Petrol Pixies

Thank you for supporting Working Title Worlds! Cody and Andrew appreciate all the support and encouragement from our Readers. This month's Reader story is what happens when Andrew is both pissed off by climate change and also has been reading a lot of fairy stories. Enjoy!

Petrol Pixies

By A.W.McCollough

The petroleum pixies swarm around the flare stack's hell-mouth building spit and soot bubble-nests like burned spun-sugar globes but my holy water jet at 300 psi from the lumbering tanker ship washes them away.

I brace the nozzle against my hips, turn on and spray God's blessing in a long arc against the nest-clusters. The bubbles drip and run down the sides of the oil rig's flare stacks like melting frosting and the pixies, incense-drugged, tumble limp into the churning sea. I spray all day, cleaning each flare pipe, but a few always survive hiding down the stack's soot-blackened throat.