Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.
With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.
THE BIRTHDAY GIFT
The little girl with the fly away brown hair and sea foam green eyes in the faded pink dress that smells faintly of mold, with the hem hanging down, waits for Carmine’s mother to invite her in. It’s his birthday, and all the children in her class have been invited except her.
The laughing boys and girls file into the house, creating a breeze as they skip past the girl armed with gaily wrapped gifts.
Their classmate brought a gift too. It’s a pile of black jellybeans wrapped in tin foil decorated with pictures of dragons, painted in her own blood.
Carmine’s mother appears at the door. Her face heavily made up, not a hair out of place, her eyes black as basalt. She smells of an expensive perfume and the odor of disdain. Her face is set in a false smile, which gives the girl momentary hope, until she sees the paper plate.
On it is a slice of cake and ice cream. She offers it to the girl who tries to give her the gift and join the others. They will ignore her or torment her as they always do, but she is desperate to be included. The woman offers the plate of cake and ice cream again. Resigned, the girl drops her gift and accepts the plate. Carmine’s mother returns inside and shuts the door in her face.
The little girl doesn’t notice the tiny, opalescent dragon crouched on the red clay tiles of the roof.
She sits on Carmine’s step and listens to the music and laughter floating out of the window. It feels like the tentacles of a sea monster squeezing her insides as she eats the cake and ice cream, which has no taste.
When she’s done, the girl drops the soggy plate and white, plastic spoon on the ground. She stands. Tears in her eyes, there is rage and grief in her heart. She rips the gift she brought for the boy into tiny pieces.
The little dragon on the roof understands her pain. He won’t get any bigger. The other dragons make fun of him and won’t let him hunt with them. He reaches under his wing for a pouch of fairy dust he stole from a fae and sprinkles it on the little girl.
As the silver dust falls like snow upon the girl’s head, she inhales lilacs, honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass. The birds call to her to join them.
Pointed ears poke through her tangled, soft brown hair. Gold and silver wings burst through the girl’s back and flutters in the breeze.
A miniature dragon flies down and enters the party through the open window. She hears him roar, and the room bursts into a raging inferno as he flies out and beckons to her.
The new, little fey smiles with delight, claps her hands and flies off with the dragon. The screams of the victims as they race to escape are like peppermint patties and licorice sticks.
Roxanne Dent has sold nine novels, dozens of short stories, flash fiction, novellas, drabbles and an E-Zine in a variety of genres including Horror, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Steampunk, Mystery, Regencies, Westerns and Middle Grade. She has also co-authored short stories and plays with her sister, Karen Dent. One of their plays, Young at Heart, won the Newbie Award for Best One Act, at the Firehouse Theater in Newburyport, MA. She just finished Book II of “The Grimaldi Chronicles,” a Fantasy/horror trilogy and is currently writing a YA prequel “The Boy in the Green High Tops.”
If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash anthology.
Iron Faerie Publishing 