The Yellow Deer and A State of Bricks
The Yellow Deer
The fossilized bonfire allowed the deer to come out of the fifth well's crevice and penetrate the high, ovular, golden-tinted ceiling vault. Some supper stoneware and bloody arrowheads' entrails were hiding a yellow pencil, a yellow book, and a yellow eraser. The deer used the yellow pencil to color his fur and antlers yellow like the sun. The yellow book followed, offered as fuel to the fossilized bonfire. The yellow eraser acted as an annihilator of time and stirred the embers from the petrified bonfire's remains. A hesitant curl of smoke began to paint the walls tangerine. Some adipose, esurient tissues began playing the tam-tam on the rainscreen. The flaxen, fading deer charged through the sixth well's ozone hole, itching to complete the last two colors of the rainbow before a new ice age.
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A State of Bricks
The castle's door took a while to unlock its many rusty bolts. A stench of centuries-old invisible dust filled my nostrils. The tour guide told us that Chateaubriand's private apartments were sealed indefinitely. They were haunted. By a wooden leg. And a black cat who had been walled up alive. They found the black cat's cadaver and exposed it for us to witness. His cadaver was shouting helplessly behind a glass box. So they had placed him on a small white cushion to ease the pain. We crossed the roof on shivering construction boards. Dry rot was eating the history.
Author Bio
Zoé Mahfouz is an award-winning French actress, content creator, screenwriter, and writer whose work spans fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She holds a Master's in Screenwriting from the London Film School and has received international film festival recognition for her comedy screenplays, including at Canadian Screen Award-qualifying events. Her work has appeared in over 80 journals worldwide, with pieces translated and anthologized in Japanese publications, notably Ginyu and The Asahi Shimbun. She is the author of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize–nominated ADHD in D Minor (North Meridian Press, 2026), as well as the chapbooks Harper's Order (Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, 2026) and Borges Must Be Rolling in His Grave (Dancing Girl Press, 2025).