I was recently challenged to write a micro-story (less than 200 words) around the randomly generated title “Boy Bands, Fairy Princes and Other Forms of Necromancy”. It didn’t take long to realise that 200 words is not a lot of words and I have a lot of words to say, and that I could easily find writing to a random prompt addictive. Oh, and I also wrote two stories. One of them kept to the word limit.

Behold – the first two of perhaps many micro/short stories that I’ll be making available here.

Boybands, Fairy Princes and Other Forms of Necromancy

This is a cautionary tale because Disney got it wrong. Faeries are not tiny or benevolent and don’t get me started on the wings. On the subject of Fairy Dust they are at least getting warmer. It makes you fly, sure, but in a totally illicit way.

Forget Merriweather, Tinkerbell and good old Fairy Godmother, you’ll never catch the ‘gals slumming it here on Earth. The boys, however, are another matter. You’ve possibly sat next to one on the train, or ordered your coffee from a Fae barista.

 Not convinced?

You have definitely seen them in your ‘socials’, you know, the impossibly beautiful boys, and you’ve sure as hell heard them. Name me a boy band and I’ll point out the fairy princes their midst. One you spot them you’ll never listen to music the same way. Only the boys can sing and their voices naturally drift to sappy acapella or poppy beats. The saccharine sweetness is like crack to a human brain.

Boy band seems innocent when you consider the music woven into the harmonics. You reckon death metal can raise the dead?

Wrong!

Crank Luv Boiiz up to 12 and even the dead get up and dance.

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Hear Me

The strongest voice in my life is silent now and the world seems a little darker with its loss. All I can ever remember is Nan’s voice being there to say her words in her raspy, pack-a-day smoker voice. Point is, people listened.

She painted her nails black on the day that Mum made me clean the polish from mine. She started wearing eyeliner when I applied the black to my eyes and white grease paint to my cheeks. She danced with me when I blasted the screaming vocals of Demented Babushka’s. We shared the same plum coloured lipstick and drove mum mad.

She was the first to use my new pronouns. They slipped from her tongue with such ease and authority that I thought my chest would burst.

My chest.

Now it is hollow.

###

She’s been gone for three months and I didn’t want to celebrate my sweet sixteenth, but Mum insisted. I fake smiled over the far too pink cake and opened gifts I didn’t want. The last one, the one at the bottom of the pile was a slim, white envelope that smelled faintly of nicotine.

The card is plain white. No sugar sweet words or pastel roses. Nan’s wobbly handwriting fills the entire side. 

One word.

TRUST.

And a ticket to see the Fairy Princes, the world’s biggest boyband, in concert.

It’s a joke. A cruel, sad joke, but she has told me to trust, so trust I will.

###

Tonight I have joined a legion of Brittney’s with their fat pink hair bows and blue glitter eyeshadow as they worship at the altar of the Fairy Princes, and I hate to admit it but there is an allure. Long hair cascades as the singers move. It could hide pointed ears, and the shimmer on their skin isn’t sweat, it is magic.

Too soon the last song dawns. The stage goes dark and a single beam of white light picks out the lead singer like a moonbeam. Their voices start low but vibrate in a soaring, wordless harmony and they utter the lyric as one.

“Hear me.” They beseech.

I join the chorus as the dry ice fog caresses the audience.  Wet earth and grave dirt fill my nose, and right by my ear I hear the raspy, tobacco smoke refrain.

“Be your own voice.” It urges, “Speak your own truth.”

My head might not know it yet but my heart knows we’re going to be okay.