As entranced by the bright lights and swirling rides of the fairground as her twin daughters, gradually, she notices every fairground worker is tall, slender, with watchful dark eyes and pointed ears. They ride on the carousel. All the garish, painted horses have horns.
‘Free candyfloss.’
The girls receive a pink fluffy cone each.
‘No, let me pay.’
‘Something for nothing.’
Sharply, she tells her twins to return their gift. They step back, take a disobedient mouthful.
And vanish. As do the people. As does the fairground.
Two mouldy apples, one bite out of each, lie on the desolate ground.
Author bio: Liz Tuckwell is a British science fiction and fantasy writer, living in London. Her short fantasy story, The Mysterious Mr. Fox, will be included in the forthcoming BFS anthology Emerging Horizons, showcasing new writers, to be published in 2018 and another fantasy story will be published in the anthology, Magic CSI, due out in the next few months.
Fairground is part of 101 Fiction issue 19.
No comments:
Post a Comment