Short fiction recs! June-July 2024

So many beautiful, strange stories I’ve read this summer so far. Here are only a few.

Strange Tales of Beauty and Horror

“Markets of the Otherworld” by Rati Mehrotra in Uncanny Magazine

In the Market of Illusions, I writhed on the cobblestoned street that wound between the gilded stalls, gasping for air, convinced I was a goldfish. Someone dragged me to a fountain and pushed me in, breaking the spell and—a minor point, except the water was ice cold—drenching me to the skin.

 

In the Cat Market, I was pursued by a large white Persian and coerced into signing away a month of my life in return for the privilege of petting her. In my dreams, I still run my fingers through her thick, beautiful fur while she leans against me and hums in pleasure. Worth it, I tell myself, even as I wonder which month of life has been taken from me.

 

An absolutely gorgeous, magical, and at times melancholy tale of a woman traveling through the enchanting markets of other worlds. A story that’s also about the magic—and danger—of books, for it was through a magical guidebook that the narrator found her first Otherworld market. It is through this book that the narrator continues to find new markets now. But the woman is old, and her time is limited. Can she find one last market before she goes?  A lovely, lyrical tale of magic and beauty that also becomes a meditation on life and death, on what and where we find meaning. And what we’re willing to sacrifice for it.

 

“The Museum of Cosmic Retribution” by Megan Chee at Nightmare

The boy looked tentatively into the cave. He didn’t like the look of the statues—their cartoonish faces, almost grotesque. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go in alone. This was supposed to be a family excursion. His parents had talked a lot about how it was a rite of passage for Singaporean kids. Generations of brats had been dragged here by their parents to be frightened by the displays of statues being tortured for various sins. “See, if you steal or cheat, this will happen to you after you die. Better be good, ah boy . . .”

 

The Haw Par Villa in Singapore is a real-life theme park, most famous for its nightmarish depiction of the Ten Courts of Hell. The little boy of this story has been taken to the theme park on an outing. . . but once there, a mysterious man takes him on a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibits on Hell and punishment which aren’t normally shown to the public. . . Chee has a remarkable gift for creating epic, cosmic worlds and tales within a small space, and she does that again here. Cosmic tales of sin and punishment are revealed. But though there is punishment, the stories shown aren’t quite black-and-white: there’s pity amidst the horror, and doubt as to the justice of the retribution. A thought-provoking, lingering tale.

 

“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Uncanny Magazine 

Hi everyone!

I know this is a very weird mass email, but please hear me out first. For some of you (all of you?) it might seem like I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth. But guess what? I literally fell off the face of the Earth (ha ha). I don’t think you and I are in the same place anymore. And by you, I mean all the people I care about. (Yes, that’s every single one of you. Really.)

 

It starts when Nefeli tries to reconnect in person with an old childhood friend. They communicate on social media and text, and make plans to meet up. But at the bus stop, Nefili’s friend Cara isn’t there. Even though Cara insists via text that she is, in fact, right there. Sitting on the same bench that Nefili herself is sitting on.

 

And then the invisibility—or physical separation—spreads. Nefili finds that she can no longer see or directly interact with her brother or parents or anyone she cares for. Telephone or video calls don’t go through. She can only interact with the people she cares for via social media or text. They manage to connect with one another through a shared online game, and find warmth and comfort in these virtual interactions. Until it seems even that might be taken away . . . Eugenia Triantafyllou has crafted a chilling, existentially terrifying piece that captures something essential about our social media age—the way that texts and social media can’t replace in-real-life interactions, but how among far-flung loved ones they may be all we have. Original and brilliant, like all her work.

 

"Joanna's Bodies" by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Psychopomp

When Eleni comes out, Joanna is already slumped on the low leather couch by the window watching Eleni’s ex-favorite movie for the billionth time. Jennifer’s Body. Two girls who are best friends: Jennifer and Needy, one of them possessed by a demon, the other one possessed by the friendship itself. Jennifer’s Body used to be their number one, but somewhere between Joanna’s first death and her first resurrection, Eleni stopped caring for it. When fantasy becomes reality it’s not as fun anymore.

