think.”

“I could stand to feel a little cheated if I had your life.”

“That’s what they all say, when they find me,” the old man said. “But they all find me in a bar.”

“I won’t make the same mistake you did,” I said.

“No, you’ll make your own.” The man raised his empty glass. “Here’s hoping you come out the other end of it.”


How The Minotaur Lost Her Way

By Alexandra Erin


Well, she lit out from Kellisport
so many years ago
bound for Hulmouth Harbor
before the winter snow.
Her holds were packed with cargo,
her sails were full of wind
and not a mortal living
knows where she met her end. 

Who can know? Who can say
where the Minotaur lies today?
She started out so swiftly
but somehow she lost her way.
My heart was packed inside her
when she went down that day.
Oh, my heart was packed inside her
when she went down that day.

She carried tonnes of cotton,
and barrels full of rice,
casks of hearty wine
and sweetly scented spice,
treasures from the conquest
and priceless works of art.
and one lonely young sailor
I trusted with my heart.

Mermaid-snared? Tempest-tossed?
They only know that she was lost.
The bankers know the value,
but no one knows the cost.
Now my heart lies under waters
no ship has ever crossed.
Oh, my heart lies under waters
no ship has ever crossed.

It happened of a sudden,
one calm and moonless night.
My sailor left his watch-post
and doused his lantern-light.
Urged on by the promise
I’d etched upon his skin
he drew steel and crept astern
and did the captain in.

Who can know? Who can say
how the Minotaur lost her way?
Only one man’s certain,
and he will never say.
He took my heart down with him
when the ship went down that day.
Oh, he took my heart down with him
when the ship went down that day.

The Minotaur lies quiet now
in the darkling deeps,
and prowling round about it
my sailor never sleeps.
In the ribs of the wreck
a light no depths can kill,
and at the center of it
my heart beats even still.


SPECTATOR SPORT

By Alexandra Erin


The two stood near the corner of the roof.

“Okay, watch this,” one of them said to his less enthusiastic companion. He pointed down across the street, where a well-dressed but harried and tired looking woman was fumbling with a set of keys beside a dark-colored sedan. She set a laptop case down on the roof of the car. “She’s just come out of the coffeeshop where she waited over an hour for an interview with a man who never showed up. She’s been out of work since her bank shut down eight months ago. She needs a job, needs it badly, but even more than that she wanted this one. It was the perfect fit for her. It was her dream job. It was actually in her field, and the location would have been perfect.”

“How long have you been watching her?” the other one asked.

“The whole time,” he said. “Now take a look directly across the street from her. What do you see?”

“Another coffee shop.”

“Yes.”

“The same as the one she walked out of.”

Yes!”

“They built two shops at the same street?”

“I know… crazy, isn’t it?” the first one said. “Now watch, because she’s going to look up and see it in about five seconds… three, two, and one.”

As they watched, the woman’s head tipped up in response to the flash of movement from a passing car and the expression on her face became one of surprise, then dawning realization and horror. Her car keys fell from her suddenly limp fingers, straight through the grating at her feet.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the first watcher said.

“If you saw that coming, you might have done something,” the other said. “Or you might have let her know that the man she was waiting for was across the street.”

“He actually wasn’t, though. He never showed up. He forgot about it. That’s what’s so beautiful about it. She’s going to be kicking herself forever, thinking that she fucked up, when actually it didn’t matter which of the cafes she went into. When he realizes that he blew off a prospective employee, he’s going to rationalize it away so it’s not his fault. He’ll decide he wouldn’t have hired her so he doesn’t have to call her to admit his mistake and reschedule. Nothing she could have done would have made this turn out differently.”

“Are you planning on letting her know that?”

“Are you? Of course not. We’re watchers. We watch.”

“We could let someone know.”

“That’s not my department. Anyway, it’s about to get better,” the first one said. “She’s blaming herself right now, but as long as she’s only blaming herself, there’s still the possibility in her heart that the universe is a kind and loving place. That just makes her kick herself all the harder, of course, because God was good enough to give her the chance to land her dream job and she blew it. What we’re about to see is the moment that she loses all faith.”

“That’s kind of morbid, isn’t it?”

“Morbid how?”

“We’re creatures of faith,” the other one said.

“Yeah, but we’re not like storybook pixies or anything. I don’t think we’re going to die just because someone doesn’t believe in us. We’d probably be long gone if that were the case.”

“Lots of people believe in angels,” his companion said.

“Yeah, but most of them don’t have a clue what Grigori are.” He pointed. “Okay, okay… watch this.”

The woman was looking around for something to fish her keys out. A young man who had just walked past the woman’s car suddenly doubled back and snatched the laptop, then took off running. The woman reacted as if in slow motion, turning, rising, and calling hoarsely for him to stop as he vanished around a corner.

“See, that’s it!” the watcher cried, slapping his knee. “Poof! All gone! Her heart’s breaking in two. She’s never going to believe in a higher power again… and the stupid thing is it’s no more her fault than the missed interview is. It’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Not getting even a disgusted reply from his companion, he turned around and found that he was alone on the roof. The other angel had vanished.

“Probably just left,” he muttered to himself, unconvincingly.

He felt very cold, very small, and not at all sure of himself.


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