Of Angels and Stars
When I went for a walk today, I saw two angels arguing over a rock shaped like a five-pointed star.
The angels were the size of garden gnome figurines, and the star was even smaller. They wore white surgical gowns, wooden shoes, and rubber gloves. The nimbuses around their heads shone pink neon light. That’s how I knew I saw angels and not their evil cousins.
“It fell from the Milky Way,” one of them said in a childish, piping voice. “See, it’s seared.”
“No way. It was born on Earth,” the other said. “Maybe even made. Look how straight the points are. I’d say it’s artificial.”
They turned to me. “What do you think, sir?”
I like being called sir. I didn’t tell them what I thought. I didn’t support either point of view. I took all three home. I collect my cousins, feral angels, and stars. Especially of unknown origins.
First published in Temz Review
A (Somewhat) Sweet Story
Miriam, a sweet girl made of sugar, hated the rain. She was born on a rainy day, and the nurse at the hospital had a hard time pricking her heel for a blood test. At first, they thought Miriam had diabetes, and that clouded her mama’s day, and her milk turned sour.
Mama fed Miriam from the bottle. How sweet of her.
Every time it rained, Mama put on a long, ugly coat, gloves, and waterproof pants on her girl. Kids made fun of Miriam because of that. Worse yet, some water drops got on her face and left ugly spots on her cheeks. Mama had to cover them with a fresh coat of sugar powder, but that didn’t happen until the afternoon, and Miriam had to walk with a pockmarked face all morning.
She was afraid to cry.
When she grew up, she stood under the awning of her favorite bakery, waiting for the rain to pass. A guy stood next to her.
“Why are you afraid of the rain?” he asked.
She shrugged. She wasn’t about to tell her life story to the perfect stranger, though he smelled so good.
“I’m Michael, the chamomile tea guy,” he said. “I’m also afraid of the rain. It dilutes everything.”
“I’m Miriam,” she said, extending her gloved hand. Instead of squeezing it, he kissed it. That was so romantic.
“Have you ever been to the Russian Tea Room?” he asked.
“No, but I’m dying to try bortsch.”
They dined together, and then he said, “We are practically born for each other.”
And she melted in his hands. Perhaps, figuratively.
MOAB
So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim, and the
flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way to the tree of life.
MOAB bomb unleashes a devastating fireball that incinerates and vaporizes anything within 30
feet upon detonation.
After the first year, it was quiet. No one came except for a sabretooth and a few cave bears.
Those were easy: the beasts are afraid of the flames. The son of Seth came, a curious boy; I
drove him off without singeing his eyebrows, unlike I did for Cain. The Flood was a major
inconvenience. Hard to keep the flames under the water. A Moabite or two came. I wanted to tell
them I knew all their dirty laundry, and Lot’s daughters’ tricks, and that ‘Moab’ means “of her
father.” But their hearts melted, and they ran. A Persian and a Macedonian shot arrows at me.
The shafts burned nicely in flight. A Saddam’s soldier tried to drive a tank. I cut off its tracks.
I whistled. I sang hymns. I composed sonnets. I drew lines in the sand.
Even before I was selected for the job, my patience was legendary among the angels. I switched
hands every decade and blinked once in a blue moon.
Now, I see a bomb the size of a whale falling toward me. Humans. Ever inventive.
‘Technologists,’ to coin a word. I raise my sword. If I cut off the whale’s fins, it will fall like a
dud.
First published in Abyss and Apex
Her Time Pieces
Perhaps the girl wasn’t born inside the hourglass. Perhaps someone put her there in the months following her birth. She didn’t know and didn’t care. She remembered the sharp caress of the sand grains on her skin and the strange, mysterious world, dark and brooding, outside the glass. But the world wasn’t too big. Later, she learned that the hourglass was stored inside a cupboard.
By the age of five or so—it was hard to measure time when no one flipped the hourglass—she got transferred into a mechanical pocket watch. That was awful: hot and cramped and nothing to see but cogs, mindless in their workaholic fashion. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. In a few weeks, the girl ended up in a cuckoo clock. Such a relief. Plenty of space, and the cuckoo didn’t bother the girl, but just told her stories of the outside world it observed when announcing the time. The girl loved to hear about the great room in which they lived: lovely picture windows, a square below the windows, a clock tower across with a giant clock that chimed in a solid, confident voice. But she especially liked the stories about the forest in which the cuckoo said it grew before being caught and imprisoned in the clock. The cuckoo told about strange and vicious beasts, squirrels, sparrows, and rabbits, and about the magical Alenky flower that could turn wood, stone, and metal into a living being.
