December Short Story Catch Up 2

1. What The Dead Birds Taught Me by Laura Blackwell in Nightmare

Mary and her sister Alice are necromancers, though they hide it. If you raise something from the dead you have to offer it something it wants, and in return it will do you a favour. Mary does this to birds though she does not need their favour.

There’s a man who they know has killed, and not small animals. Perhaps he’s worked at the slaughterhouse, or perhaps he’s a veteran. In any case Alice tells Mary to stay away and Mary knows she should.

But one day they argue and she goes back to his house. And there is a room there that she should not enter.

A room she knows is full of death.

Read This: To learn what the birds taught her
Don’t Read This: You know this story, you know what’s in the room

****

2. The Truth Hunter by Thea Cooke in Translunar Travelers Lounge

Montenegro and Doyle are Truth Hunters, a fine partnership. Everyone assumes that Sam Doyle is the competent hunter, while Lady Montenegro has the connections. But in fact the partnership has split up and Lady Montenegro is trying to make enough to buy Doyle out.

A Truth is a dragon. If a Truth bites you it’s venom can kill you with it’s epiphany (and in small doses it’s a popular drug). Lady Montenegro has been bitten many times and knows how to survive.

There’s a Truth as big as a locomotive and the Queen wants it got rid of. The fee will be nice and if she sells the venom it might allow her to pay her debts. Lady Montenegro will have to confront the biggest Truth she has ever seen.

Read This: To see Lady Montenegro hunt a Truth
Don’t Read This: That a Truth grows in darkness, explodes into the light and literally blows peoples heads off is a bit too pointed a metaphor

****

3. An Eight-Treasure Hunt by Anya Ow in Translunar Travelers Lounge

Baozi is a hunter, travelling beyond the seal, hoping to catch an exotic animal to turn into an eight-treasure feast. Though he might not win, if he places well enough – with his grandmother’s recipes – he might bring home enough money to help his village.

He meets though Master Lee, a noble who is being hunted in turn by assassins. Baozi helps him, despite his antipathy to nobles, and Lee helps him in return, though in an arrogant, dismissive way.

Between them they might learn about each other and come to an understanding. And eat some good food.

Read This: For an enjoyable adventure, and, as it happens, a third story by Anya Ow in the same world and touching on food
Don’t Read This: Antagonists overcoming their differences over dinner and fighting enemies is not for you

****

4. The Green Man’s Wife by Archita Mittra in Tasavvur

Your elder sisters marry and go away and you never hear from them. You do hear from the plants and the night before you will marry the Green Man comes and offers himself rather than the stranger. And despite a life behind a mask and amongst the stone-hearted fae you accept.

But not forever and one day you will return to the mortal world and live with your children, as apart from society as ever.

Read This: A masterful mixture of different folklores and choosing the difficult consequences of situations
Don’t Read This: Don’t marry the fae, no matter how poor the (fairytale) alternatives are

****

5. My Darling by Abhinav Bhat in Tasavvur

A man studying mathematics writes to his love. He knows, now, at the end, that he loves someone.

His theorems have been questioned and mocked, for with divine insight he knows them to be true, but the scholars demand that he write out his proofs. Which may take years, years that the mathematics will languish.

There is a solution and it will not be without cost. To him and the one he loves.

Read This: For a twisty, turny, spooky story of obsession
Don’t Read This: As an apology this sucks

****

6. Gothic Girls by Aimee Pichi in Medusa Tales

There are girls who go gothic. Not as in fishnets-and-too-much-eye-make-up, but as in turning into cathedrals.

Olivia sent a compromising selfie to a boy who then spread it about. And she goes gothic as her friend Kera watches. Kera is put into quarantine. All the girls are put into quarantine. All the women. Some boys and men choose to worship women, both those who go gothic and those who don’t.

None of this addresses the issue, and Kera escapes.

Read This: Because the women are turning into cathedrals no matter how the authorities try to control them
Don’t Read This: The dangling ends of the metaphor provoke annoyance rather than wonder

****

7. wandluv.com by Aimee Parkison and Meg Pokrass in Lost Balloon

David is on wandluv.com trying to meet witches. Specifically Rhianna. She keeps chatting with him. She keeps ghosting him.

She haunts his dreams. It’s magic.

Read This: For the magic of dating apps and a dating app for magic
Don’t Read This: The only thing worse than magic is dating apps

****

8. The Pursuit At Dawn by Neena Halle in Overtly

Deeqo and her mother Hooyo live in Minnesota. One early morning Hooyo is driving Deeqo to her college classes when a car in front is driving erratically. A hand appears from the back of the car. Someone is in the trunk.

They call the police, who send cars, but Hooyo will not leave them to it. As they follow deeper into the countryside she asks her daughter, “What will I tell Allah on the Day of Judgment? That I saw someone getting hurt but got too scared and walked away?”

Read This: For a cool ordinary people caught up in crime story
Don’t Read This: You want certainty rather than murkiness

****

9. When I Die by Andrew Neil Smith in Apocalypse Confidential

Professor Smith has had a career as a cult writer, putting out books with little mainstream success but niche interest. He’s taught creative writing. And he has an enemy, one of his former students.

Raymond Rothschild, the most successful writer to ever graduate from the creative writing program. He writes bestselling science fiction and fantasy epics.

He took no advice from the program, did not read what was suggested. Smith dislikes his work. Rothschild keeps crediting Smith as his mentor. Rothschild positions himself as Smith’s greatest fan. Rothschild might have plans for Smith, after he’s dead. After he can’t speak for himself.

Read This: For a scathing, jealousy-tinged execration that merges with a meditation on life and death and a strange horrible afterlife
Don’t Read This: It’s complaints and a weird fantasy

****

10. The Turnip, or, How the Whole World Was Brought to Peace by P H Lee in Lightspeed

Two brothers retire from the army and take plots next to each other. One gets good land, the other bad. But that’s okay as the brother with the good land gets to help his brother and feel superior.

The brother with poor land grows a giant turnip, possibly the largest turnip known to man. He decides to take it to the king.

A sly look at fairy tales, and parables, and truth and stories.

Read This: To find out how the turnip brought peace to the entire world
Don’t Read This: This is far too silly and worse, slyly knows it