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.

ST. JOHN’S EVE

June twenty-third. My eighteenth Sankthansaften. Almost to the day, for I was a midsummer baby. Only one day past the full strawberry moon. Its conjunction with the summer solstice happens only once in twenty years. The first time in my whole life, and combined with my first flower ritual, the whole evening held the promise of magic.

Almost the whole village turned out for the annual bonfire. It is the highlight of our year, and the main part of our Saint Hans celebrations. We feasted on fire-roasted meats, summer berries and endless akevitte. Through the endless June evening we sang all the old songs, drank until the sun eventually slipped low in the sky, then the men lit the fire as the midsummer moon rose over the fjord.

Our beacon burned hard and fast. Rushing and roaring, the bonfire blazed high into the star-pierced sky, greedily devouring all the wood we’d been collecting for weeks and spitting out bright embers. The old ones say that the cracks, squeaks and hisses are the dying cries of evil spirits banished in the burning.

 All around Bunnefjorden, silhouettes and shadows flickered against a constellation of fierce fires. Atavistic whoops and howls and yells echoed around the fjord, criss-crossing its surface like interference ripples, while deep beneath the water lay still, cold as corpses.

We are never more alive than in the presence of death, and Sankthansaften is one of the thin nights. We grasp greedily at life – at the feast-meats, strong spirits and warm bodies – whilst we turn faces from that barely-veiled Other Place, only half-jokingly whispering promises and prayers to almost-forgotten forebears through a door briefly ajar.

In all the commotion, nobody noticed me as I slipped away.

As the sky lightened and the shortest night fled, I lay down to dream of my future husband. In silence and a maiden’s gown of fine white linen, I tucked my flower posy beneath my pillow, drifting into sleep blanketed by the sweetly anise scent of crushed fennel, one of the seven sorts the ceremony calls for.

 

. . .My vision clears, and I am standing at the fjord’s edge. I spy an old man with hazy blue eyes.

‘Welcome home, Daughter. I have been waiting for you.’

As is the way in dreams, I know he is my father, though he isn’t Pappa.

‘Beloved child, our time is short – this magical night is almost at its close. Ask your question, and you will have your answer.’

‘Father, who will I marry?’

‘This is your dream, child.’ He holds a bowl of polished obsidian, filled with swirling, iridescent water. ‘Look into the scrying skål, Freya, daughter of Njörd. Tell me what you see, I command you.’

The air reeks of ozone, lightning charged up ready to strike, and the wind rises shrieking, whipping my hair into wild knots and tangles. I stare down into the bowl, watching fascinated as the rainbow streaks move themselves purposefully into shapes. And I see. . .

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

COMMUTER SPECIAL

I was running for the bus.

I waved frantically and yelled ‘Stop!’ as my legs kept pumping. The driver took pity on me, and the silver beast lurched to a halt. The doors hissed open, and she smiled down at me.

‘Thanks,’ I panted.

‘No problem,’ she replied. ‘Climb aboard.’

‘Climb aboard? So… I’m invited in?’

‘Sure. Why wouldn’t you-’ The driver froze, eyes widening in horror.

Too late! I leapt aboard and sank my teeth into her neck.

The air was suddenly dense with screams. Good. Let the passengers’ adrenaline provide a little seasoning.

I liked to eat my breakfast on the go.

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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 FIRE BURNING BRIGHT

Another burned down house — piles of ash, deformed steel bars protruding from the walls like mocking ghosts.  The people who lived were dead — asphyxiated while asleep, charred, baring half-cooked flesh and bone.  Five of them there were — three adults, a boy and a girl — all disfigured, asymmetric, as though eaten up by a monster and then discarded.

“Back soon,” Constable Lara Smith conveyed to her deputy and walked out, vomited by the soot-filled wall.  Even the grass was black.  The tree by the window was a half-burned post pointing right to hell. 

Lara had seen corpses before.  For twenty years she had been in the business.  But that girl’s body — the only finger covered with skin, the pink nail, and the one eye exposed into a ball with an azure circle of the sky — made her feel sick in her bones.

Lara felt dizzy and slowly walked along the periphery of the house.  The backyard opened into a wild area where tall trees still stood, and she needed to see the greens, eye a living bird perched upon a bough.

