16 fabulously fantastic short stories I read in May

 

Some months, I feel like I just cannot keep up with all the wonderful, beautiful, addictively terrifying stories coming out. Actually, that pretty much describes every month…

Here are 16 of the many fabulous stories I read in May:

Lares Familiares, 1981, by Rebecca Campbell in Liminal Stories. “Over the girl’s shoulder lay the forest’s edge. No movement in the trees, even so he wanted to pull Billy away from the door, and lock it tight and say nothing to anyone in the house—”

Set in British Columbia, this story deals with the inner workings of a family, and the forces shaping its past and present. What grabbed me right from the beginning of the story, was Campbell’s perceptive description of the grand family dinner. If you’ve ever been at one of those big family shindigs (whether or not your family has the same kind of dark undercurrent as the family in the story), you’ll recognize the familiar patterns. I love every facet of this story, especially how it knits together an ancient family mythos with the visible realities of abuse and love, power and submission. Once the unsettling stranger appears, things get even stranger… One of the best stories I’ve read this year.

Fallow, by Ashley Blooms in Shimmer. “He doesn’t have the words to describe how the field reminds him of himself. – – – How it feels like maybe the field needs something only William has, and all William has is the bottle.”

This is a breathtakingly good story with so many layers of love, longing, loneliness, desperation. A boy plants a bottle in a fallow field. Something happens, to the bottle and to him. This story has elements of magic realism, fantasy, and horror – but it becomes something different than any of these pieces. Shimmer is a magazine with a very specific vibe, and this is a very “shimmery” story. Unsettling and stunning.

Feathers and Void, by Charles Payseur in Shimmer. “Iv’s thoughts coat mine like oil, slide away, always so clear in the moment but impossible to hold on to. Iv, my crow. My shell. My ship.”

Lyrical, evocative, haunting… I was absolutely floored by this heartrending science fiction story. In a far future, some human test subjects have been fused with birds, and they are used to fight in space – attacking ships, killing enemies, and stealing “treasure”. A space opera on crows’ wings, this story packs an emotional power and an epic vibe into a short story. Stunning and intoxicating writing by Payseur.

Bear Language, by Martin Cahill in Fireside Fiction. “I only have eyes for the mass of brown fur sitting in Daddy’s chair. Maybe it has special bear senses. Maybe it heard me with its big bear ears. The tower of brown fur turns around in the chair and looks at me.
Hello, the bear says.”

I love this story so much. LOVE. IT. Heartbreaking and dark, this story of two children stuck in a house with an addicted and abusive father who is not capable of being the parent they need, still manages to be oddly uplifting, thanks to the presence of a Very Good Bear. I really love how Cahill manages to infuse a desperate and nightmarish situation with a fairytale vibe, and gleams of resilience and hope. This story will stick with me for a long time.

Witch’s Hour, by Shannon Connor Winward in Fantasy & Science Fiction. “Before she let them take the stag, Esmelda did one last thing: Her hands greased with its own hot fat and gritty black spices, sigils for gluttony and hunger-lust ground into her palms, she massaged the beast as one might a lover, from the charred wreck of its neck to its crisp, round rump.”

This is a knockout story – so deliciously wicked, vivid, rich and bold. It’s set in a castle, and more specifically: the castle’s kitchen. There’s a cook, there are feasts, there’s a ghost (or maybe more than one?), a dead king, a new king, and whole lot of food (if you’re anything like me, reading this tale might actually make you hungry). A rollicking good read.

They Will Take You From You, by Brandon O’Brien in Strange Horizons. “It did feel like I was making it for she. I start calling she Goldie—this lovely barn owl, wings like they was shimmering in water under full moonlight. She would come every night, watch me make something, see it when it finish, and then give a kind o’ bow and fly away…”

A beautiful story about art and creativity and inspiration. Owl-like beings called the Benefactors walk the world, and their presence is at once enticing and threatening: they plant seeds of genius in some chosen humans, but they also claim these geniuses after death, calling it a “cultural harvest”. O’Brien’s prose is lyrical and spellbinding, and this story really got under my skin.

