Short fiction recs! April-May 2024

 

I'm late with this, and the last month or so left me with less time to read than usual. But here are some of the stories that I loved in April and May. 

 

“We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline Yoachim at Lightspeed

This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration.

 

An alien species—fleeting, ephemeral compared to humans—reaches out to us in their decline with a message. But can we humans understand it? As Yoachim says in the accompanying Author Spotlight (which I urge you to also read), in this story she wanted “to somehow train people to do something that, cognitively, we simply do not do.” The attempt she makes here is fascinating. Read it, and then listen to the accompanying stellar podcast for a different perspective, for a different format which conveys the author’s ideas in a completely different (but very effective) way. This is a mind-bender of a story, an experimental tale of ideas, which in the end invokes poignancy as well.

 

“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha in Clarkesworld

I didn’t notice until the afternoon light from the windows began to recede. I tried to increase the brightness settings of the page, but no matter how I thumbed the margins, they would not change. For the first time, I looked carefully at the gold printing along its spine. The book was dead.

 

What kind of library carried a dead book? I wondered.

 

A moody, enigmatic science-fiction piece that unspools with a growing sense of unease. A story about the death of physical media, where electronic books can be updated and rewritten with the touch of a button, without even updating readers on the change. A story where nothing seems quite real: where lovers meet wearing augmented reality glasses, so that they never know what the other one actually looks like. But the protagonist of this story has found a “dead” book—an old-fashioned, hard-copy print book—in the library, and he wants to keep it. A mysterious man contacts him, offering to buy the book from him for an enormous price. The protagonist hesitates, but it quickly becomes clear that this mysterious man—and the forces behind him—are willing to go to enormous lengths. . . A strange, dark story that reflects on the ephemerality and artificiality of much of modern life and media, that asks what’s real. What are we willing to stand by, what do we want to remember, what do we want to hold onto and keep unchanging—even if happier updates or edits are possible? A layered, complex piece that resonates uncomfortably with our modern age.

 

“Five Answers to Questions You Probably Have” by John Wiswell in Uncanny

No matter what anyone says, it’s real. You’ve always felt it and your feelings are right. You really can manipulate stone with your moods. The grime gathers under your fingernails because it worships you. You can feel where every mine tunnel is underfoot without ever having gone down there.

 

A father’s message to his son. A story about a mining town, and earth-magic, and a father who has gone away “to get my head on straight” but is determined to come back. Wiswell weaves together magic, humor, love, and heartache all together in less than one-thousand words.

 

“By a Doorstep That Never Receives You” by Ai Jiang in Small Wonders

 You are my first delivery, and I leave you by a doorstep that never receives you.

 

A stork drops off its first delivery, but there is no one to receive the baby. In just over 300 words, Ai Jiang delivers a gorgeous and profoundly moving tale. Exquisite.

 

“Toby on Third” by Jim Kourlas in Flash Fiction Online

It was bottom of the sixth, Toby on third, the Cards down a run to the Bruins, and the sky was falling. Scoops of grim clouds were rolling in, wind kicking up dust and wrappers. They’d call the game for thunder. My ears strained for it. I’d bet Gator fifty bucks on the Cards—against my own damned kid—for gas money home.

 

This is one of my rare recommendations that is not speculative fiction at all. This flash story is a compelling and painfully realistic tale of a father and son, of baseball, of a father’s bitter experience and a son’s hopeful dream. Of a parent simultaneously betraying his son (by asking his son to betray himself by throwing a game) and trying to do what he think is best. I admit that I know nothing of baseball at all, yet this story made me care. The last moments are incredibly tense. But the very final moment then made me cheer. Beautifully, masterfully crafted.

 

“Alabama Circus Punk” by Thomas Ha in ergot magazine

I should have known something was strange because the repairman came after dark. He wore a mask out of respect, but beneath the coated plasticine I could sense the softness of his form. To think, a biological in my home. I would have to be sure to book a scrubbing service to remove the detritus after he was gone.

 

Like the “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by the same author, this is a strange and disquieting science-fiction tale. Like the other story, this one also invokes questions about what’s “real” and what’s not. But here the strangeness is turned all the way up to something approaching the surreal; it’s not just the protagonist who is unsure of what’s “real” here—the reader is, as well. I don’t want to reveal too much about the world or the nature of the protagonist here, for much of the pleasure of this story is in the slow unspooling of the situation. But it’s truly an original, lingering, horror-tinged tale.  

 

“doorbell dot mov” by Jennifer R. Donohue in The Deadlands

I must be careful to never open the door when they come. No matter how they beg, no matter what they say.

 

A just-over-flash-length horror tale (1500 words) that left me utterly, utterly freaked out. A tale that taps deep into our fear of the uncanny, of the unexplainable, of that which looks almost human but isn’t. In this story, every night at precisely 3 am, things come to the narrator’s door. Things that are not human, things that wail and plead to be let in, and which she knows she must not let in. An intense little tale of sheer terror.