The sky, though, was gloomy, as if the smoke had painted it with obscurity.  The shadowy trees looked more like a world now shrouded.  “Why’s smoke still lingering?” she felt angry.  “Smells of death.” 

“This place is bad!” She whispered. Could she not just get sick? Take off? Just once in her life?  She inhaled the pungent air slowly and sat down at a corner.  Bricks marked flower beds nearby, but only heaves of ash lay strewn across the soil.  “Maybe I will call sick,” she pushed upon the ground, attempting to get back up. 

That’s when she saw the rose.  Deep red, velvety, emanating a subtle aroma of sweetness.  A single plant, green, healthy — proclaiming life.

She brought the rose back to her apartment and put it in a crystal vase.  At night, she stared at it as she forked in pasta that still smelled of death.  Maybe she was getting a fever too.  The room felt hot, and she saw tiny flashes of light — red, blue, gold.

The doctor’s appointment was at nine AM.  It was at one AM, that the little creatures crawled out from the depths of the flower where the petals curled in.  They were a few inches tall, deep blue and with dazzling eyes burning with the fire of ancient sins.  They danced about the room and painted it with light as Lara saw glowing trees in her fevered trance.

At two AM, the creatures circled her and sang, and then they shot up to the curtains, buzzing, heating up the room with incandescent rhythms.

The curtains burned first, and then the papers, and then there was an explosion.  The rose stood still, unharmed, but stuck between two beams.

The eighth unsolved arson!  This one took down the entire apartment building.

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

RED BLOSSOMS

They heard the news and came to dance.

At first, disbelief flowed behind the initial news like a wave, spreading from tree to tree in whispers of leaf and branch: The humans of Key West wish to honor us! Disbelief because so many of their sisters, cousins, and other relatives had perished at the hands of the magic-blind two-leggeds, lives cut mercilessly short, bodies turned into everything from housing to furniture to sawdust and toothpicks. This one’s elder aunt died so that a family from Miami could have their “dream home.” That one’s grandmother gave way to a wider path for the humans’ smelly, deadly vehicles. Dryads could do little to stop the carnage. They raged and mourned impotently.

Yet with disbelief came hope, that perhaps some among the humans might be learning to see the spaces between the spaces, the sacred within the sacred, the liminal glitters that often only appear elusively out of the corner of one’s eye. That perhaps some among them might learn to honor those who came before and take their proper places in the dance of all beings.

In the name of that hope they came, stepping cautiously from their trees, some for the first time ever. Making their careful way from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, they arrived at the party.

And saw that it was true! Humans wore the red flowers of the poinciana for decoration, and were raising money—that funny leaflike stuff that no dryad ever truly understood—to help preserve at least that lineage. It was at least a beginning.

The dryads came, mingled, and danced, in gowns woven from starlight and tree bark, wearing garlands and headdresses made from their leaves and flowers. A discerning eye might observe that not all of the magical beings were poincianas. Scattered amongst them like flowers in a hurricane were gumbo limbo, mangrove, and the occasional palm with hair spikes sticking out almost randomly. Each person they danced with seemed to step a bit more easily afterward, with a light like leaf-dappled sun in their eyes. None knew who these unearthly, uninvited beings were, but a bit of don’t look here magic kept questions from being asked.

So many humans were also clad in flowers and greenery that even a discerning eye might have had difficulty telling the difference between dryad and human. Such was the magic of the evening.

When the music and festivities ended, the dryads took their quiet leave, and departed back to their trees, leaving the blessings of root, branch, and flower in their wake. Planting seeds of art, music, compassion, of bountiful harvests, and of future dances in the minds and hearts of the gathered attendees.

Many of whom found unexpected scatterings of red poinciana blossoms outside their homes later that night, and for days to come.

 

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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 HUNT

“We do the same thing every time,” Cullen complained, kicking at a tuft of grass, his ruffled wheatsheaf hair bouncing. “We never find anything new.”

Alden pulled the leather-bound book from his pack. “Make yourself busy, young master,” he said, handing the book to the boy. Sighing, Cullen pulled out a piece of charcoal from his pocket and began a fresh tally, each black mark representing one of the dozens of charred bodies strewn across the frost-glazed field.

