December Short Story Catch Up 4

Maybe the final catch up of this year, bringing me up to what I read at the end of October 2022.

****

1. Outliving The Muse by Mike Fox in Frictive Dream

Four poets were linked in some way, or perhaps they were just the survivors of 25 years on the poetry circuit. One of them, Kip becomes a laureate. Was he the best of them? He lifts up other poets, including the other three.

By popularising them Kip’s own work is described as dumbing down, a terrible and unfair fate. Though perhaps the most unfair fate is left to our narrator who has outlived the others and his muse.

Read This: For a look at how poetry controls the poet
Don’t Read This: There’s no point and nothing to understand

****

2. Fairy Boon by Lorna McGinnis in Moon Park Review

Ashputtel sleeps by the hearth, her family make her do the chores. Fee, a seven foot tall woman with wings arrives to help.

It’s not quite the story you’ve heard.

Read This: A sharp and entertaining look at Cinderella
Don’t Read This: You like the gown and the glass slippers

****

3. Apple Girl by Gillian O’Shaughnessey in Moon Park Review

If you eat an apple pip an apple tree will grow inside you. Apples will fall from your mouth, blossom will spring from ears and belly button. People will worship the Apple Girl.

But the story moves on and apples miraculous one day become commonplace the next. And what’s left in the end? Magic and apples and love.

Read This: To find out what happens if you eat the apple pips
Don’t Read This: Apple pips contain cyanide, don’t eat them! 

****

4. Postmodern Seinfeld by Rebecca Bernard in Wigleaf

Our narrator has a great idea. To make Postmodern Seinfeld, the same scripts, the same sets, the same actors. It will be a fraction of the cost, but with a ready-made audience. And somehow, for some reason, it has a freshness to it.

Everything though has been done before. We know how things will end. There are no new ideas.

Read This: In re-treading old ideas we come to new conclusions
Don’t Read This: haven’t we seen this before?

****

5. Fish Folk by Breana Harris in Fractured

Mira and her mother are on the beach. They don’t fit in, perhaps because they are fat, perhaps because when pregnant the mother had to be taught human ways and objects, except the hairbrush. She knew what that was.

Read This: For how differences can be deceiving
Don’t Read This: Another mermaid story?

****

6. I Will You Back To Time And Space by Daffyd McKiimm in Podcastle

On G-day everybody gets a gorilla that follows them around. Everyone gets used to it eventually. Then ten years later someone is born without a gorilla.

The only person in the world who is not followed by a gorilla.

Read This: To see what happens to the girl with no gorilla
Don’t Read This: The tiny story leaves so much unsaid

****

7. The Portal Keeper by Lavie Tidhar in Uncanny

There is a magic portal and sometimes people, or other creatures, come out, and stay a while, or sometimes they just go again. There is a portal keeper. He does not get involved. Not really. Not much.

There’s a woman who wants to go through the portal but she can’t find her way there. She keeps following the Portal Keeper when he comes out to go to the shops. Maybe she’ll find her way in, though the Portal Keeper discourages her. But if she does then so be it, he’s the keeper of the portal, not her guardian.

This isn’t the only story, there’s a rabbit who is late, a man with a knife and his pursuers, three wise men, a woman whose calculations do not lead here where she wants amongst others.

Read This: For a gentle look at magic portal stories, without going through
Don’t Read This: If there’s a magic door, someone has to go through

****

8. Hunting Ground by Ariana Ferrante in Prismatica

Vanessa knows that when the Wild Hunt ride you do not answer the door. You do not respond to them. No matter what they say. The iron shod door will keep them out, keep you safe.

It did not keep Janet safe. And the fae, they cannot lie.

Read This: To learn what happens when the Wild Hunt comes through town
Don’t Read This: It’s fae propaganda