Unrelieved by Shadows
For this #tbt post, we’re throwing it all the way back to Issue 1, Winter 2014, with ‘Where the Angels Wait’ by feature author Chris Humphreys.
Although not memoir, this story takes as its inspiration a real event from the author’s life. As Chris tells us, My father did pass away in Granada in 1986. I was living in LA at the time and tried to make it. Got there two days later. There was no funeral, no memorial. … This, some years later, was a touch of mourning.
‘Where the Angels Wait’
by Chris Humphreys
Granada, Andalusia, Spain. August 1986
Sitting on the edge of the bed now, listening. A door opened, shut, someone has come and gone, that much is certain. They’ve hidden them, and he must find them.
Unless they didn’t leave.
“Hello?”
No reply. He has to start. The drawers? Too obvious but he tries a couple. The cushions? He pulls them off the sofa, feels down the back and side, moves carefully because if they are there what state might they be in? He finds a crumb-covered coin, nothing else. On the high shelves then, at the back of the cupboard, rolling in the dust? Or in a jar in the bureau, pickled, floating like onions? With others? Alone? Alone, yes, has to be.
He starts to move quicker. Grapes on the table, that’s frightening. Eat one? Too risky. Time’s nearly up, pull back the sheets, grope under the pillows.
“Who’s there?”
He lies back down. “There’s no one there,” he says, challenging the dark.
He sits up. He knows where they are. His father is in the doorway, making it look small, and he has them exactly where they should be.
“Looking for these?” Dad says, and starts to squeeze his eyeballs from his face.
To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 1, Winter 2014!
Chris Humphreys is a novelist, actor, and playwright born in Toronto, Ontario. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. Chris has played Hamlet in Calgary, a gladiator in Tunisia, and a dead immortal in Highlander. He’s waltzed in London’s West End, conned the landlord of the Rovers Return in Coronation Street, commanded a starfleet in Andromeda, and voiced Salem the cat in the original Sabrina. His novel Plague won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in Canada in 2015. Chris’s most recent book, Smoke in the Glass, is an installment of his Immortals’ Blood Trilogy. His story ‘The Ankle Bracelet’ appeared in Issue 14, and you can listen in as Chris reads it here!
Opening 1 May:
The 2021 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize!
With a top prize of $300 and publication in Pulp Literature Issue 33, Winter 2022, the Hummingbird Prize really soars!
This contest is for previously unpublished short fiction up to 1000 words in length. Multiple entries welcome!
So send us your flashiest flash, your small but mighty prose, your sweet or scrappy stories. And if you enter by 15 May, you pay the early-bird fee of just $15!
For more details and to enter, visit the contest page.
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