 

“The Dreadful and Specific Monster of Starosibirsk” by Kristina Ten in Pseudopod

Here is another thing you should know: we were very desperate.

And also this: we were very drunk.

Finally: It was Mikhail’s idea, and do not let him tell you differently. That would be classic Mikhail. When it happened, it was, “I am Mikhail, prince of the good ideas, deserving of all the credit, tell them Mikhail did it.” And now it is, “I am a humble man, it was a group effort, I was merely an observer, I was only taking notes.”

 

Kristina Ten braids humor and horror together to delightful effect in this wonderful tale of a monster hoax which goes very, very wrong. Starosibirsk was once a thriving tourist town, host to visitors who came to fish for its sturgeon. But then a chemical waste leak from a nickel factory poisons the river and destroys the town’s tourist economy. One night, the desperate locals gather in a tavern and hatch a plan: they will draw back the tourists by inventing a local monster for the tourists to seek out. A monster created collectively from the townspeople’s fears. A monster revealed by footage posted online and tracks in the woods, told as a story to every visitor who comes. The townspeople’s plan succeeds beyond their dreams. But then things get out of hand. . . I love the way this story plays with modern folklore, the way it invokes the appeal of modern horror stories and myths. Most of all, I love the voice: the narrator’s wry perspective, the humor and then growing horror.

 

“The Louder I Call, the Faster it Runs” by E. Catherine Tobler in Bourbon Penn

In the predawn dark, Annie found herself in a bed, holding onto another hand beneath the cool weight of the pillow. Floral case, it was the trailer—her trailer—and slowly she came back to herself, to her body, and kissed the folded fingers beneath the pillow before claiming the ringing phone, dreadful thing. The voice on the other end was frantic, offering double pay because the cops needed her—needed her boat, a man had gone missing—Ricky had that charter, didn’t she remember—it had to be her, there was no one else. Triple, she said. She lived plain, but there were always bills.

 

Annie knows the lake better than anyone else, and so sometimes the cops come to her for help when someone goes missing in that water. Annie’s been here a long, long time, and it’s Annie’s lake. A wonderfully creepy tale of a woman who’s not a woman—of ancient creatures battling for control of a lake. I love the beautifully foreboding atmosphere of this piece, and the way that atmosphere just builds and builds.

 

 “If Someone You Love Has Become a Vudalak” by Sam Miller in The Dark

We’re twins. Our first fifteen years were a bubble of shared bliss and ill-advised adventures, secret language and all, us against the world, but now his name pops up on my phone or an old friend asks how he’s doing and I don’t think about jumping fences to steal apples from a neighbor’s orchard, or dressing identically to engage in uncanny performance pranks in public. I think of my brother’s hollow sunken eyes across the Thanksgiving dinner table—six Thanksgivings ago, the last one he was invited to. I think of my brother debasing himself in a sleazy non-studio porno film clip a so-called friend sent me.

 

An absolutely heart-wrenching tale of love and anguish. . . of love that cannot save another, of a monster who actually preys on love. The narrator’s brother was a drug addict. And then he became a different type of addict—he’s a vurdalak, a vampire-like creature who literally feeds off the love of those who love him. A vurdalak can’t feed off strangers or mere acquaintances—it has to be someone who actually loves them. This story can be read as a metaphor for drug addiction (something that the narrative clearly points to), but it can be read more widely as a story about any situation in which love can be abused, can become twisted and toxic and a horrific vulnerability. . . and yet which remains as love, even as that love can’t save anyone. This story was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award this year, and it’s easy to see why. Moving, horrific, and horrifically beautiful.  

 

“The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones in Nightmare Magazine

The Portal seeks the places where children hide. It stalked the air raid shelters in London during the Blitz. It lurked in underground cellars during the Cold War, crouched between the canned corn and rancid Crisco. It has fed itself in Italian orphanages and Australian residential schools, and it has only gotten hungrier.

 

The Portal has been exhibiting itself at gun shows recently, a gleaming bullet-proof vault in which to store kids when the shooter comes.

  

Another Bram Stoker-award nominated story (and also nominated for a Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Award), this story by Rachael K. Jones has been getting much deserved praise. It is an absolute stunner of a story--horrific, furious, anguished, surreal, and lightened with the thin thread of a teacher’s love. In this tale, a teacher and her students are confronted with a school shooting, and they escape into a Portal. The Portal takes them to a magical world of talking mice who offer the children crowns and swords and the chance to be heroes in a war. But this is not the wondrous Narnia and portal story you might think: these are some very bad mice, and this is a horrific, nightmarish Narnia. As the story unfolds, it reveals the intersection between two nightmares—the one in the Portal and the one the children left behind in a classroom threatened by gunfire—and it becomes clear that it is all one nightmare, one horror, one terrible bargain and one terrible world.