“I still think it’s a dragon,” he remarked.

Alden shook his head. Thin strands of silver glinted in the dusk light amongst the rest of his rugged hair. “Unlikely.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it is unlikely.” He drew a few long, deep breaths in through his nose, searching the frigid, smoke-laden air for an alien scent.

“We’re no closer to finding out what it is, are we?”

Alden dropped to his knees, deftly examining the grass with his fingertips. But there was nothing: no hint of footprints, claw marks, hoof marks…anything.

“No,” he admitted.

Cullen flapped his arms at his sides, his tan cloak, about a foot too long, twirling about his slender figure. “People couldn’t have done this…could they?”

Alden climbed to his feet, his face betraying a hint of amusement. “I don’t believe so.”

“Not even a group of people?”

“Not even a group.”

“Besides, we would have surely encountered this band of mad, fire-wielding humans by now!”

“Ah, Tristan,” Alden hailed. “I was beginning to wonder of your whereabouts.”

Cullen stiffened as Tristan approached, grass crunching under his leather boots, a wry grin spread across his face. He surveyed the smoking remains keenly before bending down to the ground, his pale leggings blending with the iced grass.

“As with your dragon,” Tristan continued, “I know of no mere human that can burn every inch of skin on a man’s body, yet spare their clothing.” He tugged on a dead soldier’s helm. The scalp separated from the skull with a thick, elastic slurp, like fat peeling from meat.

“Neither armour nor clothing has suffered even the slightest mark, yet the flesh beneath is melted,” he declared, examining the oozing mess of red and yellow welded to the metal. “It’s impressive.”

Tossing the helm aside, Tristan rose to his feet, brushing the frost from his knees. He stepped back, surveying the expanse of green and red. “No, young master – no human could have accomplished this.”

Cullen watched Tristan intently, noticing the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth. The flash of amber that ringed his green irises for the briefest of moments. The saliva that slicked his lips.

Heart racing and stomach pitting, he recalled the fables he’d been told in his childhood of demons disguised as companions, of the subtle signs of such deceptions oft overlooked by grown men distracted by the demands of everyday toils.

Tristan switched his gaze to Cullen, eyes flashing in the fading light. “What’s your second-best guess?” he asked, grinning.

 

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

FREEDOM FOR FAIRIES

Buzzing bees, rushing water, and the sweet fragrance of wildflowers. Another perfect sunny day in the Forest of Fairies.

As Kaya flew around, a loud boom startled her. She watched a dark shadow approach. A human.

“I know you’re in here, little fairies,” he said. “My device picked up your signatures. Come out—I have a task for you!”

Caught by humans. Kaya feared this day would come. She turned toward the forest, yelling, “Run!”

Using tweezers, the human caught Kaya between them before she could fly away. “Got you!”

She wiggled and squirmed, but the tweezers wouldn’t let her go. She watched, wide-eyed in horror as the human caught all the fairies, then took them back to his lair. An abandoned castle that resembled a science lab.

“You will be my servants now,” he explained. “You will cook, clean, and entertain me while I invent something great for humanity. The council of scientists said my experiments were too violent and rejected me, but I’ll show them. Then everyone will know the name Christopher Carver!”

“And if we refuse?” Kaya squeaked.

“You won’t.” He tied each fairy with string, ensuring they could move around the castle but not escape. “The string is too strong for your tiny hands to break. You’re here forever.”

As the days passed, Kaya believed it. Fairies kept the castle spotless while Dr. Carver worked. Sometimes, his experiments would even include the fairies themselves. He turned to Kaya with a wide grin.

“You—come here. I want to see what happens if I pluck those wings of yours.”

“No!” Kaya cried. “Stay away from me!”

Dr. Carver growled, grabbing the string she was attached to a little too hard. It snapped, leaving her with one thought. I’m free.

She flew out of the castle, faster than Dr. Carver. The forest greeted her back. But as she relaxed on a branch, there was no one there.

“It’d be safer to stay here where I’m free,” she murmured, “but what’s freedom if I’m alone?”

