BOOK REVIEW: Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

written by David Steffen

34466922Sleeping Beauties is a drama/fantasy/action novel written by Stephen King and Owen King published in September 2017 by Scribner.

A mysterious condition hits the whole planet in an instant–if a woman falls asleep, threads of what appear to be fungus quickly envelop her, forming a sort of cocoon.  She continues to live inside the cocoon if left undisturbed.  If the cocoon is broken, she will wake up and react violently like a rabid animal.  Meanwhile, in the Appalachian town of Dooling, a mysterious stranger who calls herself Eve who is arrested after violently killing a man with apparently superhuman strength.  There’s no end in sight for the condition that affects only women–the women who are still awake try desperately to stay that way, some of the men left behind are ready to take desperate measures of one kind or another, and all hell is going to break loose.  People find out that Eve can sleep without going into a cocoon, and they become violently desperate to find out why.  Clint Norcross, the prison psychologist, husband of the sheriff, has a violent past from his juvenile days that he keeps to himself, even from his wife, and he takes it upon himself to protect as many women as he can, including Evie.

I like the premise of the book.  It was enough for me to decide to read the book, and I was interested enough in it to want to stick through it to the end.  But it took effort to stick with it.  The biggest reason was that the book had, in my opinion, major pacing issues. And also a too-large cast without, in my opinion, any particular reason to root for anyone.  Ensemble casts are one of Stephen King’s major skills, many of his best books have ensemble casts: It, Needful Things, The Stand.  But those books were very good at getting me emotionally invested in most or all of the characters, understanding their strengths and weaknesses so that by the end I’m rooting for the outcome.  I did not get that from Sleeping Beauties.  Since the inciting incident isn’t introduced in that first 100 pages, the main purpose of that space must be to invest me in the characters, but I felt like it focused almost entirely on the negative in each person’s personality–this person treats this other person badly in various respects but never makes them feel well-rounded.

The Eve plotline and the cocoons plotline, while they are connected, felt like they were really two separate stories, the stories of a supernatural killer and the story of this condition the women have.  Part of the reason I kept reading is that I wanted to find out more about that connection but I felt like what I got was just vague handwaving.

The themes of the book, about the relationship between men and women and how they treat each other and how they behave, could’ve been great.  But I felt that they relied more on caricatures than on reality, and never managed to be as profound as they seemed to be meant to be.

I feel like this book could’ve been really really good with the existing story, if it were 150-200 pages, just cut out that first 100-page segment and got that characterization in alongside the inciting action and things happening, and it could’ve been an incredible book.  As it is, I was interested enough in the end to read the end, but afterward I didn’t think the payoff of reading was worth the time it took to read.

More on the pacing issues, that might be too spoilerish:
The “inciting” action of local women being overtaken by the cocoons didn’t happen until past page 100.  Usually for the purpose of reviews I try to only discuss what happens within the first 100 pages or so but, there wouldn’t be much of a review if I couldn’t even mention the cocoons. The next 100 pages are spent seeing the same thing happen over and over again as women succumb to the cocoons one after another, which has to be told anew for each point of view since each person is not familiar with it.  And then most of the book is a long slow climb to the final confrontation.

DP FICTION #44A: “Pumpkin and Glass” by Sean R. Robinson

I sit on the park bench and try to forget the cold. This was easier in springtime, when there was more day light and it wasn’t as cold. I forgot my jacket this morning and as the city lights turn on one by one, the temperature drops. I miss my coat, with its thick-padded elbows.

But I cannot go home.

I do not know where home is.

I am dancing a dance that begins each morning, and ends when the clock strikes midnight. By then, he will be asleep and whatever is broken will be broken and I will not watch my Prince Charming shatter anything else that I loved.

The park is quiet, at least. There are Christmas lights strung up, and there’s enough light to see by. I don’t have knitting to keep my hands busy. I do not have my paints or my canvas. I do not have my sweet Pumpkin to sit on the bench beside me and lay her drooly dog-head into my lap. She can’t keep me warm any more.