Rest Stop, by Letitia Trent in Gamut. “She looked up at the blue and imagined this sky during a storm, the clouds piling up, bruised and filled with electricity, threatening funnels and hail and rain enough to flood a prairie. It must be such a burden to live under such a heavy sky, she thought. It must do something to you.”

I love stories that take the every-day and twist it into spine-chilling horror. Trent does just that in this sharp and terrifying tale. A rest stop, a mysterious symbol on the wall, a familiar name, a date, and then, the inescapable smell of death. Perfectly crafted, this quietly told story still manages to hit you where it hurts.

Like The Desert Dark, by Chloe N. Clark in Gamut. “I turned from the darkness. Somewhere, time was different and my daughter was gone and I had never been the parent that she needed.”

Clark weaves together a moving and deeply unsettling story from a man’s memories of his daughter, and of his wife, both of them scientists. There are strange experiments that involve space and time and a “shadow biosphere”. There’s a childhood accident that almost claims a life. There’s another accident, or is it an accident?, that results in a disappearance and maybe a death. With each beat, this story twists itself into something stranger and more mysterious, and the ending left me breathless.

The Bone Beaters, by A.M. Muffaz in The Dark. “Watching long leg bones crack and splinter, listening to the rhythmic pounding while she sucked on a new sliver of meat, Tashi felt more at ease. – – – It was easy to believe that in that moment, all their problems were as insignificant as little shards of bone.”

This story plays out on a mountain where the dead are brought for their (somewhat gruesome) last rites. Muffaz skilfully wraps up the darkness and horror at the story’s core, in richly evocative descriptions of custom and tradition. This is a world where everyone tries to behave the way society expects of them, while all the while, something terrible is happening just beneath the surface. The story pulls you in with lush descriptions of the world and the inhabitants: their food and rituals, clothing and environment. Brilliant stuff from start to finish.

The Three-Tongued Mummy, by E. Catherine Tobler in Apex Magazine. “For a penny, the three-tongued mummy will tell you your fate. The three-tongued mummy will speak to you in sibilant whispers of the waters at the edge of the pier, the way they lick the stones as if in an effort to climb onto the pier itself...”

I have a soft spot for stories about ancient Egypt, curses, and yes, mummies. Tobler’s story twists and turns the usual cursed mummy story into something even darker and more disturbing than I expected. Ripped from its ancient tomb, sold, and then awakened by Jackson at the traveling circus to be put on display, there’s a horrible, haunting loneliness to this mummy. “You may have whatever you wish,” Jackson tells the mummy, and eventually, the mummy does get its wish. A wickedly dark tale, excellently told.

Heartwood, by L. Chan in Metaphorosis Magazine. “My lord,” she said. Her voice held the rough edge of granite crypts and the cool of marble tombstones. She took in her surroundings with glittering eyes. “The Mansion is not as I remembered it, and neither am I.”

The beautiful, poetic prose drew my right into this dark and chilling story that deals with love and obsession that last well beyond death. Again and again the protagonist resurrects the woman he loves hoping to recapture something he lost long ago. What really makes this story work is the defiant nature of the woman. Again and again she resists becoming what he wants to turn her into. This is a fascinating tale, that has the vibe of an ancient legend, retold.

Hexagrammaton, by Hanuš Seiner in TOR.com. “…the quiet song of the running engines could be heard. Their sound wavered with the rhythm of the crew’s words. The virus mediated the crew’s feelings to the engines, just as it opened their minds to the engines’ distant thoughts.”

I’m not sure I can even properly describe the premise of this unique and captivating story. Aliens have visited the solar system. They have infected? blessed? some humans with a virus that rewrites their genetic code into…something else. The aliens have left, but the infected humans are stuck, halfway to their ultimate metamorphosis. Now, a woman might have found something that will change everything. Mathematics, genetic reprogramming, fear, loneliness, a longing to explore the universe… All I can say is: read it. It’s a trippy, disorienting story that is well worth savouring.