By the age of eighteen, the girl met a boy who lived in the clock tower across the square.
It began one morning when he knocked at her clock. She had never seen a man her size up close. Or any human being that small or that handsome. And he had wings. Even the cuckoo bird had no wings.
“You are lovely,” he said. “You are lovelier than my iPhone.” She didn’t know what an iPhone was, but she enjoyed the sound of his voice. And she blushed.
“My name is Josh. What is your name, pretty lady?”
She curtsied.
She climbed on his back, and he flew her to his tower. She saw a lot of moving hats below and some great beasts Josh called “cars.”
“Promise never to walk across the square,” he said. “Or the pedestrians would crush you underfoot, and the cars run you over.”
She didn’t know what “pedestrians” were and what, if any, they had to do with the moving hats but promised anyway.
He showed her his room, his iPhone, and a closet full of wings of every color. The iPhone looked like a giant mirror, much taller than the girl, but it had pictures in it.
On their wedding night, Josh leaned out to the street and shouted, “I love my wife.” The girl blushed.
He turned around and was hit on the head by the pendulum. “If writing in all caps means shouting, then all lower-case letters are whispering,” he said before expiring. “I love you. The password to the iPhone is tattooed on the palm of my hand.”
The girl decided she had to revive him. She had to find the magical Alenky flower. She attached Josh’s wings but had no idea how to fly. She climbed down the tower wall, crossing the square at night, lest she be run over by cars or crushed underfoot by the mysterious pedestrians.
She climbed up the wall again and ended up in her old cuckoo clock.
“Take me to the forest,” she said to the bird. “I need the magical Alenky flower to revive my husband.”
“But I have no wings,” the cuckoo said. “I can’t fly.”
It had no mouth or eyes, but it omitted those details.
“Try this pair,” the girl said.
The cuckoo attached the wings and flew over the room.
“Yehoo!” it cried.
Then it landed back and said in a bored voice, “They will do.”
“Can we go to the forest now?”
The cuckoo looked away. “Um.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know how to put this to you…There is no magical Alenky flower. That is to say, maybe there is; maybe there is not.”
“What do you mean?” The girl frowned.
The cuckoo’s face turned red, or so it seemed. “Frankly, my dear, I made up the magical Alenky flower. As for squirrels, sparrows, and rabbits, they may or may not be vicious. I’ve never even been to the forest. I’ve spent all my life inside this darn clock.”
The girl sat on the floor and cried. The cuckoo embraced her with its wings.
“There is a way,” it finally said. “I’ve heard of this magician Siri who lives inside the iPhone. If you say, ‘Hey Siri, what’s the best sushi place in town?’ the magician tells you. Whatever ‘sushi’ means.”
The girl jumped up. “Did you say iPhone?”
The cuckoo flew the girl across the square.
Josh was still there on the floor, still dead. The girl took his cold hand. The words “Whisky, Bravo, Tango” were tattooed on his palm. That had to be either the names of his previous loves or his password.
She entered the words into the iPhone, and it lit up. She said, “Siri, how do I revive my husband?”
She expected a fairy to appear, with wings and a white flowing dress and a magic wand, but instead an inhuman but pleasant voice said, “Call 911. I can dial it for you.”
The ambulance came. They took Josh to the hospital, and the doctors attached a new head to him, so he became even more handsome than before.
The couple opened a watch factory in Vietnam and marketed them under the brand name “Watch Your Love.” They put the cuckoo in charge of manufacturing because it could wing anything, and Siri in charge of marketing. The watches were a great commercial success, sold for $19.99 at Walmart and on Amazon. The couple had two twin girls and two boys they named Eeny, Meeny, Miny, and Moe, who were very fond of sushi when they grew up. The couple lived happily ever after, but the mother spent a lot of her precious free time staring at an hourglass, a timeless smile on her still-beautiful face.
First published in Daily Flash Fiction Stories