Fantasy magazine

From Modern Mythcraft to Magical Surrealism

Dystopia-Triptych-Banner-2023

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Flash Fiction

Flash Fiction

Mirage-Stories

Dear Jojober, I hope this finds you well, old friend. I write to you from the deserts of Akosa, from a place so dry and far inland that the natives simply laugh at my tales of the sea. They call them eb’yore. Mirage-stories. I am the silly man who speaks in riddles, whose memories are dreams. Ha! If they only knew how true my stories are. If they only knew what kind of man I used to be.

Flash Fiction

How to Make Love to a Ciguapa

1. Wake at dawn. 2. La ciguapa finds you, but you must first pay her homage. Lore dictates she is tucked in the lush mountains of the Dominican Republic. Try the countryside of Constanza, away from the business of the valley below. Follow the crushed line of cliffs set against the horizon.

Flash Fiction

Practical Childcare Considerations for Knights Errant

We were at the mouth of the cave, peering into the darkness that glimmered faintly with the gold of the dragon’s hoard, when my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my leather satchel just far enough to see that it was, in fact, the daycare. My heart sank.

Flash Fiction

isio

it is a windless evening in april/ & night drinks my exhalations /in my palms are corpses of fireflies as i sprawl/ here, my aching back reclined /on the breast/ of a half-timbered wall/ above me, the glorious reincarnations of fireflies /mostly with autopsy reports/ “a child’s curiosity” / to steal into a child’s body/ is to be granted magic/ to breathe in wonder/ it is to want eyes /that mirror gods too perfectly, they flutter by, in bodies of/ butterflies calling you by your poison /beyond the cliff

Flash Fiction

Collecting Ynes

Ynes doesn’t remember the marigold, but she has a recurring dream in which she accidentally swallows an entire tangerine. She grows very warm and realizes it was not a tangerine at all but a small sun. She knows if she tells her mother what she swallowed, there will be a panic. So instead, she keeps her mouth shut. The sun sits warm in her belly and shines tendrils of light down her arms and legs. When rays escape her fingertips, she puts on mittens.

Flash Fiction

I Have Reached Into the Quantum Basket

I HAVE REACHED INTO THE (Quantum) BASKET, SEEN THE THINGS SHOWN, HEARD THE THINGS SAID, KNOWN THE THINGS DONE. (Declaration of Initiates)

Flash Fiction

After Naxos, Ariadne

After Naxos, Ariadne moved to Nicosia and built a new labyrinth online. Here she sits and smiles and buries her bullish secrets: where to buy building permits and apply for trademarks and government grants and benefits. How to join the fire service. Authenticating seafarers. “That way leads to an external labyrinth,” she says pleasantly. “Oh dear, has the roof fallen in? I’ll send someone down to dig it out later.”

Flash Fiction

The Unseen

A city stands on the horizon. It glitters against the hazy background of a desert, enticing you to come near, to relieve yourself from this afternoon heat and revel in the shade of its skyscrapers. You consider it. You’ve considered it for a good portion of your life.

Flash Fiction

Pest Control

There is a mermaid in your fields, fisherman. I saw the signs when I was coming in; its lower jaw was lying unattached, and I could see the deep groove its upper jaw had left as it dragged it along the dirt, ripping wheat out from the ground, no doubt. Here, I have its jaw for your examination. Look at it well. A fine specimen, is it not?

Flash Fiction

The Mirror Test

“The mirror test . . . is a behavioral technique developed in 1970 by American psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. . . . In the classic test, an animal is anaesthetised and then marked (e.g., painted or a sticker attached) on an area of the body the animal cannot normally see. When the animal recovers from the anaesthetic, it is given access to a mirror. If the animal then touches or investigates the mark, it is taken as an indication that the animal perceives the reflected image as itself, rather than of another animal . . . Very few species have passed the test.” – Wikipedia