Issue 5 February 2014 Flash Fiction Online February 2014

During the month of February, dreamy-eyed girls often dot their I’s with little hearts, flower shops are overrun with frantic husbands, chocolates come in heart-shaped boxes, romance is everywhere, we hope, for everyone who wants it.  All thanks to St. Valentine who, I suspect, would not have recognized the day that bears his name.

But love is more than chocolates and flowers and dinner dates and passionate love affairs.

Bruce Lee (Yes, THAT Bruce Lee) said this:

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire.  In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering.  As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”

Exactly.  

Consider “The Faerie and the Knight on Valentine’s Day” by Izabella Grace.  Old love.  Very old love.  Timeless love in modern-day London where the ancient Faerie and the aging Sir Magvelyn meet in the moonlight.

Also, “Love in the Time of Cthulhu” by Gary B. Phillips, in which Cassandra, a hopeful-virgin-sacrifice-speed-dater, knows just what to say to end up with the man, er, thing, of her dreams.

And from Matt Mikalatos, “Pranked by a Pixie” in which workaholic television producer, Grissom, gambles his reputation and his life on the promises of a faerie.

Enjoy!

I meet Sir Magvelyn at dusk in a north London park to exchange gifts. The damp, frosty air makes my seven-hundred-year-old bones ache, but I hide my discomfort, and reach up to brush grey strands of hair from his wrinkled brow. He greets me with a tender kiss, then we sit on a metal bench covered in swirls of graffiti beneath a slivered moon.

I give him my wings, folded into creamy-white, tissue paper, because, I tell him, his love lifts me high enough, and his old, grey eyes twinkle. He opens the scarlet, quilted box, and runs his gnarled fingers over the shimmering wings. I study his age-weathered face, but, apart from a slight twitch of his thin lips, he gives no sign that he knows they are fake. My real wings are tucked away at home in our carved, oak wardrobe. These ones are made from chicken wire and gauze with a glimmer spell cast over them.

Magvelyn slides back the lid onto the box, and twists one of my greying curls around his calloused, index finger. Then he reaches into his parka pocket and pulls out a small package of crinkly, brown paper tied up with string. I raise an eyebrow, tear it open, and out falls a huge, white tooth, sharp as a silver dagger.

“A dragon’s tooth,” he says. “I plucked it from the fire-breather’s jaw–just for you.”

His breath smells of beef crisps and cheap beer, and I should scold him, because he has obviously been to the pub. How many times have I told him that my magic will only slow aging for so long? I worry about his heart, but he refuses to watch his diet. “I’m five hundred and thirty three,” he always says. “That’s a mighty stretch for any man, and I’d rather die happy with a bacon roll in my belly than live miserably on boiled chicken and rocket salad.”

I sigh, snuggle closer to him, and watch human children playing football on the frosted, sodium-vapour-lit grass. Then I ask Magvelyn about his dragon hunt, and he tells me how a band of robbers tried to knock him from his saddle in the dark, Elm Forest, but he hacked off their ugly, bearded heads with his glittering sword. His voice changes as he describes it: he sounds younger, stronger and happy.

In the haunted marsh, he says, he saw the bloated faces of the dead beneath the water’s muddy surface, and they called to him like sirens. His white mare frothed and rolled her eyes, but he soothed her with a faerie ballad, and led her across the treacherous ground to safety. Then he reached the Purple Mountain, which spiked, sharp as my dragon’s tooth, high up into the dark, rainy sky, and lightning split the earth as he climbed the narrow, crumbling path through Dead Man’s Gorge.

Sir Magvelyn heard the dragon long before he saw her: the ground shook with her snores. Boulders tipped down the mountainside, uprooting trees, and, as he approached, stones leapt and danced on the scorched grass. The stink of half-eaten human carcasses made him retch. The deafening, earthquake-rumble lodged like an axe in his head, and fear nibbled at his bones. But he refused to turn back. Gripping his sword, he crept closer and closer to certain death.

Then the dragon cracked open her yellow eyes. And raised her gargantuan head. When Magvelyn threw the blade, it flew like an arrow and thumped into her throat. She died coughing fire.

“It was like stepping into hell,” he says.

“Then you should’ve run.”

“But I wanted a tooth.” He smiles. “For you.”

I plant a kiss on his icy, unshaven cheek, and cast a glow spell to warm us, which I regret instantly, because the effort makes my gums ache and the tips of my fingers go numb. Casting drains me more than it should these days–I even lost a tooth after I glimmered those wings–but I keep it from Magvelyn. He’d just try to stop me doing his anti-aging spells if he knew.