And so Kaya armed herself with weapons from the forest—pine needles, wasp stingers, and flowers. She flew back to the castle and squirted the flower’s nectar into Dr. Carver’s eye when he opened the door. He cried in pain as she used the pine needles to break the strings holding each fairy.

“Kaya!” one cried. “You came back!”

“Of course,” she said. “No one can be free until everyone’s free. Now, come on!”

As Dr. Carver chased them, Kaya fired off the wasp stingers at him. His hands and face swelled like balloons. “No…I’m allergic!”

“That’ll teach you not to take what isn’t yours!” Kaya yelled back. “Fairies, follow me!”

When they’d made it back to the forest, they threw a party in Kaya’s name to celebrate her courage. The mad scientist never bothered them again. But just in case, Kaya laid out a trap of sticky honey to slow him down.

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

SKIN GATE

The job site was the dirty basement of a rundown building. A few single bulbs hung from the wooden rafters, illuminating spider webs and dark crevices where I’m sure spiders lurked and stared out at me with unhinged hatred.

HR said my sponsor, Jimmy, would be down there to show me the ropes of the job, whatever that entailed. The job description was pretty sparse.

A wiry fellow sat on a stool with his back to me, doing something with a patchwork quilt that covered a hole in the concrete wall. I cleared my throat.

He looked over at me with wide, crazed eyes. Put a finger over his mouth and motioned me to the empty stool next to him.

I sat. “Hey man, I’m Adam.”

“Jimmy.” I looked at his hands. He threaded a needle through the squishy quilt on the wall with desperate speed.

“What is that?”

He stopped, his eyes darted to me.

“Flesh.”

My face twisted up as I touched the wall. The small hairs on the warm skin prickled my hand. My own skin crawled as I jerked away and tumbled backwards.

He shook his head. “Let me guess, they didn’t tell you what we’re doing here?”

It took me a minute to find my words. “The job listing just said they needed people good at sewing. I did some of that in the Army.”

He choked a laugh. “Fucking management. It’s a tunnel, a place where our world and the other place come together.”

I’m sure he saw the confusion on my face.

“Look, we don’t have a lot of time, just put your ear to it and listen. You’ll see.”

He went back to sewing.

I hesitated. What a weird situation. The flesh-like wall unnerved me. I thought about walking out, but my wife gave me an ultimatum. I needed to hold down this job, make ends meet.

I leaned forward and cringed as I placed my ear against the creepy flesh wall. I listened. Part of me wondered if this was some sort of hazing.

Then I heard the screams. Screams I’ve never heard before, like tormented souls, guttural screams from the very bottom of people’s lungs, thousands, millions, trillions of screams.

The cacophony of hell.

Every hair on my body prickled. I pulled my ear away, mouth agape.

Jimmy stopped sewing and looked over at me. “Now, you can go apeshit like the last few they’ve sent me and run out of here with your dick between your legs or,” he holds out a second needle and thread. “You can help me. Flesh keeps us in, and them out.”

I stared at the needle, the screams still rattled in my skull. I never knew terrors like this were possible, not in reality. What would people do if they knew reality’s veil was held by a thin screen of flesh?

I took the needle from Jimmy and helped him keep the nightmares out.

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

OF ROSES AND RUIN

The castle loomed, its stones surrounded by ivy and rust. She crossed the threshold, not for love or hunger—but for freedom, for power whispered in every shadowy hall. The Beast watched, eyes molten with rage and longing, his curse a crown of teeth and sorrow.

She did not fear him. She feared only the mirror he held up, showing what she might become if she stayed. Yet when his claw brushed her throat, she leaned in, tasting the rot of roses, the promise of ruin.

Love was never the cure. Love was the contagion. And she welcomed the infection.

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!

 

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.

FATED

She was his, in a way no one else could touch. Not because he owned her, but because he understood her completely. Every flicker of fear, every sly defiance, and every laugh that barely hid the scars—he had seen them all. Still, he had stayed. The world could push, it could threaten… could even try to take her away from him, but it would never work. He was her anchor, her steady in the chaos she pretended didn’t exist. And when she let him close, let him in, it wasn’t possession. It was trust. Sacred, unshakable, and entirely his.

If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.

AVAILABLE HERE!