A Heart, An Egg, A Lock of Hair, by Kelly M Sandoval in Daily Science Fiction. “She tries to remember the last time anyone touched her. She tries to remember her name. Ruin tugs her along, and she allows herself to be led.”

Oh. This one moved me. It’s such a deep and lonely story of love and loveless-ness, wanting and longing. Sandoval stitches a thin, silvery thread of possible redemption and hope into the tale’s weave, making it shine and glimmer. A profound love-story, with something that looks a lot like a happy ending.

When No One’s Left, by Lora Rivera in Reckoning. “And this broken species of ours should never again have dominion over the earth, now that it’s free. We do not deserve this second chance. I’ve told him this. He agrees.”

I love the dark, unsettling, and lyrical tone of this story, set in a world that is almost completely devoid of humans. Two people remain, and they are trying to survive together, haunted by the choice between extinction and… maybe, something like love. Gorgeous prose, and a mesmerizing voice.

The Rule of Capture, by Christopher Brown in Reckoning. “I knew foxes were living back in there in the woods behind the door factory, but the first time I saw one was when it was running away from a realtor.”

This is a non-fiction piece, full of laws and regulations that deal with property and ownership, but the ending, and the skillful writing elevates it to something a lot more than just dry legalese.

Prayers to Broken Stone, by Cat Sparks in Kaleidotrope. “I’ve got ghosts,” says Morgan. “They cling to us when they want to.”

This is a profoundly strange and evocative tale of a world haunted by shadows and ghosts, war and despair. It’s a world that feels eerily familiar to our own, but where reality shifts and warps in the presence of mysterious, shadowy figures. Each person in the tale is somehow caught up in a nameless fear they can’t defeat or even see or understand clearly. “We let these creatures through and there’s no turning back…” I re-read this piece a couple of times, just to savour the prose and the ever-twisting and shifting layers of reality.

   (Originally published at mariahaskins.com) 

 

9 incredible speculative fiction short stories

 

December was a busy month for me: lots of feasting, lots of traveling, lots of reading, too. Here are nine stories that are for keeps.

Wooden Boxes Lined with the Tongues of Doves, by Claire Humphrey in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Quite simply one of the best short stories I read in 2016. Magic, love, war, and secrets kept for nefarious purposes… It’s the kind of story that made my heart skip as a reader, and as a writer, I feel like reading it a million times just to appreciate the amazing craftsmanship and luminous talent of how Humphrey creates a world, a mood, and spins it all into such gorgeous dark magic.

Where She Went, by Linden A. Lewis in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. “Rhee walked towards the towering obelisks, a hundred feet tall and thick as two men, spurs singing in the desert sand, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his brow and one hand poised above his revolver.” A grandfather goes on a quest to find his grand-daughter, a quest that has him heading into a place where nothing is what it seems… and oh my gosh, how I love this story. It is fantasy and science fiction in one, weaving in fairytale creatures and settings in the telling. And, it also has a sort of wild west flavour.

The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage, by Alix E. Harrow at TOR.com. “Without us, the land won’t lie still. It writhes and twists beneath their compasses…” In an alternate version of our world, the land itself changes shape when people move through it, defeating the attempts to tame and cultivate it. Mapmakers are needed to hold the land still, but it is a job that takes a heavy toll. An amazing story, in a uniquely imagined world, with a heart of grief and hope and sorrow.

Too Many Ghosts, by Steve Rasnic Tem in The Dark. “As the tiny lights blinked indistinct faces and pale twisted bodies floated momentarily out of the bark.” An old man carves wood, and sometimes pumpkins, finding the faces of the dead in the material. This is a ghost story of sorts, and Tem expertly weaves a deep and evocative mythology into the telling. A gloriously inventive and evocative read.

Uncontainable, by Helen Stubbs in Apex Magazine. “At intervals, all night, she fights invisible monsters. It’s like something is trying to devour her soul.” A child who doesn’t act the way she is supposed to. A lodger who becomes her friend. And a very strange, seemingly helpful woman feeding her special milk to babies… This is an exceptionally creepy tale of mounting horror as you begin to realize just how much darkness lurks beneath the surface. 

