Short Fiction Recs! August and Sept 2018
October is here, first drizzly and gray, now bright but sharp with cold. It’s time to bundle up in sweaters, make stews and soups, and cuddle with
good stories and a cup of tea. Here to keep you company are some stories I
loved from late summer and the earliest fall.
Stories
of darkness, healing, love, and passion
“The Last Epic Pub Crawl of the Brothers Pennyfeather” by L. Chan in The Dark
Chan is one of the most wildly
inventive writers I know, and this story shows off his pyrotechnics of
imagination, his poetic language and humor. . . as well as a delicacy of
emotion that is all the more powerful for its restraint. Bob and Bill are the
Brothers Pennyfeather, a duo of ghost hunters/exorcists who have been trained
in their Work by their mother. After a job gone terribly wrong and mutual
absence, the brothers reunite for one last epic pub crawl. Creepy ghosts abound
at each pub they visit, and brotherly snark and banter enliven the night. But
there’s something much deeper going on than a simple night on the town. The
narrator, Bob, is struggling under a weight of grief and guilt. Slowly, this
deeper story of brothers, and of their mother, comes through. I love the way
the brothers circle around dark truths and their emotions, of how they love one
another but can’t quite speak it aloud; the brotherly jokes and jabs feel real. In the end, this is a fun, twisty, and ultimately poignant story of
ghosts teaching a man to live.
“The Pull of the Herd” by Suzan Palumbo in Anathema
A gorgeous, painful story of love
and family. The narrator was born to a herd of shape-shifting deer-women who
live free in the woods. But there are men in town who want to steal their
doeskins and, in so doing, steal a wife. The narrator has consciously,
willingly made the decision to cast off her skin and live with a human woman
she loves. But she is also pulled back to the herd by love and obligation.
There are so many layers to this story. Palumbo beautifully evokes the conflict
between worlds, the bonds of family, the painful tension between individual
freedom and the obligations due the people you love. Sometimes a skin never
fits, and any choice made entails pain. A beautiful, haunting story.
“Jewel of the Vashwa” by Jordan Kurella in Apex
I watched my love die in the claw of a
Scorpion Man. I watched him sever her in half; watched as her long hair dripped
down to the ground; watched as her hand let go of her spear; as her long legs
folded under her; as the Scorpion Man’s tail rose in triumph.
Oh, this fierce riptide of a
story. A grief-stricken narrator who tells her story three different ways. A
story of love and passion and jealousy, which changes upon each telling. Devastating
and gorgeous.
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning wakes up again. It’s the third time today. She thinks
awakenings are far more common in springtime, but all year long she is called
this way. She sighs and tucks her dark hair back under her cap. She will not
refuse the call.
A heart-warming story of joy
and light. An afterlife where poets and writers are wakened whenever their
words touch living hearts. This is a lovely, rapturous ode to art—to how poetry
and literature connect people across space and time,
“Dead Air” by Nino Cipri in Nightmare Magazine
A story that takes the form of
an art project that takes the form of a radio drama. Nita is an artist who records
interviews with the people she sleeps with. But one person, Maddy, becomes much
more than a one-night stand—or art project. Told exclusively through Nita’s
audio transcripts, this story seemingly starts off as a sweet rom-com—and
indeed, the romance is sweet. But
Maddy holds a dark secret, and as Nita probes, the tension and creepiness of
this piece builds and builds. The dialogue is brilliant, often laugh-out loud
funny, expertly catching the rhythms of real speech. The “found-footage” format
of the story is used to brilliant effect;
atmosphere is set through details of ambient sound, like this:
[4 seconds of soft
breath.]
[Rustling cloth. Nita stirs. The sound of skin
touching skin; comfort.]
[Footsteps. Birdsong. Rain on a
dirt road.]
There are also interjections
in the transcript by someone, or some
ones, else. Even as the love between Nita
and Maddy deepens, the shadows grow. An absolutely chilling, heart-shredding
story.
“Light Breaking on Glass” by Garrett Croker in Aliterate
An extraordinary tale, sharp
and painful as shattered glass. The narrator’s family is haunted by a terrible
disease; his beloved grandfather died slowly, of a disease that slowly turned
his body to glass. Now the grandson is suffering the same disease. I love the
way Croker depicts the slippery/malleable nature of memory, how events are
retrospectively reshaped by current emotions and events. The way anger and pain
and love, and the feeling of helplessness, shine through. Yet in the end, there
is a seed of acceptance, too. Beautiful and raw and visceral. (Content warning: graphic
depictions of self-harm)
“The Kite Maker” by Brenda Peynado in in Tor
The aliens are winged like
dragonflies. But in Earth’s gravity, they cannot fly. The narrator makes and
sells kites that remind the aliens of how they once soared. The narrator is
also ridden with guilt over how she once participated in atrocities against the
aliens, during the initial panic that humans felt over what they thought was a dangerous
invasion. This is a haunting, painful, and layered story of the aftermath of
First Contact, genocide, generational guilt, and ongoing violence. Echoes to
current events are unavoidable (and almost certainly deliberate). This is a
story that stayed with me.