 

Didn’t I say that everything Eugenia Triantafyllou writes is brilliant? She does it again with this gorgeous, aching, story of a complicated friendship, of jealousy and guilt and love. Eleni and Joanna were always best friends, even when Joanna hurt Eleni. When Joanna dies in a car accident, Eleni summons her spirit back. But this has consequences she can’t foresee. . .. The ending feels both tragic and inevitable. A beautiful, painful story.

 

“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones in Lightspeed

Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory.

 

This story went viral on Twitter, and there’s a reason why. In under 600 words, Jones creates a wild sci-fi horror world with a last line that will leave you breathless.

 

“Unwrapping” by Madeline Pelletier in Short Edition

The DeliverBot drops the box at my feet and wheezes out a metallic "Happy Birthday" before flying away. At first, I think it's a mistake, because it isn't my birthday. At least, I don't think it is. But the bot said my name, and other than my arrival at Lethe Colony a year ago, there's not much in my past I do remember. 

 

Another tiny flash piece that packs power into a small space. A little tale of memory, grief, and love that, like Rachael K. Jones’ piece above, has a stunner of a last line.

 

“Open Them if You Don’t Believe Me” by K.C. Mead-Brewer in Matchbox Literary

She pointed a glowing finger at her parents’ twin graves. “Behold your own closed eyes.”

 

The man wanted to scoff or smirk, but he couldn’t. It was suddenly all too plain how very much indeed the two dark mounds resembled a pair of massive, closed eyes upon a massive, earthen face.

 

“Open them,” she dared him. “Open them if you don’t believe me.”

A woman sees horrors, and can’t look away. She can’t close her eyes. A golden man on horseback offers to save her, but her affliction—eyes open too-wide, eyes that can’t close—is catching. And so this story turns, an eerie fairy tale in which a curse is passed on from person to person, a tiny horror story bearing dark, inexplicable fruit.

 

Heartbreaking Stories of Family

 

“like blood on the mouths of death” by Victor Forna in Nightmare Magazine

They were behind the divider, the things I could not name, covered from head to toe in raffia. They thrashed at each other, shrieked, shivered, as they ate Mama’s hair off the floor—but at the age of five and a half, when your mother tells you she’s fine, you believe her.

 

I believed her.

 

An absolutely heartrending story of a mother and son, of a woman who is dying and trying to shield her son from the truth. Trying to pretend that she’s okay, that she’s not in pain, that her body isn’t slowly being eaten away bit by bit. The story of the man who realizes what his mother went through, what strength she had, as he raises his own sons and faces his own trial. Searing and devastating.

 

“Twenty-four Hours” by H.H. Pak in Clarkesworld

Six hours left.

“What do you want to eat sweetheart?” She looks at me expectantly, holding out her phone to show me the menu. “It is your special day. I’ll get you anything you want.”

 

A mother and her daughter go out for Korean barbecue. But this isn’t an ordinary mother-daughter dinner. They have only limited time. A beautifully told and poignant, heartbreaking tale. I don’t want to give too much away, but I love the twists and turns that this takes. Also, warning: not only will this tale pull at your heart, but the lavish descriptions of food will make you hungry as well.

 

“The Last Lucid Day” by Dominique Dickey in Lightspeed

Your father, a theoretical mathematician renowned in his field, stood over your shoulder as you did your homework. You were a child. You were counting on your fingers. He took off his belt and laid it on the table. He wasn’t actually going to beat you with it, but you didn’t know that—how could you possibly know that? It would take a few more years of this before you saw straight to the bottom of his empty threats.

 

A tale of complicated love. A man grows up afraid of his father, who never hit him but still abused him terribly. As an adult, the son cuts his father off and lives a happy life, not thinking about his father at all. But when his mother dies, the aged father attends the funeral, and seems to have changed. The two tentatively establish a new relationship—a relationship that changes and is complicated even more when the father develops the first signs of dementia. A difficult and painful story about a flawed parent and abuse, about complicated ties, about the desire for recognition, for an apology that might never come.  And about love that exists even along with abuse, denial, and terrible hurt.