It’s all gone. Lost. Like a slipper at midnight and the years that follow after, chasing themselves until I’m an old woman with hands that hurt as the nights get longer, without a coat to keep me warm, afraid to go home until the clock strikes twelve.

The phone in my purse rings. It’s him, and there is nothing that I can say to him. I let it go, and pull myself up from the bench. My knees ache as much as my hands do, but there are still hours until I can sleep. There are floors to wash at home, but no furniture. Not for a long time. There are shelves to polish, but my pictures, my teacups, my little knickknacks are gone.

He’s sold them, or thrown them away, or sent them to wherever the precious things go when the clock strikes midnight and you’ve been too busy dancing out the starlight and don’t realize that your prince has been breaking all the glass slippers he can find.

I stopped answering the phone the night he called me to say that he had taken Pumpkin to the hospital. My sweet Pumpkin, who licked my face when she was a puppy and showed her tummy when she was being naughty. I could never be mad at her, not with her tongue lolling out. Not when she’d filled the emptiness that grew in the house.

“She’s dead,” he’d said.

“They’re gone,” he’d said of the pictures. Our wedding pictures. Old photographs of my mother, my father. Pictures of us at the beach and Polaroids from college.

“Sold,” he’d said. The rocking chair he bought me when we’d been married thirty years. The grandfather clock that his Opa had brought from Germany. The plates that had sat, unused, in my hope chest, bought with the money I’d saved babysitting for the neighbors as a little girl.

There are tears in my eyes.

I find a seat in the coffee shop. It’s open all night and the girl behind the counter doesn’t give me a second glance. She has thick red dreadlocks, a piercing through her nose, and her eyes on her cell phone. She does not look up as I settle in. It’s not quite ten o’clock and the little café is busy. There are couples, bundled with thick coats, smiling at each other.

There is not enough money in my purse for a biscotti. He cancelled the credit cards and I am not allowed to have more than what I am given, more than what he thinks I have earned.

I miss my Pumpkin.

“There are mice in the walls,” he’d said. I sat on my rocking chair and laughed.

“Don’t be silly,” I’d said, sipping my bedtime tea. “There’s nothing in the walls, Mike.”

“There are, Hazel,” he’d said.

“And I suppose they make me dresses while we’re sleeping.” I laughed again and reached forward to place my hand on top of his. We had done it a hundred, a thousand, times. But for the first time, since that awkward first moment when we were still he-and-I, he pulled away. He pulled away from me and stared at my face as though I were some nameless step-sister and not his wife.

It is warm inside. The seat is more comfortable than the park bench, and the music playing from the speakers is a gentle waltz. It reminds me of the first time I met my husband, when the radio played the waltz and Betty Ann Lamontagne’s party had been dancing for hours. The sound from the speakers lulls me, and my eyes close. When they open, the café is empty and the music is still soft.

A biscotti sits on a plastic plate, on the table in front of me. There is a napkin folded underneath it.

The girl with red dread-locks is sitting across from me, a leg tucked up under her. The phone is gone, but she is cradling a steaming mug in her hands.

“Try it,” she says, gesturing to the plate with her chin. “It’s pumpkin. And organic. Gluten free. You name it.”

“I can’t,” I say. There is just money in my pocket book for a train ride home. Not enough for cookies, unless I want to start scrubbing the café floors.

“On the house,” she says.

“I really can’t,” I say. No matter how much I want to. I would like something nice and sweet. I would like a cup of tea and my rocking chair and the man who was my husband. Who had been my home before my home went away.

The girl says nothing, but she takes a long sip from her cup.

She smiles when I pick the plate up off the table, lift the biscotti, and bite into it. I can’t let it go to waste.

When I’ve eaten every speck of the cookie and the taste of pumpkin—unlike any other taste in the world, and my favorite—is gone from my tongue, she is still smiling.

