1 and 2. “Flume”, Séan Padraic Birnie and “The Philosopher’s Skeleton”, Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece

Snapped up an epub of Pale Grey Idol Issue Zero, the new publication edited by Michael Kelly (editor of Undertow Publications, Weird Horror, Shadows and Tall Trees) and of course, the level of quality is uniformly high but there’s a couple I find myself particularly wanting to talk about. To wit, in Séan Padraic Birnie’s “Flume” there is such a tightly orchestrated structural perfection in the experience of reading this story about two brothers on a trip to the local swimming pool with the “Big Slides”. The windup on the bus ride, the ascent of the stairs, the momentum building up to the sudden final splash, so abrupt and so cold.

Then, apropos perhaps for October, there’s a story about skeletons, specifically the one hanging in our narrator's classroom with a fiery red gemstone in its forehead. It's also about the irruption of television into the bucolic life of a bizarre cult preparing for the return of the beloved Philosopher. Turns out, though, the Philosopher’s skeleton is not quite like the ones they see on TV...I enjoyed this one so much that I had to look Szczepaniak-Gillece up online, where I discovered she is a professor of Film Studies (and Director of the Films Studies department, apparently) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and has authored many articles published in journals such as Film History and Film Quarterly, with intriguing titles like “Spectatorship’s Intoxicating Field” or “Bombed Pasts, Burning Futures: Notes on Demolition and Exhibition”, all of which I mention because it’s a research area that seems quite clearly and directly to inform her fiction in this case, and because I’m very interested to read more from her and more Pale Grey Idol 💀💀💀

3. ”Please Turn on Your Magic Beam”, Orrin Grey

Speaking of TV, this deceptively plainspoken tale in The Dark by Orrin Grey (also, according to his bio, a film scholar!) uses a scary movie playing on the TVs of several units in the Castle Arms apartment complex to explore the interwoven isolation of its residents. The spectre of Death hangs over mass-media modernity, it lurks in the periphery of its vision, both inside and outside the frame of the screen. Or in the hallway, just on the other side of the peephole,

…a different hallway. Longer, more bereft of details. It is cast in grayscale, the many doors which open off it nothing mroe than oblongs of darkness.”

By the way, have you checked if your flashlight has batteries recently?

SELF-PROMO AND OTHER RECS: “The Math Problem”, NM Whitley

Earlier this month, Heavy Feather Review published my story “The Math Problem”. It’s short!

So then after you’ve read it, you can go on to read some of the other great fiction HFR publishes. Earlier this year, for example, they’ve published:

• “Pearl Ring”, Ivy Grimes: a pristine example of that classic Grimes stuff, straddling that borderline between the folktale and the modern Weird. You can even hear the author reading it here, which is neat imo as the orality of it pushes the need that further toward the ‘folktale’ pole

• “Four Paintings by ______ (1928-1999)”, Addison Zeller: a bit of micro wizardry that manages to imply the biography and artistic journey of its main character through the titular four paintings, a “tiny world of dwarf reporters and loud aviatrixes”, all revolving around an artist who, in name at least (“_________”) is pointedly not even there

(BONUS SELF-PROMO REC: “Enselfening”)

Just thought I’d also remind folks that last October The Dark published my story “Enselfening”, which features foetus clouds and eyeball trees and unresolved issues with an ex that end up breaking reality. You know, fun!