Lunch With Maurice

I was doing time at another warehouse.Another W2 in a factotum year.Maurice, pudding formed with a handlebar mustache, sat across from me.He liked security. “I keep a weapon in every room. I don’t even lock my door. I have got a shotgun on the wall, a handgun in each room unregistered. I got a bat in the bathroom and a sword under my bed with a knife between my pillows.”“Expecting trouble?”“My dad was in the navy. Antiwar activists target the relatives of veterans.”Maurice was found dead in his apartment.Stabbed in the eye.From Guest Contributor Michael Zone

Michael is the author of Fellow Passengers: Pubic Transit Poetry, Meditations & Musings and Better than the Movies: 4 Screenplays. His work has been featured in Because Eileen, Dead Snakes, Horror Trash Sleaze, In Between Hangovers, Three Line Poetry, Triadae, and The Voices Project. He scrapes by in Grand Rapids, MI

Houghton

The dark forest overlooking Houghton was well known to be the home of sprites. Thomas Buchanan, of Oxford, had made the journey to confirm the rumors of their presence were true. He came with all the normal accoutrement, including a traveling dresser, a coterie of servants, and a pack of beagles.

The sprites are nearly impossible to find when they want to stay hidden but Buchanan was prepared. Through a mixture of alchemy and freshly-baked pudding, he attracted a number of the young fairies. The hunt had begun.

No one ever heard from Buchanan, or the villagers of Houghton, again.