Book/Novella
Quietly’s roommate Imani stole the Pacific Ocean. Now Quietly has to track her friend down in the underworld, take back the Pacific Ocean, and set things to right. This is a rollicking, joyous adventure, breathing with a wild inventiveness that reminds me of Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series. A sea is kept in a jar. There is an underworld beneath Athens, Georgia, filled with cast-off desires and monsters swimming through literal heaps of trash. The embodiments of the states of California, Washington, and Oregon run amok as they chase after the sea, displaying West Coast stereotypes to hilarious effect. I hesitate to describe any of these wonders in too much detail, for fear of ruining surprises. But there is wonder aplenty. A lovely story of friendship, love, and magic, perfect for an afternoon escape.
Selections
from Syntax and Salt
Syntax and Salt is one of my
favorite short story markets. Here are some of my favorites from the current
issue, but the entire issue is wonderful and I strongly recommend reading it
all.
“All the Ugly Things” by Brigitte N. McCray
Ingrid’s mother brushes her daughter’s hair so as to keep
Ingrid beautiful, so as to attract the attention of the river-god (who loves
long, shining hair) and to keep away the awful little river demons (who nest in
tangled hair). All the mothers of the village do this. All the daughters
compete to have the most beautiful hair of all. But beauty and ugliness are not
always what you think. A chilling, vivid story of delusion and abusive beliefs
and practices, passed down through generations.
"The Girl Who Ate Galaxies" by L’Erin Ogle
A story about a
woman with a black hole inside her, a void that is literally swallowing the
world. The power of this story is in the sheer emotion evoked: the ravening
hunger, the hurt and the need at the core which cannot help destroying.
“I’m
not much more than bitterness with a side of hunger, or maybe it’s the other
way around.”
A story that is a raw scream.
“An Accidental Coven” by Laura Blackwell
Liminal Stories, Issue 5
Since its debut in
2016, Liminal Stories has consistently fulfilled its mission
of publishing stories “beautiful,heartbreaking, and strange”—stories that consistently
place within my top reads of the year. Issue 5 is one of their strongest yet. I
wanted to take the time to discuss the entire issue, and not only because I
have a story featured in it. The editors at Liminal Stories do
a particularly fine job of selecting and arranging stories for thematic
resonance, and I wanted to be able to address this. In this late summer issue,
seven strange stories play off each other beautifully in mood and theme. Issue
5 breaks my heart in another way as well. Shortly after its publication, the
editors announced that Liminal Stories is going on an
indefinite hiatus. Like so many readers, I am hoping they will be able to come
back some day. And until that time, I urge anyone to read this latest issue,
and all the back issues, of a truly wonderful magazine.
“If it Were True Owls Dream” by Jan Priddy
In flight air flows and we wait for the small night creatures to reveal themselves. We lift with no sounding beat of wings, no ruffle, fluffle, shuffle of feathers. We are silent and silent be. We three.
This is a gorgeous, surreal
tale of human children who are also owls. The mood is dreamy and generally gentle
but studded through with sharp moments that remind us that owls are not all
soft wings and peaceful flight—they’re predators, too. Absolutely lovely.
“Cold Fish” by Anjali Ravi
Down the hole the two sisters practiced climbing. Older shoved her toes into the dirt until they blistered. Younger clawed up the walls, hoisted onto jutting rock, tasted light, fell backward, got up, climbed again. They took turns boosting each other. They took turns catching each toher. When the hole high above darkened at the close of day, their moon eclipsed, the sisters crawled to the edge of the tight black cave, bodies bruised, silt in their hair, and wept.
Like Priddy’s story, Ravi’s is
also about a surreal mystery. But the mood is entirely different: not gentle,
but harsh and bladed. Two sisters are trapped in a hole. Every so often, cold,
dead fish fall out of the sky to keep them from starving. Eventually one of
them escapes. She can’t find the hole or her sister again, so she tries to move
on with her life, to forget the nightmare. She grows up and becomes a
respectable school teacher, going by the name of Ms. Prudence. But the hunger
and horror of the hole never truly leaves. A chilling, surreal, indelible tale
of horror and survival, trauma and memory.
