December Short Story Update 1

Ten stories and poems I read earlier this year

****

1. Sing, Goddess by A V Greene in Corvid Queen

Cleo meets Aggie in a karaoke bar. Life’s hard for mythical creatures, but they manage. Cleo likes people more but stays away, chooses places to meet where they’re alone. Aggie, arrogant, doesn’t like people but always meets in crowds.

They always argue, always compete. And singing is their power.

Read This: Two old friends with very different views on people use their powers and song
Don’t Read This: Siren and Banshee go to a bar, catch up and argue

2. Missing Helen by Tia Tashiro in Clarkesworld

Mark, Helen’s ex- has news for her; he’s marrying her clone. Helen got out of her abusive home at sixteen and sold the rights to be cloned. It went for enough to pay for her degree. To find a career debugging robots. To meet Mark and find someone she could let her guard down to.

Mark has never worried about where his next meal or rent will come from. Never had to leave his family behind. There are parts of Helen he can’t fathom. And when the time comes he can’t keep the promise that it’s until death do they part.

A clone is like an adoptee, their identity kept secret from their donor, though the clone can contact their donor once they reach adulthood. Helen knew their lives would not overlap. The agency vets clients, the clone’s family can hardly be worse than hers. It was a way out, a means to an end. They would never meet. Until Mark saw the face on a dating app.

But this, of course, is not Helen’s story.

Read This: Story of a relationship and second chances
Don’t Read This: Second person story of someone’s failed marriage

3. The Ghost Lyrics by Jim Marino in Kaleidotrope

Evan’s a poet, and though he hasn’t written any for four years the poems from twenty years ago are taught and make him financially comfortable. He teaches, and he’s separated from his wife. Then one day he gets a letter from an institute that claims to have a chair that lets you experience other lives in other time periods, the Ghosteye.

There’s no evidence, it works for some people and not for others and it mysteriously stops working for people. All you bring back is what you saw and that’s just fragments. People think it’s a con, an illusion. The college lets Evan go. His wife sues him, claiming incompetence.

There are things he needs to know, things from the past, things from other viewpoints. Things that will let him write. Things that will tell the truth. But others have tried this before with the Ghosteye. And they have come to bad ends.

Read This: Effortless blending of personal and impersonal history and fiction and truth
Don’t Read This: Time travel proves nothing that wasn’t already known

4. Dybbuk-Draw by Devan Barlow in Kaleidotrope

It’s been many years since Antonina has sensed a dybbuk, a lost spirit possessing someone. It was her grandmother who had the talent who drew them out. Now she has been invited to the Herilivion Academy to see the Founder’s Collection, to consider if she can be a curator there. The infamous pictures of Jean Herilivion, which the Arch-Curator assures her almost certainly will not driver her to despair.

The secret of Jean Herilivion’s magic was to bind lives to his own, to protect himself while he collected ensorcelled artworks. And so the collection. Yet he murdered his muses, and as Antonina now knows, they remain here. Some people say you need a rabbi, but grandmother told her it was a different skill.

One she has to use before the curators.

Read This: Fast moving, dark story of secrets from the past and possession
Don’t Read This: Dark magic, necromancy, murder etc

5. The Moon’s Only Daughter And The Teeth Of Time by Malda Marlys in Kaleidotrope

For every immortal created there is born a predator that eats them. Most die swiftly but some survive to be cunning, to hunt the greatest and longest lived. Our narrator has succeeded for now, until it comes to a strange cottage. And there it is caught in a wicker basket. Somehow the spellcraft is tight, no way out.

It’s when they see that the cottage is always in moonlight (arranging deliveries a problem) that it understands. This is the Moon’s Daughter, a power in her own right and as old as creation.

Yet even the Moon’s Daughter might have need of an eater of immortals.

Read This: Dark hunting of the supernatural meets all-powerful cosiness
Don’t Read This: A lot of inexplicable things happening at once

6. But Depart Into The Wild Mountains by Caro Jansen in Baffling

The husband expects an exterminator, doesn’t expect the woman in the wheelchair. He’s careless, when she always has to take care. He wants the problem gone.

His wife Kristen has turned into a giant bug. What has caused this, what extremity has forced her into such a desperate metamorphosis? The husband doesn’t care. The exterminator does.

Read This: Would you still love me if I were a bug? Did you love me before I was a bug?
Don’t Read This: Unpleasant bit of pest control

7. permutations by Eva Papasoulioti in Kaleidotrope

A poem of navigation, or stars and space. Of being lost and being found. Of being people out in the darkness.

A poem of directions and more, all compressed into 18 lines.

Read This: Gorgeous words pointing towards deep feelings
Don’t Read This: Stranded in the middle of a voyage with no end or beginning

 

8. I Opted For Praying Mantis Arms by Katy Bond in Kaleidotrope

Insurance only covers one procedure. Others at the company have chosen useful adaptions, to the eyes to read screen easier, to translate from foreign offices, to reinforce the nerves for working long hours. They’ve opted for something else.

Maybe they’re not practical. Or maybe they are.

Read This: Corporate cyberpunk office satire that cuts deep
Don’t Read This: Absurd to the point of being silly

9. Sparrow And Parasol by Varsha Dinesh in Tasavvur

In the Crimson City the Red Parasol is the paramount god, magic gorged by prayer and offerings. Sparrow is a much lesser god, of tricks and underhanded methods, spilling childling birds. But her client wants her to kill Red Parasol and has given her the means to do so. The Aunties cut into her, forming her into a weapon of iron and hellfire.

Sparrow knows they’re useful, they deserve more prayer. And when they kill Red Parasol everyone will know it. Sparrow will get what they deserve.

Read This: Boldly imaginative, almost hallucinogenic story of underworld dealings, god-magic, envy, and revenge
Don’t Read This: Weird bird crime god commits stupid and violent crimes

10.  Fish Upon A Star by A R Fredericksen in Haven Speculative

He inherited the starfisher from his father. It looks like a fishing rod but can pluck stars from the sky. If someone wished upon a star, as a child, then when it comes true the star falls. If they regret the wish, he can pluck the star from the sky averting it. If they still desire it, why, they’ll pay him money to leave it alone.

It’s not a strictly legal business.

He goes to Glimm, the tinkerer, a former boss, former friend, maybe lover. And Glimm asks for his star. The one he wished for as a child. He’ll have to take a promise on that, he needs the starfisher to deliver.

Glimm is the only one who knows what the wish was, not even Loirelle knows. His father knew, but his father’s wish was a tough one. And it turns out this isn’t arbitrary. Or at least not completely.

Read This: Darkly down-to-earth story of wishes, regrets and stars
Don’t Read This: A fishing rod that catches stars is a weird metaphor for family tragedy