December Stories Update 2

Ten more short stories I read earlier this year

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1. Out Of Draconia by Alma Alexander in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Beyond the mining village, where they labour for the owners, is Draconia. The boys of the village go out to search and sometimes they find dragon’s eggs. Old, damaged, when put into the forge fire sometimes they hatch. For a short time the crippled dragons live and the boys know what it is to be loved.

Arylss is the motherless daughter of the smith, built like her father. If she were a boy she would be the smith, or a miner. As it is the smith sends her to Draconia. She stays away so long that he fears she will not return.

She brings back an egg and it is perfect. Dragons are freedom on the wing and no mine owner, no village owner can take it away.

Read This: Finding hope in an unexpected place
Don’t Read This: The dragon changes nothing and the dragon changes everything but we don’t see any of that

2. The Cobra-Girl by Smitri Ravinda in Many Worlds

A woman gives birth to twins, a boy and a cobra. Everyone is shocked but the cobra hides in the walls. Her mother feeds her, keeps her secret from everyone except the brother. The brother grows up to be interested only in video games. When the cobra has grown the mother dresses her to be so pretty, as woman-like as possible. She brings her in to the house to help out.

Every day she takes tiffin out to the fields to her father, who does not know her. Every day the tea-stall owner sees her. One day there is no one on the street, and he wishes to do something terrible, to destroy her. And no girl could resist him.

Yet a cobra can, though it will cost her.

Read This: A fable of beauty, cruelty and cowardice
Don’t Read This: Everyone thinks a cobra is a girl

3. Coffin Corner by James McCrone in Tough

Dean Sassuolo owns a funeral parlour. Little Joey Tedesco couldn’t find the money for his mother’s funeral so Dean let him owe it, like a good neighbourhood business. But it’s time and past time so Dean took action. He took Joey’s car.

But it turns out there’s something in Joey’s car that doesn’t belong to him. Joey’s made a deal to pay off the debt, a deal that has some very bad people. So Dean and Joey have to get together, to take the car to the place Joey agreed.

Dean’s daughter Nadine thinks this is all getting out of hand. So Dean keeps her informed. Texts her where they are. Let’s her know they’re okay. But Nadine has plans of her own, she can get old-school and neighbourhood with the best of them.

Read This: Old-fashioned crime caper with people getting out of their depth
Don’t Read This: Just a lot of dodgy people doing dodgy things, also disrespecting the dead

4. Queerbait by Sean Dowie in Maudlin House

Peter is a fisherman who fishes for gay mermen. Explicit gay content is not allowed on land, not even in the pursuit of mermen whose flesh is not only delicious, but can provide happiness beyond expectation; some people have never felt happy until they eat it. The queerbait they use to catch the mermen are deniable images of same-sex characters looking meaningfully or having fleeting, accidental contact.

Peter is from a fishing family. He should not think about the merman, about the moment they have together. He needs to concentrate on fishing, on getting a wife. On the butchering to come. This isn’t a queer moment, it just looks like one.

Read This: Absurd, impassioned story of being all at sea (in the closet)
Don’t Read This: We’re not being baited, we’re the catch

5. Every Ghost Story by Natalia Theodoridou in Reactor

At the Apparition ghosts appeared. Our narrator has been sent to Ghost Camp (Centre for the Research and Rehabilitation of Spectral Visitors). It’s not to try to understand the ghosts, or communicate with them. It’s to come to terms with what it means.

The ghosts appear to be covered in sheets, or projection cloth, or shrouds, but when they’re taken off – violently – nothing’s there. They speak but it makes no sense. The narrator finds the camp as expected, a lot of talk, a lot of people whose names start with J. They are there after they split up with their girlfriend, they got in a car crash and they don’t talk.

They’re not there to understand the ghosts, they’re not there to communicate with them. Some people can’t see them. Some attract them. There’s a place where the ghosts are trapped by barbed wire, and that makes no sense.

Read This: Story about strangeness impinging on life, and the inability to face loss
Don’t Read This: You know this story, it’s every ghost story

6. The Crow Who Owns The Stop Sign by MC Childs in Penumbric

Xochi-Ann greets the crow who owns the stop sign. The crow tries to recall it’s last life, lives this one, assembles parts. They might be a message for others who have come to Earth.

Xochi-Ann is six years old and might have parts the crow can use, things her parents might think precious or lost or worthless.

Read This: Fragment of a story, telegraphically telling much
Don’t Read This: Actually quite an ominous ending

7.  My Dad Who Lives In The Walls by Chris Scott in Gooseberry Pie

Exactly why Dad decided to move out of their lives and into the walls isn’t clear, though the family left behind speculate. They know he’s there, by his movement. They know he’s there by his absence and what he didn’t do before he moved.

Read This: Absurd six sentence story about families and separation
Don’t Read This: The metaphor is obscure, the emotional whiplash to great for such a slight piece

 

8. Savannah And The Apprentice by Christopher Rowe in Lightspeed

Savannah the Librarian, her mule Seldom and the demon she is bound to, Boy, leave the city following a bounty. An apprentice has killed his master and fled. The murder was foul, and the master left behind a widow and babe so Savannah is not  inclined to mercy.

But up in the hills she comes across a body that doesn’t match the description. One that rises from the dead. There’s more to this than meets the eye. Savannah and Boy are unwillingly bound together, and when they encounter another bounty hunter, one who can hardly have time to have heard of the crime, they will be tested to their limits.

Read This: Darkly entertaining swords and sorcery with a chaotic demon sidekick and an enemy who is somehow worse than imagined
Don’t Read This: Murder, rape and other crimes taken as standard

9. The Fox’s Cartographer by Devin Miller in Small Wonders

The Fox is the ringleader of the Vulpine Circus. One day a woman arrives, wanting to join. Her only skills are cartography, or perhaps navigation. She offers to take them to new places, places they’ve never been before.

The first place is a town they’ve visited before, but from a new direction. And the people who come to them are different, stranger. Something that intrigues the Fox.

Read This: Short tale of finding old places new and magical
Don’t Read This: We learn nothing about the circus!

10. Swine Smuggling: The New American Art by Mason Dougherty in The Molotov Cocktail

Our narrator drives a lorry and smuggles feral pigs to rich men who release them to hunt as an invasive species. He spends the money on bath salt benders, then collects garbage to attract feral pigs from the land to smuggle to the next rich man who wants to hunt them, in increasingly bizarre ways.

This is a blackly absurd story that gets more hilarious the more damage that is caused. And if you think that this swine smuggling is a tragedy, well the story is not holding your hand, nor pointing out the allegory, but it’s clear as a truck carrying fifty to seventy five feral hogs down the highway.

Read This: Dark story making fun of a self-and-other-destructive rampage
Don’t Read This: Dark story making fun of a self-and-other-destructive rampage