April Stories Update

Five stories I read in 2024, bringing my short story notes/reviews for the year to an end.

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1. The Vessels Of Song by Avram Klein in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

The Badchan Yankel leads a troupe of Jewish musicians. They complain and do their in jokes and are broad characters – in this story told by the Badchan Yankel. In 1618, two days out of Grodne they go into an inn, only to discover demons are there.

But they are not just musicians, or perhaps music is not just music. As Jews in Central Europe in the 17^th century they are always wary of trouble and danger. And despite their complaints they can work together. A charming dark horror story of music and companionship.

Read This: Fun story of travelling musicians coming together to defeat evil
Don’t Read This: Awkward juxtaposition between monstrous evil, banal evil and ridiculous clowning

2. A Bone Garden by Reed Weston in Crow And Cross Keys

The boy and the girl disappeared. No, not disappeared. They transformed in the Bone Garden.

It’s known that this can happen. Benny was the first one, they recognised a distinctive fracture in his tibia. They put a fence around it, and then sold tickets. The bones grow strangely, freakishly. No one is allowed to visit more than once a month. The groundskeepers are on a strict rotation, one day on, twenty off.

So it’s a matter of bad luck that he’s the one who finds what happened to the boy and the girl.

Read This: Discover the alien attraction and horror of the bone garden
Don’t Read This: People get turned into bone-plants 

3. The Witch And The Spaceship by Allison Wyss in Moon Park Review

The witch is trying to sew a daughter from the usual ingredients, a heart, a tuna fish sandwich, a bolt of common corduroy. The spider is spinning a web and intends to get revenge, as the witch knocked down the last web.

Inside the web the witch sews the daughter. Outside the web the spider plots revenge. Between them is mystery.

Read This: Two stories of strange magic combine into something extraordinary
Don’t Read This: The nature of the spaceship is just odd

4. Three Hearts To Love Myself by Elena Zhang in Lost Balloon

The ice age comes and Beth grows extra limbs, leaves her husband, flees down into the dark ocean escaping the ice. Escaping the expectations, becoming something new.

Read This: Explosive super-short of escape and transformation
Don’t Read This: Why ice age, why octopus, why this?

5. Wolf Skulls Four Dollars (Harwich 1713) by Corey Farrenkopf in Necessary Fiction

Richard’s father tells him the dog is for work, not a friend. Richard doesn’t listen. When the dog escapes, Richard’s father is hunting wolves. There is a bounty after too many chickens have been taken.

Richard is not hunting the wolves. He will encounter them nonetheless. They have a question for him, and for the dog.

Read This: Dark wolf fiction
Don’t Read This: Very simple be kind to animals story