Fantasy

Welcome, you have reached the home—still, barely—of Morgan Delaney, writer of dark, strange and fantastic fiction.

He is fading fast, but reading the following piece of flash fiction may keep him going a little longer.

Read on!

“Listen!” said the author. The word sliced through the pitch black of the room we all sat in.

Through the walls came the sound of someone asking for a book. It was the wrong book, for the author gave a sob as the cash register rang and footsteps receded.

I was more worried that I didn’t know if I was sitting in the dark, because I didn’t have hands to check whether my eyes were open or closed.

I hadn’t been there long, and the author was the only one who would talk to me, though lots of other people were close by, muttering to themselves or each other.

“Statistically,” he said after a pause. “Statistically, someone has to order one of my books eventually. I wrote more than a dozen, so at some point… Don’t worry!” He said that last bit as if to soothe me.

He had already explained his theory that this was Purgatory. All it would take was one reader ordering one dead author’s book for that author to get into heaven. The word “statistically” seemed to comfort him, though I was sure his reasoning was faulty.

“But how many books did you sell? When you are alive?” I hated having to ask the question. Thinking about death gave me a queasy feeling where my stomach used to be, though I was sure that I was still alive: I had merely bumped my head while gardening.

“Ah!” he said mysteriously, as if I could never hope to understand his sales, not if I stayed in Author Purgatory for eternity. I decided it meant he hadn’t sold many.

Some of the other authors must have been listening, for they sniffed at my question, as if to say, “you can’t measure literature by sales!”

I had put together a booklet of dreadful poems while at school, which is presumably why I was here. I would never have called myself as an author, though, and certainly couldn’t expect to hear anyone request a copy of… what had it been called? Paper Blooms? Something like that.

If I had thought about it, I might have assumed that being trapped with serious authors for eternity would at least be interesting. All these great minds. Deep thinkers, interested in exploring the human condition and trained in expressing their thoughts with precision and grace. But the conversation always returned to sales.

“If I’d known, I would have bought one of your books. Before I—“

“Listen!” said the author. The bell tinkled through the walls and footsteps made their way to the counter next door to make their next request.

I hope you enjoyed that?

If not, perhaps you’ll enjoy this: it’s an old video, but new to me, and the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.

And if you’re a subscriber, make sure you check out my newsletter this Saturday, as it’s got news of an important update for you!

We’re still in Berlin, but I’ve been thinking about a walk I took a couple of weeks ago while I was in Ireland. An odd thing happened.

Let me tell you about it in this week’s flash fiction.

I did a double take when I walked through the rainbow. They’re always far away, aren’t they?

Turns out, they’re not, they’re just a lot smaller than everyone thinks.

This one was barely 6 foot high at its zenith, meaning my head passed through the violet and indigo bands.

Pretty amazing.

But rainbow or not, it was pissing rain, so I left my phone in my pocket, rather than risking a selfie and drowning the poor thing.

That must be why you don’t see pictures of small rainbows. It all makes sense when you think about it.

Things were different on the other side of it, though.

I didn’t notice at first because of all the rain everywhere, but I realised that someone—something—was following me in the field beside the road.

When I moved, it moved. When I stopped, it stopped. My first thought was leprechauns because I couldn’t see what it was, so it had to be small (and, you know, the rainbow).

I waited where I was for a while, then started walking again, keeping my eyes on where I had thought I’d seen something. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, because other than the rain twitching the grass, all I could see was spots of grass being flattened as if the invisible man were strolling through the field beside me.

The next thing was that I realised I wasn’t getting wet, despite the rain. I was freezing and getting colder with every step, but apparently untouched by the rain.

It had to have something to do with the rainbow, so I turned around to make sure it was still there and wasn’t also following me.

It was still where I’d passed through it, but there was something else, too.

On the ground, equally distant from it in the other direction, was a shadow.

I looked at my feet to confirm my suspicion. It was my shadow.

That’s when it made sense to me. I hadn’t passed into some other world where leprechauns were stalking me. There was no otherworldly nonsense. I’d been reflected and refracted, that was all. Split into my component parts and spat out again.

I felt cold because one part of me was gaining altitude as the rainbow reflected some of me upwards. I was dry because another part was travelling further down into the ground with every step I took.

There was no invisible man in the field. It was the weight of my own footsteps, which had been displaced from my actual body, which was flattening the grass.

The shadow was refracted to travel in the opposite direction. I just needed to go back through the rainbow to be whole again.

I started running towards it, hoping to crash into my shadow as it, in turn, raced towards me.

The rain was stopping, and the rainbow was getting small and fainter.

I ran faster, accompanied by the sound of my footsteps from the empty field.

In other news this week, German punk-post-punks, Joseph Boys, have announced their new album will be out in August. The first single will be released tomorrow. Check it out!

Did you know that fairy tales are sometimes allegories?

Well, did you know that sometimes they’re just straight up lies?

Welcome to this week’s fantasy flash fiction!

“Yeah, that’s one hell of a beanstalk,” said Grandpa Jack, as we took him on a tour of the garden before dinner. “But it’s nothing like the one I climbed.”

We groaned. We all knew the story. Grandpa told it whenever he came to visit.

The weather was mild, and it looked like he was just going to tell it again, right here, with the sound of a distant lawnmower floating in the air, but the words caught in his throat and his frame jerked as coughs wracked his body. His hand was bloody when he took it away from his mouth.

“Time to tell you what really happened up there,” he said, after we’d made him comfortable in the big armchair, and soothed his throat with a glass of milk.

“Most of the story is true and you know it,“ he said. “I never understood how I got away with the bit I lied about. We were poor in those days. Everybody was. That’s how I had nothing to lose. Not in this life.” He coughed. “As for what happens next, well, we’ll see.”

“Stealing’s not so bad,” I said. “Not when you have to, to survive.” That was something my family all believed, having profited from Jack’s adventures as a young man.

“No,” he said. “But there’s stealing, and there’s stealing. That’s why I said I stole from a giant, so it wouldn’t seem so bad. And it didn’t. I was even a kind of hero for a while. Got in the papers, and everything.”

He let us think about that while he drained the milk. The wash of white milk had traces of pink as it flowed back down the sides of his glass.

“So who did you steal from, if it wasn’t a giant?” I asked.

“You’re sure you don’t know?” Grandpa looked at each of us in turn.

I shook my head.

“Big fellow? Lives high above the clouds, watching everything we do? Angry when you cross him, but doesn’t otherwise get involved?”

I kept shaking my head, but it was because I didn’t want it to be true.

If he’d stolen from Him, there’d be Hell to pay for all of us.

I didn’t hear it until the lawnmower’s engine shut off outside, but then the scratching under our house was impossible to miss and getting louder all the time.

Something was climbing towards us to steal Grandpa, and anything else it could get its hands on.

Tonight is “Stand Up for Ukraine,” a two and a half hour show with ten top comedians, including Delaney favourites James Acaster and Sara Pascoe, to raise money for the Ukraine. Tickets are 10 pounds each and the link is good for a week, so if you miss it today, you still have time to watch it. Get your tickets here!

(I call it “Putin” your money towards a good cause… yeah, well, I’m not a comedian, am I?)