Short Fiction Fridays #15: Unexpected Characters
Golden thread, subscriber counts, ashes, and more...
Welcome to another Short Fiction Friday! This issue's theme is Unexpected Characters. One of my favorite reading experiences is realizing that a story is referencing something, because it unlocks a whole new layer of meaning. That reference can be anything from scientific fact to a Tumblr meme, but all of these stories have that layer in the form of famous figures. They also contain season finales, golden thread, YouTube analytics, cigarette lighters, and more...
“Raise-the-Dead Cobbler” by Andrea Corbin
Three witches gather to summon the dead. Jun helps, Mason brings back his late mother, and Isabel resurrects silent film comedian Buster Keaton. It’s not funny and she doesn’t intend it to be. Isabel has always been fascinated by him, only now that he’s here, she doesn’t know what to do. Unforgiving, solemn, and as inescapable as heat and shadows on a summer night.
CW: Death of a parent
Once I explain what happened, he decides to go by Joseph. Why? Well, it is his name. No, but why? Because this isn’t his life, now is it? It’s something different. He’s something different.
Read "Raise-the-Dead Cobbler" in Shimmer
“Sharing a Cigarette with Joan of Arc” by dante émile
The narrator of this flash piece meets Joan of Arc outside a dive bar and reflects on her sainthood. Poetic, resigned, and doomed.
CW: Death, loss of bodily autonomy
You know this because you’ve seen it before; over & over, you’ve seen Joan die. In poets’ tongues & in the tip of the artist’s fingers. In the sound a young girl’s hair makes when it falls on her shoulders, in the way a boy creates himself with a pair of kitchen scissors & his parents’ dismissal. Patron saint of non-conformists, angel of the oversized sweater, of the buzzcut & the transsexual. May your cigarette ash linger forever.
Read "Sharing a Cigarette with Joan of Arc" on Substack
“Starpoop” by Sandra McDonald
Alora tells her grandson, “Starpoop”, about all of Papa’s big plans for his reaction video channel. He watches classic science fiction shows and mostly makes silly faces, since he’s not even three yet. She’s already worrying that something is wrong by the time she finds the photos of his third birthday parties. Delirious, vulnerable, and loving.
CW: Unreality, pandemic, death of a family member (mentioned)
Papa has to work very hard to keep up with fresh content and sometimes your reactions are just not what we need them to be. For instance, you had no response at all to ST:TNG S4E5 with Dr. Beverly Crusher saying her most famous line. You just yawned. It was very disappointing. Do you remember that line? I think it’s very important, though it escapes me right now.
“Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart” by Sam J. Miller
It’s late 1939, and a Jewish cab driver is looking for solace in New York City. He finds it in the form of his only passenger that night: Ann Darrow, the woman who was carried to the top of the Empire State Building by Kong. Sorrowful, regretful, and vengeful.
CW: Death, antisemitism (mentioned), the Holocaust (mentioned)
Even with only five years’ driving under my belt, I’d already had more movie stars in my back seat than there were cross streets in Manhattan. But this was no movie star. No fraudulent sorcerer, whose magic was made up of lighting and makeup and special effects and screenwriting. This was Ann Darrow. This was someone who knew what magic was. Who’d been held in its hand. Who’d been lifted high into the sky by it, and then watched it die.
Read “Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart” in Clarkesworld
“Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold” by S.B. Divya
This Rumpelstiltskin retelling follows Rampalalakshmicharan, his blessing of the golden touch, and everything he has lost because of it. Ram grows from a curious young boy to a world-weary disabled adult while his childhood friend Ilse faces challenges of her own. Vivid, searing, and resolute.
CW: Death of parents, violent assault, abusive relationship
My first clear memory of Ilse has to do with my hands. We were out playing somewhere in the woods behind the hut, when she said, “Ram, why do you keep your hands like that?”
I tripped over the old lie about having burned them. We had lived in one place for so long that it no longer made sense. I was terrified. What could I say that she would believe? I grasped for a word and came up with schlecht. I knew it meant that something was not good.
“Oh.” She grabbed a low-hanging branch and swung from it. “Well, can you do this?”
Read “Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold" in Uncanny
“Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU” by Carmen Maria Machado
A novella in the form of 12 seasons of Law & Order SVU episode summaries. The episodes share the titles of their reference material, but the summaries diverge into a feverish kaleidoscope of shadow-selves, ghost girls with bells for eyes, contagious prophecy, and the heartbeat of the city. Dum-DUM. Dark, swirling, and hungry.
CW: Descriptions of sexual assault and murder typical to Law & Order SVU episode summaries, unreality, body horror, explicit sex, disordered eating
“Scourge”: Stabler hears it again. The sound, the drumming. It seems to come from the break room. When he goes there, it sounds like it is coming from the interrogation room. Inside the interrogation room, he hears it again. He bangs his hands on the two-way mirror, imitating the sound, hoping to lure it, hoping to see it, but all is quiet.
Read “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU” in The American Reader
UP NEXT
Changing reality has rules, unless it doesn't, or did at one point, or might in the future... The next issue's theme will be Magic.
THANK YOU FOR READING
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