Before we leave the park, I hang the bone-white tooth on a piece of brown leather, and tie it around my neck. I saw Magvelyn buying it from a bric-a-brac stall in the goblins’ market last month, and goblins are renowned for selling fake curios, but I don’t care about its authenticity. My need for cold, hard facts has faded with age, like my eyesight and the rich auburn in my hair. The mind creates a colorful enough reality, I’ve found, and love always forges a much sweeter version of the truth.

Izabella Grace

Izabella Grace hails from London, but lives in rural Ireland with her partner and two very naughty cats. She wrote “the Faerie and the Knight on Valentine’s Day” with her late grandfather’s fountain pen. The story was inspired by traditional fairytales, Arthurian myth and the Carol Ann Duffy poem “Valentine”.

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“One final question, Cassandra. Why do you deserve to be sacrificed to the great Yog-Sothoth?”

The candle on the table flickered as she studied the hooded man’s dark eyes and considered her answer. She hated when the elder gods sent a proxy. How hard was it to show up for themselves? It made her feel so… unattractive.

But of course, it was a trick question. No mere mortal deserves such eternal pleasure. Only through the sheer chaos of the universe is anyone worthy to be gazed upon by him. Or it. Do elder gods even have genitalia? Cassandra had never considered that question before. Maybe she could ask later.

“He is the gate, the key, and the guardian,” she said. And those eyes.

A subtle smile crossed the man’s lips.

Nailed it.

The bell chimed and thirty chairs screeched across the linoleum floor. The hooded man rose from his seat and bowed to her.

“Ia! Ia! Yog-Sothoth fhtagn,” he said.

She held up three fingers, emulating the points of the elder sign.

Sam, may the elder gods rest her soul, had always told Cassandra that dating was the most dangerous game. She was thankful that Sam had not lived to see the day that the beasts rose from the sea and came from the stars. When the moon was always gibbous, as if hidden in the shadow of a great monstrosity.

It was only men on the prowl back then, and relatively easy to avoid the monsters that only had one thing on their mind. Cassandra knew she could count her lucky stars if these monsters only had that one thing on their mind. Or minds. Hive-mind?

Something squirmed at the next table. She sat down and scooted her chair as far back as possible without being too obvious. A mass of tentacles swarmed in the chair across from her. Each time one of the tentacles hit the table, it made a nasty squelching sound when the little sucker unhinged itself. Cassandra’s breath quickened in her throat as a single scaled tentacle slid across the table and coiled around her breast. It squeezed with a surprising gentleness.

I hate tentacles.

She closed her eyes, fighting back tears, willing herself not to grab a dinner knife and lop it off. The tentacle or the breast, it didn’t matter which.

She waited out the rest of the time in an awkward silence. The bell chimed and she exhaled. Thirty chairs screeched again and she moved to the next suitor.

“My name is Cassandra. It’s a pleasure to meet you-“

You would not be able to say my name.

It spoke without words.

“Hang on, I’m pretty good with these names. Cah-thu-loo. Wait, no- Coo-too-luh. No, hang on-“

It laughed, a sound like static rising and falling in the void of space. The thing told her its name. Just hearing it — sensing it — made her feel intoxicated. Her world swam.

This was a good trip. I could get used to this. And the sex is probably out of this world. Literally.

It spoke again, in her mind.

I offer you the first dream.

“What is the first dream?”

Your death in me.

It was a tempting offer.

“I’m sorry. I’m looking for something a little less,” she considered her choice of words. “Final.”

The last bell rang and it was all over. Now the wait began. The bachelorettes mingled, drinking deeply from their glasses. The tentacled god approached Cassandra and attempted to make small talk, or in this case, small squelches. Cassandra affixed her empty glass to one of its suckers.

“Go get me another,” she said.

It writhed over to the bar, looking like a squid-cum-waiter trying to ever-so-carefully balance the wine glass. Upon reaching the bar, it lost its balance and dropped the glass, shattering it. Every eye (including The Great Eye) turned toward the quivering tentacle god and stared.

It slinked away forlornly and in that moment she almost pitied it. It was awkward.

The results were tallied and names were read from the list. Most of the girls vomited or fainted when their names were called and had to be carried out.

“Rookie!” Cassandra shouted when the last girl was dragged away by the tentacled abomination. She was happy that it had found someone. Especially because it wasn’t her.

She was the last human left. Two elder gods remained. One would be going home alone tonight.

“Cassandra and…”

Please not Nyarlathotep, the black pharaoh that waits in the moonlight. Please not Nyarlathotep, the black pharaoh that waits in the moonlight. Please not Nyarla-

“Yog-Sothoth!”

She couldn’t help herself and squealed like a fan-girl. It’s not every day that your elder-god-crush reciprocates!

They prepared her by removing her clothes, shaving her head and bathing her. Then they led her into a dark room. Her high heels echoed on the floor, sounding sepulchral.

Something moved in the darkness and her heart fluttered.