“Looks like you needed that.”

“Thank you,” I say. I’d made treats for my sweet Pumpkin, once. Baked them in the oven and fed them to her one at a time. Her muzzle had just started to gray.

And she is gone and the phone in my purse rings again. And again I do not answer it.

“I have one of those too,” she says.

“It was really kind of you.”

“I meant the crazy ex,” she says as she stands, clears away the plate, and sits back down across from me.

I touch my wedding ring, a thin band of gold, unthinking.

“Crazy husband then,” she says. “I don’t have one of those.”

I should tell her that he isn’t crazy. That work has been busy and he has lost a few important accounts. It’s not his fault that things have gotten bad. That he thinks my paints attract mice, and that my china hides rats. That it’s not his fault that there are tears in my eyes again.

I tell her the truth. The first truth I could say to anyone other than myself, or to Pumpkin.

“The last time I answered his phone call, he told me that he had taken Pumpkin to the hospital and that she was dead,” I say. “She was old, but she wasn’t sick. She would sit with me on the park bench when I couldn’t go home yet and would curl up beside me after he said we couldn’t keep the bed, and we couldn’t put the heat on, because it would encourage the mice.”

She sets her tea down and before I can say anything else, let any more secrets from my mouth, she is sitting beside me and has her arms wrapped around me. I can’t remember the last time someone has hugged me.

“She must have been so scared,” I sob, into the strange girl’s shoulder. But she holds me tighter and smells like cookies. “She must have been so scared without me there. If I’d been there he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t have…”

When I have finished crying and the girl has brought me a hand-full of rough paper napkins, I look at the time.

“Thank you,” I say. “I don’t usually do this sort of thing.”

“It’s alright,” she says.

“It wasn’t always like this. He wasn’t always like this. I left my dancing shoes at the party where we met. He found out where I lived and brought them back to me.”

But the girl with red dreadlocks isn’t paying attention. She is looking at the clock, as the arms move together at the top.

“It’s midnight,” she says to me. “Make a wish.”

“Thank you,” I say, not understanding the strange girl. I can’t tell her my wishes anyway. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”

“No,” she says. “That’s not your wish, Hazel.”

I did not tell her my name.

“That pumpkin season lasted year round,” I say, pulling my purse close to me. There is enough strangeness at home without more at the coffee shop.

She’s still watching me. She smiles. “I’m kind of new at this. You’ve got until the clock is done striking twelve. Make your real wish.”

But my hands are on the door to the shop.

“I wish home was waiting for me,” I say, stopping long enough to brace myself for the cold. I do not have my jacket or my dog, and have only just enough money to get home. I wish so much that home is waiting for me, not the empty lack of it.

When the last train drops me off at the station, and I walk the last block to where my husband and I had made our home, I take a deep breath and prepare myself. He will be asleep, it is midnight. It will be enough that I do not have to speak to him until dawn, and then I can find a way to not come back.

The lights are on, which is strange.

Stranger still is that when I turn the knob, there is warm air on the other side. There is a frame on the wall, and inside the frame is a watercolor I did when I was sixteen. A watercolor that had not been there when I left this morning. A watercolor that had gone missing months ago, because it would hide the mice in the walls.

“Mike?” I say as I step forward and shut the door behind me. My china cabinet is full. But my husband’s grandfather clock is not beside it. The bookshelves are full again and when I step into the kitchen, I cannot speak above a whisper.

“Mike?” I rub my hands together, and for the first time since I was married, I can feel bare skin on my left hand. My wedding band is gone.

There is a plate of biscotti on the table, and as I touch the plate, I hear a noise I have not heard outside of my memory for months. I turn and my dog—my Pumpkin is sitting, smiling. Her stumpy tail wagging. Welcoming me home.