The Blood Drip, by Brian Evenson in Nightmare Magazine. “My jaw?” asked Nils. He reached up and prodded it, and Karsten thought he saw a jag of bone push up beneath the skin. Then, with a swift movement he crunched the jawbone back in place. “What do you mean?” Evenson’s story is the kind of scary story I love: it’s unsettling to the extreme, and suffused with a slow-creeping, disorienting, almost hallucinatory madness and horror. Brilliant stuff.

All the Souls Like Candle Flames, by Vanessa Fogg in Luna Station Quarterly. “Mikki thought of the Sea Witch. She thought of the songs she heard in the night, the voice calling and the chime of drowned bells. “It’s all one sea,” she said.” This is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking stories I’ve read, and yet it is also full of love and hope and light. Fogg tells the story of orphaned children, the hard life near the sea, and the charms woven to protect the living from the Sea Witch, with exquisite care and skill.

Now We’ve Lost, by Natalia Theodoridou in Shimmer. “I used to grow chrysanthemums in my garden. Now it’s sown with cigarettes and shards of glass.” A story I could read over and over again, just because of the gorgeous language: how it flows and sways and sings, and makes the story shiver to life as you read it. The brutality of war lurks just beneath the surface and the hope of peace, even in defeat, is there too. A must-read.

The Three Nights of the Half-Gent, by Mário de Seabra Coelho in Strange Horizons. “More than once he told himself he would talk to her. After all, he was already dead, you can’t lose anything when you’re dead.” A ghost who revisits the love of his past. A flicker of hope, maybe, just out of (or within) reach. This is a different kind of ghost story, all aglow with gorgeous prose, and its very own take on what might happen after death.

 (Originally published at mariahaskins.com) 

18 superb speculative fiction short stories

 

I read a lot this past month, partly because I was having some trouble writing (writer’s insecurity demons rearing their heads), and so I read more instead. End result: a whopping 18 stories in this monthly roundup, including stories from two new publications:

• Anathema: Spec From the Margins – “a tri-annual speculative fiction magazine of work by queer POC“
• and Arsenika – “a quarterly journal of speculative poetry and flash fiction”

Both are well worth a look, featuring strong voices and great stories.

Now for an irregularly scheduled PSA:

Supporting the publications you like to read is a Very Good Thing To Do. Some publications (Fiyah, Gamut, and InterGalactic Medicine Show, for example) require you to buy an issue or a subscription to read their stories. There is also a lot of speculative fiction available for free on the web, but putting money down is a nice way to keep them going and show your appreciation. Buy a single issue or subscribe. For options, check out the publications’ own websites, Amazon, Patreon, or Weightless Books.

Anyway, here are 18 excellent stories I read in April:

Praying to the God of Small Chances, by L Chan in Arsenika. “I meet the god of small chances in a hospital waiting room, amidst the smell of unwashed bodies and overwashed floors.” Hope and grief mingle in this beautifully written flash fiction piece. It really captures that feeling of wanting to bargain with the god/s of life and death when someone you love is sick, and when you feel your own mortality lurking beneath the surface of everyday existence.

A Complex Filament of Light, by S. Qiouyi Lu in Anathema. “If you could peel back your skin, core a bone from your flesh, perhaps your skeleton would reveal truths about you, too.” Set in a frozen and forbidding Antarctica, this moving and aching story deftly explores anxiety, insecurity and depression, and how our sense of self, and our understanding of others, can be warped and distorted. There’s a strange encounter with an enigmatic presence in the icy wastes, and there are also powerful threads of light, hope and friendship woven into the story. Gorgeous prose.

Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus, by Bogi Takács in Clarkesworld.  “You inflicted the field upon us, without permission, without explanation. Of course you can say, “Why should we have asked? You were an octopus.” What I am right now is anyone’s guess.” Bewildering, mysterious, and profoundly moving, this story about how humans use (and change) other living creatures for their own ends, without considering the consequences, is mind-bending in the best way. It might also be the first story I’ve ever read that’s told from the POV of an octopus! (Bonus tip: also read Takács’s wonderful poem The Size of a Barleycorn, Encased in Lead in Uncanny Magazine.)

