Grim Fantasy

ALL FEMALE MENU

GRIM OCTAVIA INSPIRED

NOVEMBER 2020

FANTASY FLASH

BUTLER ISSUE

In Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler writes: Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.

The 10 pieces in this collection were curated in response to the following prompt: For the next three hours, we ask you to submit micro-poetry and -fiction in the spirit of Octavia Butler. Let your writing dip into Halloween-inspired horrors and brief but bold science-fiction universes you’ve been waiting to publish. Send us 1-6 lines that explore this topic.

GRIEF You can forget for a moment, but then, between breaths— the coffee wafting, the birds chirping— you remember he’s gone.

Raise him from the dead over and over, memory staggering back, begging for slaughter.

GAIA RAJAN Twitter -- @gaia_writes Instagram -- @gaiarajan

WHEN THEY LIE AND JUSTICE BELIEVES THEM if i close my eyes i can see the sneer on his face as he claimed insanity and got off starving his dogs to death VIC NOGAY Twitter -- @vicnogay Instagram -- @ohiov

WE ROT FOR NOTHING I am sick of all the perfume and delicate mannerisms.

I have death in my nostrils and char to pick from my teeth.

Worse still, we are not even allowed to become compost in the end.

MEGAN NICHOLS Twitter -- @mgnchols Instagram -- @megjnic

AN APPEAL TO THE CLOCK time passes as it always does in the rhythm i pretend to know so i continue at this same speed— to await for time to mourn for time the way it never will for me MARIAH Twitter -- @theeldercap Instagram -- @theeldercap

SEARCHING FOR REASON It is not the star cracked spine of the girl lying face down in the still warm water of Arcadia Bay that causes Reason to slip her own drying skin beneath wet skin and flesh, and adorn this girls body like a coat.

Nor is it the yellow-white hair splayed like a halo between fossilised seashells, and the hulking body of a two limbed crab with a goldfish tail.

It is the curve of her throat, her jaw, her shoulder, that reminds her of the days before the sky had split in two, and Earth had split like an egg so that half the world remained awake, and half the world remained asleep and dreaming.

NATASCHA GRAHAM Twitter -- @SomeOfHerParts Instagram -- @Vitaswoolf

YOU You really are trying to kill me, aren’t you? sending me to live in a lion’s den selling me the tools to hide my scars I pay my dues I play the enemy -but I did not invent this game LUCIA LARSEN Twitter -- @mslucialarsen Instagram -- @lucialarsen

WICKED TRICKS “When your rage is choking you, it’s best to stay quiet” - Octavia Butler A wicked trick of light revealed an eerie patch of wall which morphed into faces of twisted, silent screams.

Choking on her rage she knew to remain silent.

LORI GRAHAM Twitter -- @wanderingpoetUK Instagram -- @lorikan

FAILURE TO ASCEND The announcement brought the news she had dreaded. She had failed, again. Her options were the same as the last two cycles: do another turn on Earth, in this skin, with this pollution and destruction, or she could agree to depart. No one of her designation had taken so long to move on to Mars before, most didn’t fail until at least Jupiter. She sighed, steeling herself for one more attempt at humanity, then pushed the “Repeat” button and waited to be born.

SUSAN WARDLAW Twitter -- @suze_wardlaw

LONELINESS Probing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. We searched galaxies until we accepted our solitude, and instead, took upon the mantle of missionaries, shepherds of breath. To the thousands of microbes we had discovered, we granted the gift of life: division.

REBECCA RUVINSKY Twitter -- @writeruvinsky

SUMMER, 2073 We were not ready.

Ashes drifted like snow when cities and forests burned, and coasts vanished under choking seas.

We were not ready.

We did not listen.

ALISON BAINBRIDGE Twitter -- @ally_bainbridge

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