© 2018 by Sean R. Robinson

 

Author’s note: This story is part of a series I call “Laundramat Fairy Tales” mashing up real-life with Once Upon a Time. This was inspired by a quote from the site Humans of New York. That, coupled with the experience of growing up with my grandparents (though, thankfully, there were no mice in the walls).

 

Sean Robinson is an author of Science Fiction and Fantasy. He has been a professional spelunker, fire-breather, has taught horseback riding, and whip making. After almost a decade working with high-risk adolescents, he’s recently begun teaching high school English. It may be the scariest thing he’s ever done.

 

 

 

 

 

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Anime Review: Real Girl

realgirl

Real Girl has what is likely a cringe-inducing premise for most women. High school boy Hikari Tsutsui is a introverted anime/gaming nerd who can barely stand being around “normal” people because they make fun of him for never outgrowing his hobbies. It doesn’t help that his all time favorite series features an elementary school aged girl. Then one day he gets stuck doing pool duty with a conventionally “hot” girl who eventually becomes his girlfriend.

When I heard about the series the first thing I thought of was that it was male nerd wish fulfillment, but then I looked closer and realized it was based on a manga that ran in Japan’s Dessert magazine, which is aimed at teenage girls and young women. I decided to give it a chance.

Tsutsui (who is almost always called by his family name) is initially unlikeable. He gets stuck with pool cleaning duty because he comes late to school for the first time he can remember, which is the same for Iroha Igarashi, who is the kind of girl who looks incredibly well put-together. Her hair is styled, she’s pretty, the other girls hate her, and she has a reputation for being easy. Tsutsui immediately doesn’t like her, figuring that she’ll flake out on pool cleaning and leave it all up to him, because she sees him as beneath her just like everybody else does.

But Igarashi does show up, and they bump into each other a few more times in and out of school. He comes to realize that despite being a frequent victim of preconceptions himself, he’s also guilty of his own preconceptions about her, and once he realizes this, he tries to be a better person towards her, which results in her asking him if they’d like to date, keeping in mind that they only have six months until she has to move away.

Though Real Girl follows the story of a nerd and his non-nerdie girlfriend, it’s largely a story about communication. Tsutsui and Iragashi have a lot relationship problems. It’s never that they stop liking each other, or that they come to decide they have little in common, but there is a lot of self-sabotage, especially on Tsutsui’s part, that comes with the territory of this being the first major relationship for both of them.

Tsutsui honestly can’t believe that someone would ever be interested in him, especially someone who looks like her, so there’s an extended period where he is continually doubting that she can honestly be in a relationship with him. While he’s grateful for her, it’s possible to see how this wears on Igarashi because his repeated need to pinch himself feels like a dismissal of the fact that she does like him.

Usually this gets hammered out by the two of them eventually realizing that they have to talk, but this is high school, and nerves strike a lot.

If there’s a fault to Real Girl it’s that the human obstacles to Tsutsui and Igarashi’s relationship are largely non-threatening. When Ayado is introduced as another girl who would like a relationship with Tsutsui it’s nice to see how he reacts to the possibility that there might be one girl who will ever be interested in him, but at the same time we know she’s not a real threat. The only way her presence can sabotage anything is by Tsutsui putting his own foot in his mouth.

The same goes for the male rivals, who are similarly toothless, and Igarashi is unwavering in the fate that she likes Tsutsui despite all his hang-ups.

Probably the most dangerous character to the relationship is only introduced in the last couple of episodes, which makes for a bumpy ending to the series, as the new character and their circumstances aren’t fully fleshed out. But even so, I would still recommend this series. It’s a lot more realistic about first time relationships than most shows are, and especially for the self-doubters among us, watching Tsutsui struggle is highly relatable.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: The show is about working through a relationship rather than towards one, Tsutsui is highly relatable, depiction of relationship problems is realistic

Minuses: Rival characters aren’t much of a threat, we don’t see enough of Igarashi’s POV to understand why she likes Tsutsui so much, last minute new character not handled well

Real Girl is currently streaming at HIDIVE (subtitled, subscription required). Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Intergalactic Medicine Show.