“Till Human Voices Wake Us” by Rachel Halpern
They had traded us among themselves, for pearls and stones and shark teeth, and hurt us sometimes for their own amusement. Even as I tried to grasp the memories, they melted away, leaving only traces of beauty and terror.
Another story of trauma and
memory, but one that ends on a note of strength and resilience, of finding
support and comfort in community. This is a return-from-fairyland story as I
haven’t quite seen it before. Geoffrey is one of four who have just escaped sea-captivity
by mermaids. This is the story of how these four learn to live on land again. Throughout
this process, the four humans must struggle against the ongoing song of the
sea, which calls them back to the cold darkness. All had different reasons for
following that song in the first place, and all must deal with those reasons before
truly committing to life on land. I love the way this piece blends sinister fae
magic with the grit of real human relationships and pain. It’s a truly painful
read in places, yet it ends in hope. The steps these characters take toward
reconciliation and human life feel real, as is the comfort and support they
find in one another. Luminous and beautiful. (Content warning: suicide attempt and suicidal ideation).
“The Clearing of a Host” by J.M. Guzman
It is only at night that his house becomes a castle.
A haunted house that flickers
between home and castle. A man who has abandoned the children who hunger for
his love—who would prefer not to think of them, not to see them at all. Who
would rather live in a castle of his own making. A strange, sharp story that
vibrates with anger and hurt.
“Late Night at the Low Road Diner” by Frances Rowat
This is the heart of the night, and the only things in the building except her are yellow light and empty tables and the smells of coffee and old grease.
Empty, late-night diners
always feel like weird, liminal spaces. Marisse, waitress and cook, is working
alone at a diner on such a night when two suspicious characters walk in. Only
one of them eats. This is a piece that pulses with quiet menace. But Marisse has
seen a lot and knows how to handle dangers both human and inhuman. Watching the
tense interactions unfold in this story is simultaneously nerve-wracking and
(because Marisse is a badass) delightful. An original take on a late-night
ghost story, masterful in its execution of mood.
“When Leopard’s Bane Came to the Door of Third Heaven” by Vajra Chandrasekera
The red tower is always busy, crowded all the way to the top, a queue that moves step by excited step. Our green tower is for the perverse and our door is its highest, the least accessible.
And oh, I love this story. The
narrator and his work colleague, L (also known as Leopard’s Bane), are guards
for the tower door that leads to the third nonsensual heaven. There are sensual
heavens as well, which are far more popular. The two guards are often bored;
they pass the time teasing one another, getting into harmless hijinks, and
letting the occasional visitor through the door to heaven. They live in a world
where a lottery system is supposed to randomly assign people to different jobs,
but where the rich always seem to draw winning tickets while the poor are assigned
the worse jobs, and lives, of all. And as L. says, "If you think the system is rigged, if you think the world is unacceptably fucked" you can always leave through one of the doors to heaven. This piece unfolds with
dry humor, satire, and slowly, increasing feeling. The doors to heaven seem
like a built-in safety valve for a fucked-up system, a cynical and easy way to
dispose of malcontents. Yet at the same time, heaven appears real, and the narrator is increasingly drawn
toward it. Chandrasekera has created a fantastical world to work through big
philosophical questions e.g. what is the validity of personal salvation/escape
versus the responsibility to stay and fight for the world? A surprising, quirky
story that also has real gravity, warmth, and hope.
“The House of Illusionists,”
by Vanessa Fogg
It's impossible to deny reality for long. Yet we all try; we're all pretending.
Yes, this is my story. A house
of illusionists at a magical academy are doing what they can to survive a terrible
war. This story actually appears first in the magazine’s table of contents,
although I’ve left it for the end of this review. And I love it that it’s my
story and Chandrasekera’s “When Leopard’s Bane Came to the Third Door of Heaven”
that bookend this issue, for I feel that these stories are in conversation with
one another. Both create fantasy worlds to address big, philosophical
questions. Chandrasekera’s story asks about the validity of personal salvation/escape
versus the responsibility to stay and fight for the world. Mine questions the
validity of personal salvation/escape/art and asks whether it’s even possible—whether
art can withstand the challenges of the “real” world at all. In the end, I see my
story as one about both the power, and the limits, of art. I’ve been fascinated
by the different responses to my piece. Personally, I find Chandrasekera’s
story the more hopeful one, but I am also happy for any reader who finds hope
in my own.
Bonus comic rec
"The Place We Once Called Home: A Comic" by Wendy Xu at Catapult
This made me catch my breath. An achingly beautiful piece about fantasy worlds, online friendships, and mourning.
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