Entry for a contest at Metazen – Image to Text Conversion Experiment. Picture by Metazen – an online metafiction journal edited by Frank Hinton.

The serious writer looks back on a long and distinguished career as an herbologist. Her favourite bush grows in Central Park and is called Noah’s Ark by the residents because of the myriad of animals that it shelters. The serious writer has given a name to every leaf and branch of the Ark, and when autumn comes, her heart slowly withers, pondering decay as the shrub sheds its summer splendour and returns to the raw.
(published in elimae)

Entry for a contest at Metazen – Image to Text Conversion Experiment. Picture by Metazen – an online metafiction journal edited by Frank Hinton.

Thornton thought the abandoned castle would make a wonderful gallery space. Its remoteness and romance differed royally from the artistic dankness of downtown and would attract the casual wanderer as well as hunters and boy scouts. He was not sure about the furry costume, but his girlfriend had convincingly argued that the splendour of the setting required a special effort on his part to establish wilderness credibility.

Entry for a contest at Metazen – Image to Text Conversion Experiment.
Picture by Metazen – an online metafiction journal edited by Frank Hinton.

A feline predator came across a Gruiform and experienced that most fleeting of feelings, a moment of felicity between bird and mammal, ornithology and therology, beauty and beast. Their encounter was akin to the merging of two human bodies, when the phallic serenely protrudes into the spongy, bringing pleasure to both creatures. An outsider such as the  majestic grampus, who fell out of the jungle sky in that very moment merely saw a tigress roaring at a crane very shortly before its massive marine body squished both lovers.

Winner of the the Metazen “Image to Text Conversion” contest.
Picture by Metazen – an online metafiction journal edited by Frank Hinton.

That morning, four children appeared in front of the train, which was ready to depart and would carry them to an institution where they’d spend the day yawning while pondering how to begin their life in the most astonishing fashion. Their clothes were coloured flags of countries undreamed of that withstood all weathers like perennial plants and harboured machine guns, automatic rifles and grenade launchers made by the best for the boisterous. They were: a jew, a buddhist, a christian and a muslim, and they were ready for school.