MOVIE REVIEW: Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

written by David Steffen

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is a computer animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation that was released in June 2017 in the US, based on the long-running book children’s book humor superhero series.

George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch) are the 4th-grade comic book authors who created Captain Underpants, who is pretty much Superman except all of his powers are toilet-related and instead of wearing a cape and underwear on top of his clothes, he wears a cape and underwear on top of nothing.   They’re known for being the class clowns, always pulling pranks on the teachers, and the principal Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) is always looking for a way to bring them down a notch.  Mr. Krupp decides to pull the ultimate power move and split them into separate fourth grade class with the intention of destroying their friendship.  Desperate, the boys sneak into his office to try to prevent this, and when they’re caught in the act George uses a toy hypno-ring which (surprising them both), actually hypnotizes Mr. Krupp.  They plant a suggestion that Mr. Krupp is actually Captain Underpants.  They discover that whenever he is touched by water he becomes Mr. Krupp, and whenever he hears a finger snap he turns into Captain Underpants, and so to keep their friendship intact they keep him as Captain Underpants pretending to be Mr. Krupp.

But Captain Underpants keeps trying to cause problems, always tending to lose his pants, and trying to rush off into danger, and his happy demeanor is so different from the grumpy Mr. Krupp.  Before the boys can stop him, he hires mad scientist Professor P (Nick Kroll) to the faculty, who soon makes his evil intentions clear.

Keeping in mind that I am in my mid-thirties and thus quite a ways away from the target demographic, I thought this movie was pretty fun, and I’m sure it’s a hit with the kids with all the poop and underwear.  I’m not at all familiar with the source material, but we picked it up as a rental to watch with a four year old, and he loved it.

So keeping all that in mind, I found the protagonists honestly pretty terrible, terrorizing the teachers and then acting surprised when the principal wants to do something about it.  When they realize that they’ve hypnotized the teacher I can understand them being excited at succeeding at stalling the principal’s plan, and at the immediate sense of control, but they apparently have no remorse over completely stealing this man’s life and replacing his mind with a comic book character, only getting upset at Captain Underpants’s behavior when they are afraid of being caught in the act.  And the entire crisis was based on the premise that splitting them into two different fourth-grade classrooms would destroy their friendship.  But their biggest point of bonding was making comics, which they did in their treehouse after school.  I don’t think that every kid’s movie has to have an overexplained moralistic story, but I do think that the themes and ethics involved in the story should be considered, because kids pick that stuff up.  So I guess I’ll file this one with Trolls under “problematic themes that no one else seems that worried about”.

 

Summer 2018 Anime First Impressions

This summer’s anime offerings are more hit or miss than usual. There’s only one series I’m truly certain I’ll watch no matter what, and it’s possible I’ll dip back into continuing series from last spring, specifically Persona 5: The Animation and Tokyo Ghoul:re which looks like it will eventually finish out the series.

Angolmois: Record of Mongol Invasion

angolmois

Why I Watched It: The art style is a lot cruder than I normally like, with characters having square jaws and tiny pupils. This makes it clear that these characters aren’t refined people by any means, and it’s not often that we get a historical drama around a 13th century Mongolian invasion of Japan.

What I Thought: The setup is excellent. A group of criminals are spared the death penalty and are instead exiled to a remote island whose people want them to serve as soldiers against the incoming Mongolian invasion. This is a sore deal for our criminal protagonists who evaded one death only to be faced with another, but most of them seem used to fighting and our lead is a skilled swordsman and former retainer for the shogunate, so their odds against the incoming 900 warships is probably not as bad as it looks, though history does not favor the island they’re now trapped on.

