Where realty and fantasy blur
A good look at the selection reveals why these shorts stood out: an assassin’s inopportune unrequited love; parents’ macabre obsession over a child; the cold and undefined passion of a alien ideal; betrayal of heroism; the smouldering chill of prolonged revenge; the legendary fierceness of family protectiveness and the horror of otherworldly possessiveness.
One winter my dad went to London to meet with an old friend, Avery Knuth. They had a snowball fight in Hyde Park. Papa said rain and snow fell together on that day, so that he had shivered and winced. I have never seen snow falling or heard it pierce a frozen sidewalk. They were supposed to be friends: affable, kidding, beer-buddies. … Continue readingFrightened Children by Priya Sridhar
Nicknaming the place Shroomtown was in bad taste. I knew that. But sometimes our work is so harrowing that I need a little black humor to get me through the day. That and my voice recorder. After every gig I sit somewhere quiet and tell the story of what I’ve just been through. It’s illegal, feeding this audio into the cloud. Instant jail time or worse if my bosses find out. Still, it’s worth it for the sanity it brings me. … Continue readingThe Shroomtown Files by Anne E. Johnson
The attic is alive with boneless bodies in motion. Living bobbins, no bigger than buttons, pushing fine threads of silver from their middles. Watching it is enigmatic, imagining the clacking of that many feet on the ground, but not really hearing it. Stick-pin feet are silent even en masse. … Continue readingThe Better to Hold Her by Sealey Andrews
He sat in a restroom stall on the lower tier of the stadium complex, staring at an aluminum-plated door and gray tiled floor. Fluorescent lights flickered alien and erratic above him. He shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. … Continue readingOn the Edge of the World by André le Roux
It might seem a cop-out to declare that passion and relationships play a big part in the stories selected