Chaos Fables

By Candy Ray

A collection of quirky and surreal short stories and flash fiction, with a theme of magic and metaphysics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frond
• Release date: Mar 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201237998

Book preview

Chaos Fables by Ino

The River Flows to Nowhere

The children had never been on a voyage up the river. They thought it might be too late, and no wonder, for they suddenly found themselves grown up.

As they sat in the boat about to push it out into the middle of the current, their heads shot up several inches as they grew taller. Their chests and hips expanded in size and their legs lengthened.

I think I’ve turned into a woman, Betty exclaimed. She looked down and surveyed her figure- she would have liked more time to get used to having breasts. She had always been told that it would happen gradually.

Peter was happy about his enlarged muscles, but not so much about his whole body feeling unfamiliar. He had been trying to feel like a man by going fishing with his dad, which seemed both a more measured and a more innocent way to go about it.

Lavinia gathered the top of her dress and scrunched it in one hand, in an attempt to fit it round her new breasts. Like Betty, she would have preferred time to get used to all this.

They leaned over the side of the boat simultaneously- it looked like a river of ice but couldn’t be because it was moving, and the boat was travelling forwards. As the sun glanced off the solid -looking sheet its bright rays snow-blinded them and split into laser- like shafts when the boat carved a path through them.

The sky above was china- blue and just as brittle as the water; it too could have been made of ice. To the west, a couple of fluffy clouds swirled around a central blue hole like a vortex, and it was in question whether this was a cloud formation or part of the environmental glitches.

Lavinia dabbled her hand in the water to make sure it was fluid, and it was, as it tumbled over her fingers. But she didn’t want to be gender-fluid herself, or age-fluid, or watered like a garden flower by these strange forces acting to bring on the garden to an early maturity.

Peter tried to steer the boat with the steering wheel and throttle. But the boat didn’t want to know. Again and again, he squeezed the throttle and turned the wheel, yet it kept its course straight ahead, slicing through the liquid ice.

The scenery they passed was quickly becoming more urban as they neared the next town, Donaldsbridge. The canal was mainly used for leisure there. Some of the people knew them (at least in their normal forms as children), and they would be surprised and scandalised if they were to find out the canal had become a transformative catalyst instead of a dull waterway for pleasure boats.

Shall we get off the boat? Betty asked, tentatively.

We weren’t going to town, Peter replied.

And looking like this... Lavinia added.

Not just looking. BEING like this. Maybe this is us, now. Peter spoke boldly because a voice at the back of his mind was telling him the adjustment would be harder for the girls, although he wasn’t sure why, never having had the need to look that far ahead.

He ran his impressions of the townsfolk through his mind. Mrs Wellington would be scandalised. Jackie Jones, who ran their favourite sweetshop, would be intrigued, for she was always open to something different. Others who he knew vaguely, friends of their parents, would want to send them to the local hospital with doctor’s letters explaining the unusual case.

He tried again to make the rudder move, to get the boat to slow down sufficiently or him to get a closer look at the town, with its attendant activity, to assess what was going on there today and how busy it was. The boat jolted. Its movement seemed sulky, as if it had a mind of its own. It didn’t slow down much, but enough for him to focus in on the nearest quayside.

There were few walkers, but those who were walking there were bright with gingham headscarves, pale macs and other such garments. Peter wondered if the splashes of colour they made were all part of this new surreal landscape, with previously unknown sky and water effects, which had taken over the world they had known yesterday. Was it possible the townsfolk had all been brought on like greenhouse plants the same as themselves, and those who had been in the prime of life were now elderly? But if so, surely, they would not be parading so nonchalantly along the quayside? They would be alarmed, rushing around or speaking to one another while making gesticulations.

I definitely don’t want to go to Donaldsbridge today, said Lavinia. Why are you slowing down the boat, Pete? We’d better go home first and work out what’s going on.

"Okay, I understand, but I’m not even sure about the boat taking us home at this rate. It hardly moves when