| No. 2 | December 2003 |
WINTER'S REIGN
Winter's troops swept down, blanketing everything in powder, ice, and snow.
The fourth and youngest season watched the world in the grip of his
reclamation. He whipped up a blizzard to keep his brother Spring from
gaining a foothold. Summer lay at his weakest. Autumn still rested from his
own recent reign. The rulers of the Pantheon of Order, Mother Nature and
Father Time, recalled the last time Winter'd done this, and the effort it
took to dethrone him.
The blue-skinned prince stood smiling from his crystal tower, eyes twinkling
every time a set of veins stiffened with the cold.
by C. Dennis Moore
DEPARTURES DAILY
Ever since my parents died when I was seven, wakes have held a
certain attraction for me. I don't even need to know the dearly
departed or the attendant family and friends. Any wake will do.
All the funeral directors recognize me and my wardrobe of four
black dresses. I've even dated a fair number of them, whether
they were available or not. I wasn't interested in the directors
themselves but the access they represented.
My longest continual streak is seven hundred and thirty-two days.
Tomorrow makes seven hundred and thirty-three.
Since I won't travel for more than an hour, sometimes I have to
be a little creative. For example, there is nothing scheduled
anywhere for the day after tomorrow.
I volunteer at a number of hospitals and nursing homes for just
this reason. I figure three will be enough to ensure that I
don't break my streak.
by Stephen D. Rogers
THE VORACIOUS HEAD
Walking in the dark one night, I came upon a human head. As a matter of
common courtesy, I stopped to chat with it.
"I am the head of Randolph Frey, lopped off by the blade of Arthur Arbitage.
Whoever looks upon me must seek vengeance against the one who did this."
The head spoke in a low voice and bore a rather hungry-looking expression. I
was about to follow the head, but it rolled down the street and disappeared
into the fog. I heard it laughing as it went.
I, Westminster the farmer, happened to know the very Arthur Arbitage the
head had named. Arbitage was the father of a young woman I wished to marry.
I had met the head at a particularly low point; my beloved was just then
abroad visiting her aunt. I sorely missed my Lucy; I secretly worried that
while away she might meet another gentleman better suited to her family's
taste than I.
The head's words echoed in my ears. I decided I must seek Arbitage out and
discover why the head had spoken to me.
The grey fingers of fog that had held the night in their hands began to lift
as I opened the gate of the Arbitage manor. I was just making my way to the
door when the head suddenly jumped out of the prickly bushes encircling the
house. "I've arrived ahead of you," it brayed.
We let ourselves in and headed towards Arthur Arbitage's bedroom. The head
rolled itself up the carpeted stairway, skillfully using its tongue to grasp
the edge of each stair, propelling itself upward with a bouncing motion.
Arbitage's bedroom door creaked a bit as we opened it. I heard the rustling
of bed clothes, then Arbitage's voice calling out, "Not again!"
"It is I, " thundered the head.
"I thought we'd settled this once today," Arbitage replied.
I remained silent out of uncertainty.
"You've settled nothing," the head continued. "Pay me what I deserve."
I rolled my hands into fists inside the pockets of my greatcoat. I might
have to swing at the head if it demanded the hand of my Lucy!
"Give me what is mine," the head persisted.
"Oh, all right, whatever," Arbitage said. His hands fumbled a moment as he
searched for a bell on his bedside table and rang for the maid.
Arbitage suddenly noticed me in the doorway. By way of explanation, I
mumbled that I'd met the head on the street and it demanded that I seek its
vengeance.
"Yes, yes, I bet it did," the old man said.
Arbitage's stout maid, Ellen, in the short black dress and stiff apron I had
always seen her in, appeared at the door. She led the head and me out of
Arthur's bedroom and down a dark and winding hallway. Moments later, she
seated us at what seemed an endlessly long and polished dining table in a
room I had never entered on my previous visits to the manor.
Ellen rapidly set forth a full breakfast: bacon, sausage, eggs, toast,
cheese, yogurt, several kinds of marmalade and all the tea the head could
drink.
She motioned me away from the table to the sideboard where she confided the
head's history in a low whisper.
"Once, he was Mr. Arbitage's servant. His cook in fact, years ago, that
is, you know, before. . . One night, he's supposed to be preparing dinner,
a very special one, for Mr. Arbitage's friends. He cooks the dinner, then he
eats almost everything himself. Arthur, Mr. Arbitage, that is, he gets
really angry, see. He takes one of them big cleavers outta the kitchen and
chases him. What do you know, his head pops off, just like that. Oh, since
then, we've tried to get new cooks, but the head rolls in almost every day
and scares them crazy. I do most the cooking myself now. Well, I do simple
things, nothing like what he used to make."
The head interrupted his gorging a moment and smiled at us, rather wickedly,
I thought. Then he burped and started eating again.
"If he don't stop coming 'round here and eating everything, we'll be
ruined." The plump maid put her own head in her hands and wept. I heard
lugubrious chuckling sounds coming from the table.
Prior to this, I had been the sort who weighed his actions back and forth,
back and forth, so much that sometimes I did nothing at all. For the first
time ever, I felt different.
I strode from the room, not even looking to see what Ellen or the head
thought of my impetuous gesture. I marched to Arthur Arbitage's
bedroom—eventually, that is, after getting lost several times in the
serpentine hallways.
I pounded on Arbitage's bedroom door.
"What now?" I heard Arbitage groan.
"It is I, Westminster the farmer," I cried out, then burst into the room.
"I have solved the problem of the voracious head!" I announced.
Arbitage stroked his grey beard and listened to my story.
"I know you are against my suit, for I am but a farmer," I began. "But if
you will only allow me to marry Lucy, I can take the head off your hands.
Why, just think of it! At my farm, there is plentiful food. Acres of apples
and pear trees. The head can spend his days rolling about the grounds eating
the windfalls."
"Westminster," Arbitage replied, his voice full of import. "Damn it! I
wanted better for Lucy! But this head will be my ruin. If you can lead it
away from here, Lucy is yours."
And that is how I wed my beloved Lucy. And it is how it came to pass that
when my love and I went for strolls on the grounds surrounding our house,
we'd often see the head rolling about in nearby fields gorging itself on
fallen apples.
***************************************************************
Ellen Lindquist’s work has appeared in numerous online and
print journals. She was a recent winner of the E2K Net Author Flash Fiction
contest. Her poem, "The Erstwhile Wire-Woman" was nominated for a Pushcart
Prize.
by Ellen Lindquist
BIG SURPRISE!
by Wesley Lambert
MADE IN CHINA
Wesley Lambert has had poetry or fiction published in Hadrosaur Tales, Paradox, Scifaikuest, Outer Darkness, and Astropoetica, just to name a few.
THIS ISSUE OF FLASH FANTASTIC -- "Winter's Reign" is ©2003 by C. Dennis Moore. "Departures Daily" is ©2003 by Stephen D. Rogers. "The Voracious Head" is ©2003 by Ellen Lindquist. "Big Surprise!" is ©2003 by Wesley Lambert. All contents of Flash Fantastic edited by Patty G. Henderson. Final formatting and additional graphics by Nolan B. Canova. All contents of Crazed Fanboy dotcom and Nolan's Pop Culture Review are ©2003 by Nolan B. Canova.