“There are other beings out there. Demons, fae, aliens, robots and more. Creatures that have been watching us for a long time. They know us. For this challenge, write from the point of view of something “Inhuman”; an exterior point of view that is able to see what it really means to be Human.”

Absolute XPress presents its fourth Flash Fiction Challenge anthology – “Inhuman” containing two flash stories of mine, “Joy” and “Jesse’s Choice”.

How I came to have two flash stories in this anthology…

You may wonder about that. I must say it wasn’t on purpose.

And what does that mean, you’ll ask. 🙂

I wanted to submit something to this anthology, but the topic was difficult, and I had several ideas but nothing that seemed to be working. How not to hit the reader over the head with something moralistic, and how to show it through an inhuman being’s eyes.

I started two stories, one with androids, and one with an elf. I went back and forth between them, changing something here, something there, rewriting bits of this and that. I wasn’t happy with either.

Then, suddenly, I was happy enough with both and sent them off to a blind jury to decide.

Both were accepted. 🙂

JOY was inspired from a Cypriot legend. There is a village, Keblini, where it is said only 100 families can live at a time, or else the angel of death strikes to keep the number the same. I read that in a book and got to thinking: what would happen then if the number of people living there was 100, and one more was born? indeed, the daughter of a lord who would go and claim her before she died? The lord became an elf who keeps fighting his humanized nature, pushing him to save his newborn daughter and his young servant, against elven customs.

JESSE’S CHOICE was born of the intolerance to homosexuals here in Cyprus, in particular through the Church. For the Orthodox church, being a homosexual is a sin dooming one to hell. I am honestly horrified with this attitude and the generally backward stance of the society toward such issues (although there has been a move to allow if not marriage at least some legal backing of homosexual couples this year – finally!). So what would happen if an android turned out to be gay – would that be acceptable? Or would the android have to learn to compromise and hide his true nature like all humans here? (I took out of the story all mention of Cyprus not wanting to offend my motherland, but sometimes I think I should have left it as it was).

Ebook is sold on Smashwords

Print version will be on Amazon on August 6.

Enjoy. 🙂