October Short Story Update

10 short stories I read earlier this year

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1.The Girl In The Sea by Faith Allington in Dark Winter

Lina loves the sea, living there with her mother and father. She knows she’s going to return to the sea. Knows she’s going to be a mermaid.

But her parents disagree. She belongs to them. She isn’t a drowned child. Not this Lina.

Read This: Not the mermaid story you’ve heard before
Don’t Read This: Too much drowning

2. Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These (Or, I Won’t Say I’m In Love Cuz It’s True) by Ell Huang in AZE

Essie finds herself in the (virtual) reality TV show Into The Sunset where someone who admires them wants to go on a fairytale date. But Essie didn’t ask for this, didn’t ask to be a princess. Wasn’t consulted on what fairytale she was in.

There are many possible versions of this story, but they all force Essie into boxes that aren’t hers. Despite what they know about her. They want a story that the audience will accept, a story they already know. They’ll look for it in various versions.

This isn’t that version.

Read This: A story of being offered everything you want, everything you ought to want, to be someone you aren’t
Don’t Read This: Literalised temptation very blatantly put forward

3. Belladonna Bride by Emily Anne Elliot in Litmora

The bride, of course, is doomed, hemmed in, the bright colours and flower imagery only showing up the violence of the wedding. But she’s not the only thing doomed.

A gloriously lush and vivid poem, the ambiguity of the flowers-as-description creating a mental space of magic and dark wonder.

Read This: Brutal yet delicate dismantling of flowers, poison and weddings
Don’t Read This: Flowers don’t get married

4. Bon Appétit by Grace Black in Roi Fainéant

Her husband will eat anything, drinks generic beer, yet he got her Julia Child’s cookbook as a wedding anniversary gift. “The only real stumbling block is fear of failure,” Child writes. She wants to prove that false, perfects eggs, then on to making pate.

Her husband does not seem to appreciate this. Does not appreciate her cooking. Her company. Her at all. Sheila, her friend, she does appreciate the food, the wine. The effort.

Sheila appreciates the husband.

Her husband doesn’t listen when she says she’s going to Paris, a dream she’s always had. He does like this pate. Sadly Sheila won’t enjoy it.

Read This: Deliciously dark tale of cooking, desire and betrayal
Don’t Read This: Grotesque revenge of very mundane problems

5. Discordant Fractions by Howard Andrew Jones in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly

Hanuvar was Volanus’s greatest general; while he was absent the Dervan Empire overthrew the city, taking it’s people into slavery. Hanuvar has vowed to rescue every one of them. He finds himself disguised as a Dervan noble at the Dervan villa of Laritus, a connoisseur of music who has three former Volani temple singers amongst his possessions.

And not just music. He writes on other cultures. One of his guests is a foreign Prince with his own collection of weapons and armour from legendary heroes, and is notorious for his strength at arms. Laritus is also the leader of a group, the Zenith. Group? Conspiracy theory cult. They believe that Volanus was attacked because Hanuvar was in league with The Vanished Ones to bring forth the immortality powers and now Hanuvar is in the Praetorians, pulling the strings behind the new emperor*.

Also at the party is Aleria, a thief who Hanuvar has encountered before, posing as a noblewoman. She knows Hanuvar isn’t who he’s pretending to be, thinks him another rogue running some sort of scam. She's after gems from Laritus’s collection.

Unlike many conspiracy theory cults, this one does have real supernatural powers at the heart of it. Hanuvar has to navigate an uneasy truce with Aleria, a warrior prince and unearthly powers to rescue his countrywomen.

This then is a solid swords and sorcery tale. But I want to note that this is part of Jones’s Chronicles of Hanuvar. These are novels where each chapter is a self-contained story like this. This is from the third volume, which I’ve not read. I have read some of the earlier stories, so I’m a little familiar with this, and pick up the analogies (the Dervan Empire is a fantasy Roman Empire etc). It stands alone, yet also entices us to find out more. That there are (wildly inaccurate) rumours of Hanuvar being alive and operating in the Dervan Empire is great. That he runs across another character he’s met before. This story also clearly pushes the greater narrative forward, even if we don’t have the pieces from the other chapters.

Read This: Excellent heroic fantasy hinting at the larger story without insisting on it
Don’t Read This: Swordsman fights cultists, many dangling plot threads

* Any points of comparison with real world conspiracy theories is entirely coincidental. Of course.

6. Calling On Behalf Of The Dark Lord by Catherine George in Translunar Travelers Lounge

Our narrator had to take a part-time job in a call centre. It’s working for the Dark Lord, trying to get worshippers for him. It can be a hard sell, the glowing tattoo is cool but the river of ice and joining the dark army rather than being smited when he takes power is a bit abstract. And not that enticing. They wonder what would happen if he turned up, but that seems unlikely, him coming to the call centre.

So she changes the script, just a little. Offering dark brunches, the desert of dry heat. Just little things, things that people actually want. Something in return for their worship. Something in return for the power it brings.

Maybe someone powerful will visit the call centre.

Read This: Fun look at evil cult and call centre marketing crossing over
Don’t Read This: The only thing worse than an evil cult is a call centre job

7. How Ethics Did And Did Not Evolve by Lance Manion in Misery Tourism

Our narrator got a job with Andrew, a gorilla who had learned sign language. His vocabulary dwarfed that of previous gorilla sign language. Our narrator begins every session by giving Andrew a treat. One day, going in to continue talking about art, Andrew gets his treat, then it’s revealed that he deceived the narrator. He had already had a treat. The gorilla had lied.

Our narrator decides to teach him ethics. This requires months of talking about philosophers. And our narrator thinks Andrew gets it.

Read This: A story of trickery and ethics that’s fun and funny
Don’t Read This: I do not think this experiment would pass even a cursory ethics review

8. Nightraven, Highway 9 by Wendy Nikel in Metastellar

Cryptid Observation, Rehabilitation, and Protection Society (CORPS) doesn’t officially exist, doesn’t have any authority. So when they’re called out on a 43, for a Nightraven, they run into problems. Like many corvids they’ll collect shiny things and someone is making a profit from them.

Never mind that it’s a bird with ragged five foot wings that make you vomit if you see light through them.

Read This: Short, brisk cryptid capture story

Don’t Read This: Just let the bird carry on, it’s not doing any harm

9. The Blob Takes Manhattan by Chelsea Stickle in Fractured Lit

With climate change The Blob is no longer confined to the Arctic. Everyone blames everyone else. Everyone has an opinion.

No one asks The Blob’s opinion.

Read This: Very short story about how people react to world events, and also The Blob
Don’t Read This: Watch The Blob instead

10. What Rage Or Madness Drives You by Jay Hulme from The Vanishing Song

This poem sees Joan of Arc in all her strange strength and power. And imagines what she will do when she arrives in heaven, a place of peace and justice, where she no longer need to take up arms. Yet that is what she was fashioned to do.

Read This: A queer Christian stab at the heart of what makes Joan so endlessly fascinating
Don’t Read This: You prefer the history to imaginative theology