 

 “The Ecological Impacts of Resurrection: A Field Study” by Corey Farrenkopf in The Deadlands

Two weeks before, Aunt Claire left a voicemail on our home answering machine.

 

…two little otter paws sticking out of the ground just like my neighbor said, praying to the sky. The rest of the body was buried, otter prints all around. They must be burying their dead. I told Bill to keep quiet until you could come take a look. I know how competitive your research is. Sorry I haven’t been in touch lately. It’s just hard, you know?

 

Jenny’s father is a professor of ethology, with a focus “on the study of death rituals and burial behavior in mammals and their intersections with human traditions.” Since the death of Jenny’s mother years ago, the father has been obsessed with how other animals care for their dead. Too obsessed, his daughter thinks. He muses about the idea of an animal afterlife, about an animal conception of heaven “as if it all held a clue to his own personal mystery, a hidden path back to Mom.” And when he hears about the strange otters that bury their dead, he goes with Jenny to investigate. . . This is story that’s at once strange, sad, and beautiful. A piece with striking imagery, with a sense of real mystery, and with a slow-building sense of tragic inevitability.

 

 

Love Stories from Haven Magazine

Haven Magazine is a newer market that has been just killing it of late. I read the entirety of Issue 15, guest-edited by LP Kindred, and every single story is gorgeous. I list three of my favorite below, but the entire issue is well worth reading:

 

“Ghost Apples” by Madi Haab

Another dead rabbit had grown out of the snow.

 

Cathilde pulled her foot back, shuddering at the sight. The rabbit was just outside the tent, laid out like an offering. Beady brown eyes stared up at a sky the colour and texture of meringue; its soft white fur rippled in the crisp wind, and a spray of red berries grew out of its mouth, covered in a thin lace of frost.

 

Cathilde lives in the wilderness with her lover, Aglahé. It’s a hard life, hunting and gathering what food they can. When dead rabbits and other gruesome offerings appear outside their tent, Cathilde shudders and sees them as threats and ill omens, but Aglahé sees them as gifts and welcome food. Aglahé.is a strong hunter, resourceful and practical. Cathilde was once a sheltered princess, and she feels afraid and useless in her new world, her new life. What unfolds from a seemingly macabre beginning is a tender and lovely story of change and love, of realizing one’s worth, and learning that there are many types of gifts in this world.

 

“Ten Ways of Looking at Snow, Reflected Off an Obsidian Armor” by Avra Margariti

You were cruel when we first met.

It would have been easy to claim I was sleepwalking, under your compulsion. But the truth was, I sought you out that midwinter night, in my spiderweb-flimsy nightgown and bruised, bare feet, chasing after a woodland vista I was taught through catechisms and beatings always to avoid. I left my bed in the smallest of hours despite parents and priests cautioning I stay away from the Erl-Queen's territory.

 

A gorgeous retelling of the legend of the Erl King, both aching and rapturous. A young woman goes willingly with an Erl-Queen, traveling ten winters together and learning that all the stories she’d learned are different than she’d thought. Margariti’s prose is sheer poetry.

 

“Every Breath a Kiss” by Natalia Theodoridou

"Why did you save me?" His voice is cracked, his throat raw.

 

The creature fixes him with its lidless eyes. Its face so human that it looks almost familiar: the sharp cheekbones, the wide forehead, the tangled hair. Its lips thick, plump. The man traces his own, recalling the feeling of those lips on his mouth, the briny breath deep in his lungs, filling him with life he didn't want.

 

Lazlo tried to drown himself. But he’s been saved by a merman, who insists that Lazlo does not—despite what he may think—wish to die. What follows is an exquisite tale of falling in love, of dark thoughts and feelings, of underwater grottos and the sea. A story about darkness, but also a story about life and living.