Stories Catch Up 3

More stories I've read this year and thought I had something to say about them.

1. An Anatomy Of Waves by T R Siebert in Kaleidotrope

A selkie is a seal who can become a human. If someone takes their seal skin while they are human they cannot turn back to a seal.

The selkie shaved her body hair to fit in. She tried to be with the man. And then she left him, left behind her seal skin and went away, to work in a hotel, cleaning rooms.

Then he comes to the hotel, with his new woman. And that woman recognises her from the photos. And blames the selkie for what went wrong. And why not, she’s sacrificed too, given him her feathers for safekeeping.

But there’s always a way back. That was in the tales she was told as a pup. There’s always a way back. Even if it’s not what you thought.

Read This: For a selkie story about choice and running away
Don’t Read This: The whole seal pelt thing is not for you

2. By The Far Salt Lake by Portia Elan in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

The daughter of a scholar learns her aleph-bet. The letters dance and tell her what is possible. That is not what the sages say in his book, so he stops teaching her, though she is still there with his students.

Her father dies and she knows that someone will arrange something for her. She tears her shawl for mourning. Then when it is over, she repairs it.

And in the repair an angel comes.

A story about Jewish beliefs and folklore and society, and how repairing things can create a miracle. And a miracle might help heal the world.

Read This: A fairytale story about choice and from a Jewish perspective
Don’t Read This: Angels, miracles and deception are not for you

3. Armageddon Bride by Lindz McLeod in Kaleidotrope

The Apocalypse has come to town. They’re rumoured to be looking for a bride. They have, of course, no lands, no fortune, no family. But they are not entirely ineligible.

They court our narrator. And despite the darkness, the falling stars, the rains of blood, they find common ground. Despite? Say rather because of.

They will get married. And they will learn exactly what the Apocalypse has to offer to the Armageddon Bride.

Read This: You’ve always wanted to marry the Apocalypse
Don’t Read This: There’s a lot of blood and you can’t be having with that

4. Grown Gown by Derek Des Anges in Baffling

The gown has made been made from a mushroom fibre. Maggie is the model, a trans woman being used to promote Rita’s new material.

Mushrooms can also have psycho-active effects. Being brought out as a model, a figurehead, a message, that’s hard for Maggie. And the mushroom dress might bring her to a revelation.

Read This: The pitilessness of fashion and ways to change yourself
Don’t Read This: You don’t need mushrooms to have a breakdown or an epiphany

5. One Heart Lost And Found by Kat Howard in Lightspeed

A wizard is looking for a heart. They send you to find it. There is a lost and found carriage on the subway. There you meet Tanis, who brews tea and has bees onboard that make honey.

She might have the heart. She might have something you desire.

Read This: A twist on a quest given by a wizard
Don’t Read This: The strength of the story, that so much is left undefined behind a wall of description of lost and found, is a weakness for you

6. More Than A Feeling by Vik Shirley in Tiny Molecules

There’s a woman and she loves More Than A Feeling by Boston. She really loves it. She picks up guys and makes love to it. She picks up guys and has them sing it.

They guys may not be having as much fun, no matter how much Boston themed food she feeds them.

Read This: She likes the song too much
Don’t Read This: She likes the song TOO MUCH

7. Her Suffering, Pretty And Private by Aimee Ogden in Gigantosaurus

A hundred years ago the princess fell asleep and all her kingdom. Now they have woken again in a changed world.

Adalène made the princess’s gowns then. But now you can buy factory made dresses much more easily. So no one will pay her and everyone in the kingdom survives on charity, brought by motor trucks. And they are objects of curiosity by those from outside.

No one is to blame, or at least no one they can find. Not the princess. But they have to find some way of living in this new world.

Read This: For coming together and adapting when happy ever after happens to other people, when you’re left behind by progress and development
Don’t Read This: The whole conceit of Sleeping Beauty falls apart if you consider history actually occurring

8. Mame Coumba Lambaye’s Stinky Pinky by Mame Bougouma Diene in Omenana

In Rufisque, Department of Dakar, Senegal, Commissaire Ba receives reports in his police office. An unseen, invisible women is fingering men’s anuses. He finds this funny until he feels it himself, falling penis first into his office pride and joy, the shredder he had consigned the first reports to.

Now a man has been attacked, invaded, now an important man has been sexually assaulted. Now there is a plague of it amongst the men of the town.

Now there will be an investigation.

Read This: For a bawdy, outrageous read that makes a turn to the serious
Don’t Read This: You aren’t interested in supernatural fingering

9. Mark The Lesser by Sean MacKendrick in Roi Fainéant

Mark goes to restaurants, eats alone. He likes to go to Local Street Bistro, he likes Roman the owner and it helps as it always seems to be empty when he goes.

It’s always empty when Mark’s in and Imelda has noticed the pattern. He tests it out and everywhere he goes is quiet. Even the baseball game. And he likes Local Street Bistro so he stops going there.

Until Imelda asks him back one night.

Read This: A fun look at someone discovering that the world they live in is very strange
Don’t Read This: If whenever you go out the place is deserted. Or over-full!

10. Hideous Miracles by Barlow Adams in The Forge

There were three miracles one day, one summer, when our narrator and his friend Steak were back in Ohio. Both having dropped out of college, our narrator after a suicide attempt.

They played a lot of basketball, as Steak had a half-court, with lights for playing at night. And one time Steak throws from outside the court, from the roof of the house and gets a basket. And his cousin Try challenges him to do it again.

He makes it.

There are three miracles, and three murders, two suicide attempts. One lie. All part of our narrator’s life. All hideous miracles that led them to the present.

Read This: The chances that effect lives, echoing down the years
Don’t Read This: Every miracle contains a tragedy