Two new flash fiction at Wyvern Lit today, including “Feast Your Eyes,” which was a finalist in Wyvern’s first Annual Flash Fiction Contest!

From “Sixteen Golden Staircases”:

“Sixteen golden staircases, sixteen golden staircases she chants, a breathy croon, the soft sibilances snagging on her gappy mix of big-girl and little-girl teeth and escaping like tumbly snarls of spider silk.

Sixteen golden staircases, sixteen golden staircases, as the temperature outside drops by twenty degrees, as rain spatters the panes and the overhead light surrenders to a neurasthenic quiver. If you didn’t know, you’d think it was a coincidence. An accident of the weather, of faulty wiring in this big old house. If you didn’t know…”

From “Feast Your Eyes”:

“Feast your eyes Uncle said. He pushed open the front door and I wobbled out sleep-drunk onto the wooden slats, the porch ringed with rose bushes. He’d woken me out of bed, he’d tied my shoes as my head bobbed, my chin sinking to my chest then jerking back up, again, again. The sky was full of sparkling boats, more than I could have imagined, boats exactly like the ones he’d drawn for me on sheets of graph paper in his little room as I sat on his big knees. Our secret, the tall masts with scarlet sails, curling bows with the heads of wolves. This is why you have black hair, black eyes, like me. This is why you don’t look like your parents he’d said. His boats, silvery-bottomed, in clusters, strewn across the wide night sky. They’ve come back for us…”

Read them both here