And In That Sheltered Sea, A Colossus, by Michael Matheson in Shimmer. “When the ghosts raise their voices to the heavens, their song is the sweet song of cloudstreak, fast-moving.” Oh my goodness, what a story. A woman living by herself in a strange place surrounded by her dreams and the ghosts of the past, and a stranger who arrives, setting something new in motion… I don’t often come across stories that make me think of Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing, but Matheson’s evocative story about love and loneliness and longing does just that. There’s something about the strange, yet familiar, world described here, with its own ancient rituals and traditions and deeply settled way of life completely captivated me. And the prose itself is so beautiful I could read and re-read this story a hundred times over.

Extinctions, by Lina Rather in Shimmer. “You’ve seen ghosts and you’ve seen demons, and you’ve killed a thousand monsters, but unlike your mother, you don’t make a life out of it, or so you tell yourself.” What I love most about this story (and there’s a lot to love about it) is the strong voice of the main character (you get such an immediate sense of her personality through the prose), and the way Rather brings to life a complex and vivid world of witchcraft and magic lurking beneath the surface of our everyday world.

Flowers in the Road, by Jennifer Todhunter in Syntax & Salt. “…a girl with short, brown hair, blooms out of the catchfly sitting in the middle of the conference room table, petals falling from her fingertips like blood.” This story is set in northern British Columbia, where Tina is part of a road-work crew. She’s haunted by guilt and grief, by old relationships gone wrong, and, suddenly, she is also haunted by ghosts that literally spring from the blacktop. Todhunter tells a rich, multi-layered story that touches on a real-world tragedy: the many women and girls who have gone missing on B.C.’s “highway of tears”. This is an amazing story that really got under my skin.

Say, She Toy, by Chesya Burke in Apex Magazine. “The skin on this body was too dark to bruise, but the man needed to know. “Tell me it hurts.”
“It hurts. Yes. It hurts.”” This is a brilliant and gut-wrenching science fiction story about violence, racism, and what happens to people and society when we decide that some individuals are worth less than others. It’s the kind of story that cuts like a knife, and it is also thoroughly compelling. A must-read.

The Selkie Wives, by Kendra Fortmeyer in Apex Magazine. “He says, “I love you.”
He says, “You belong to me.” And waits for it to be so.” Fortmeyer tells and retells the tale of the selkie wives, twisting and turning the lore, exploring it from various angles, and exploring the different ways it can be used and interpreted. I particularly love how she dives into each scenario by turning it into a vivid micro-story, and then pulls back to examine it from the outside. A thought-provoking read.

Thorn Tongue, by Sarah Read in Gamut. “…she pressed the wide ends of the thorns into the spaces where her teeth had been—tasted the copper tang of blood and the earthy dust of the vine, felt a cold wetness flow down her chin and knew it ran red. She’d need fangs to get Estella back.” Strange, vivid, and disorienting, this story drew me in from the very first sentence. The prose is lush and original, and the world is exquisitely imagined and detailed. There’s a quest, there’s a loss, there’s guilt and pain and darkness, and every word is intoxicating.

Vade Retro Satana, by Maurice Broaddus in Fiyah. “The drumming tugged at a part of Macia’s soul, the way an old vidgraph of distant relatives was both familiar and alien.” Some short stories are set in worlds so vivid and interesting, with characters you feel so powerfully drawn to, that it makes you wish for a novel. This is one of those stories. Macia is a religious soldier riddled with doubts, and haunted by her own past (“She felt like an incomplete bad poem. She prayed against her heathen thoughts late at night.”) Set in a place where religious soldiers wear biomech suits, and where science and zealotry is being used to “save” people from their own culture, this action-packed, gripping story pulled me in and made me crave more.

Talking to Cancer, by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali in Fiyah. “I begged, “Cancer, please don’t kill my mother.” It listened.” A compelling and powerful story about a woman who can communicate with cancer cells, and how her ability affects her own life and the lives around her. I really love the way Muhammad-Ali explores the complexities of what it might be like if you wielded this kind of power, and the consequences, intended and unintended, this might bring. It’s a poignant story without being maudlin, and a captivating read.

