Short Story Catch Up - May

It's time to finish reviewing short fiction I first read in 2023. it's five more stories, let's go.

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1.The Dream Dealers Of Percival Street by Lisa Voorhees in Crow And Cross Keys

Fidelia and Dorlyn are the Shadowmend sisters, the Dream Dealers of Percival Street, healers. A woman appears on their doorstep in a storm, a woman who won’t – can’t – give her name or what is wrong. They persevere with tinctures and teas, resorting to dream walking.

They give her the name Lily. They discover she had magic. But now it is burned out, used up in service to the queen. And they know of no way to restore it. Lily is lost in nightmares.

It will take a miracle to return her to herself. A miracle, or at least a miraculous flower, the storm flower. But there has not been one seen in living memory. They have very little magic, but they will try, because it is the healing that matters.

Read This: A story of magic and healing and trying to mend what has been broken
Don’t Read This: Miracles and magic flowers can’t fix people

2. Travelling Salesman by Zoe Kaplan in The Cosmic Background

Travelling Salesmen hardly ever eat humans and even when they do it’s in areas where it’s all built up with strip-malls, not enough room to roam. Here in this town, with farms and forests all about it’s fine. So our narrator puts out a bowl of soup or a beer and sometimes the Travelling Salesman leaves something behind.

But the narrator lives with their sister and the sister doesn’t want to take that chance. But the Travelling Salesman will not go hungry.

Read This: For an askew look at living with dangerous, other creatures
Don’t Read This: Travelling Salesman are not creatures to be endangered in this way, and are no more a threat than any other profession

3. Pulmonary by Avra Margariti in The Rumpus

Our narrator lives in the cancer-riddled lungs of their dead mother. They are larger than you might think, but not large for a home. They fold paper into the shapes of organs for museums and novelty gift shops, but not lungs. They go on dates to meet new people, because they cannot face the old.

On her date they meet a woman who becomes their girlfriend. She believes she is dead. She is glad to meet someone who is nice to her despite being dead. She finds the lungs cosy and warm.

A story that is about grief, but more, it’s about the world being strange, unbearably different. And about organs, the inside of the human body. Mostly about that.

Read This: To understand what it means to live within a dead loved one, to live with someone who is dead
Don’t Read This: All these body parts and death-belief just convolute the real feelings

4. Caught In The Cat’s Cradle by Olivia McNeilis in Crow And Cross Keys

Alice is walking home when she sees a gallery she’s not seen before. She is always apologising. Going in there’s an artist she’s not familiar with, though everyone there seems familiar with him. Alice often feels out of place. In one picture some women are doing cat’s cradle. Yet no one there knows about the string game, or about Vonnegut, and the description suggests it was an invention of the artist.

She goes home, to where she lives with her boyfriend. Thing seem mixed up. Tangled perhaps.

Read This: To see Alice find herself out of place
Don’t Read This: We all feel out of place and there’s no answers here

5. Mise En Place by Rick White in Roi Fainéant

David and Helen are going to see Craig, an old friend, who is also their lawyer. They’ve been separated and are back on civil terms, mostly. David hasn’t seen Craig for five years, and now David wants to deal with some legal issues. Craig insists on seeing them in person, as his fee.

The last time David saw Craig he threw up over his dog. Craig insists he apologises – to the dog. David can’t bring himself to feel happy for other people’s success, so Craig’s nice house – Craig aging well, just annoy him. Craig’s cooking them Beef Wellington. Mise En Place – setting the scene, preparing everything in advance.

David’s deflected questions on why now, why this, what’s going on. He’s been setting the scene. Mise En Place. But it’s not the scene they expect.

Read This: A paused friendship – a broken marriage – brought farcically to life
Don’t Read This: All the flaws of annoying people brought to the fore