Meat, by Sandra M. Odell in Pseudopod (read by Linda Hamilton – yes, that Linda Hamilton). “A poster on the far wall of the crowded cafeteria chamber shows an identical man and woman in coveralls and happy smiles with their hands on the woman’s pregnant belly. The caption at the bottom reads: A REPRODUCTIVE WORKER IS A HAPPY WORKER. MED CALL TO SCHEDULE YOUR NEXT SEXTIME TODAY.” Fair warning: this is not a story for the faint of heart. Odell’s tale is simultaneously heart-breaking and gut-wrenching, shot through with gore, sex, visceral longing, and pain. It’s also mind-blowingly good. (And yes, Linda Hamilton is an awesome narrator!)

Murmuration, by E.Catherine Tobler in Intergalactic Medicine Show. “Sita Balachandran found the bone on her forty-first birthday, its pale wind-scoured point emerging from the dry Martian floodplain like the splintered stalk of a flower.” Any story that starts out with whale bones being found on Mars is a must read, as far as I’m concerned. More than that, this story brims with an aching longing to explore, understand, and connect to an alien world. Sita tries to understand both what the strange find on Mars means, and also to understand what lurks inside her own body. (“Some bit of Mars has gotten in there–hasn’t it?“) Yes, it has that beautiful Bradbury flavour that blends Martian soil with the human soul, and it’s the kind of scifi I have been in love with since I was a kid.

Crossing, by A.C. Wise in Lamplight Magazine. “Sometimes Emma Rose secretly believes she’s a princess from under the sea. Her parents found her on the shore, curled up in a giant oyster shell.” Wise’s fascinating story follows a woman who is powerfully drawn to the sea. As a child, she first encounters a strange and alluring, yet also threatening, presence while swimming. Through her life, the sea tempts and haunts her, and remains both a refuge and challenge. Her passion for the sea and swimming, weaves together with the love she finds and loses in her life: her first love, and the loves that follow. A rich and layered story that is well-worth both a second and third read.

The Awakening of Insects, by Bobby Sun at TOR.com. “Jingru yanked herself to the next tree just as the one she had been tethered to splintered at the base; the suit’s HUD recorded a sub-second increase from 50 to 500 degrees Celsius from within the flash.” This is the kind of “hard” science fiction I love: building a compelling story bit by bit, and then, in the end, successfully blowing my mind. Sun uses scientific observation and field research (on an alien planet, mind you) to create both action and suspense, and the ending had me hungering for more: surely there’s a sequel?

The Name, Blurry and Incomplete in His Mind, by Erica Mosley in The Dark. “Jentri listened to the blackness, waited—trembling—for a hand to reach out and grab her ankle.” I love haunted house stories, and this one freaked me the hell out. It starts off with a girl and her dad finding a name scribbled into various places in a house, and by the end, I was literally clutching my chest. A weird, dark, bewildering, and haunting story.

Red Hood, by Eric Schaller in Nightmare Magazine. “She never left home without the blood-smeared suit, and so everyone called her Red Hood.” Take one of the most well-known fairytales in the world, mix it with zombies, and you might end up with nothing but a bunch of tangled tropes. Instead, Schaller masterfully turns this into a gloriously dark and horror-ful tale that is at once familiar, completely new, and utterly compelling.

A Marvelous Deal, by Kate Dollarhyde in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. “The carrot opened a crack in its front wide like a grin and stretched its taproot taut.” Grief makes a lonely, orphaned girl willing to strike a bargain with, yes, a carrot. But striking a bargain in any fairytale is usually a dangerous thing, and so it is in Dollarhyde’s wonderful, frightening and heart-wrenching tale. As a reader, I was hooked from the first line to the last. As a writer, I know this is one tale I’ll be coming back to because I want to study the masterful way it’s crafted. A fantastic read.

  (Originally published at mariahaskins.com)