Verdict: I might come back to it. As expected for a period war drama, this is a predominantly male cast (though the island’s Princess Teruhi has potential), and I didn’t find any of them particularly likable. The plot would have to get rolling for this one to hook me.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Attack on Titan Season 3

attackontitan3

Why I Watched It: I’m a big Attack on Titan fan and Season 3 animates my favorite arc out of all of them. Though it’s not quite as popular as it was in its peak, it’s still the thousand pound juggernaut of the anime world.

What I Thought: I’d heard they were making changes for this arc, and boy howdy did they rearrange things. Nothing outright happens differently but events happen in different locations or happen at the same time, or even in a different order. This might be intended to give the viewer a sense of confusion as the Survey Corps doesn’t know exactly what’s going on either, but as a manga reader it’s a little baffling because some characters are no longer in a position to perform actions they take later on. It’ll likely turn out pretty good anyway, but this is by far the greatest deviation the anime has taken yet. Season 3 is not newbie friendly either. A little of Season 2 is recapped, but truly new viewers should start at the beginning.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. Though to be honest that was a given. I’m really curious how they will handle the rest of this arc due to one prominent character being placed out of action so early.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled), Funimation (subbed and dubbed, subscription required for dub), Hulu (subbed), and Toonami (dubbed). Dubs will be following roughly a month after the subtitled version airs.

Banana Fish

bananafish

Why I Watched It: Banana Fish was one of the first manga to come to the US that featured a gay relationship, and for a long time that’s all I knew it as. I didn’t know it also involved an international drug ring and that the protagonist is roped into the seedy underworld after being handed a mysterious necklace and the keywords “banana fish.” Though dated now, it was a landmark at the time of its release and this animated version has updated events to present day.

What I Thought: Though Banana Fish has been modernized by about thirty years, parts of it still feel a bit dated, with character attitudes and the kind of gang warfare we end up seeing. However, for being a Japanese production, there is a surprising awareness of race; as in not every American is white. Ash himself might be, but this is a New York with a healthy population of black and brown people, in both incidental and named roles. This is also one of the few anime I’ve seen that is blunt enough to use the word “gay” to describe someone’s sexual orientation, rather than dance around it.

Verdict: I’ll probably watch it. It’s certainly a strong contender, and being based on an older, completed property there’s a very good chance for a satisfying ending. Since I missed this while the manga was in print (though it’s being reprinted) I’d like to see what all the fuss was about.

Where to find stream: Amazon Video (subtitled, subscription required)

Cells at Work!

cellsatwork

Why I Watched It: Cells at Work! anthropomorphizes all of the body’s cells into people who do various cells’ jobs in the metropolitan world that is a person’s body. It’s completely ludicrous, but the primary white blood cell of the series cuts a striking image, being rendered entirely white, like a sheet of paper.

What I Thought: It was fun and surprisingly educational. The creator put a lot of thought into how this fictional world works, from capillaries which are narrow doors so red blood cells can only pass through one at a time, to a white blood cell pulling a Die Hard through the vents to bypass a blocked doorway, since they’re able to permeate blood vessel walls. Despite being mildly educational though, it’s not really for children. The protagonist white blood cell is a bit of a killing maniac (all the white blood cells have an instantaneous and ruthless reaction to invaders) and ends up spattered with “blood” after confrontations.

Verdict: I’ll pass. It’s funny, but not quite funny enough to beat out its competition. Also, I’m not sure how well the story will develop as a series since there’s nothing to suggest there will be an overarching storyline.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Holmes of Kyoto

holmesofkyoto

Why I Watched It: Cozy mystery involving the local “Holmes,” who happens to work at an antique shop, and his new assistant. I like the character designs and I’m always looking for good mysteries.

What I Thought: The first episode doesn’t have Kiyotaka (whose surname can also be rendered as “Holmes” through a multi-lingual pun) and Aoi solving any mysteries, but serves as an introduction to the two characters. Kiyotaka is in college, and about to be starting graduate school, making him older than most anime protagonists. He works in his grandfather’s antique shop as an appraiser. Aoi is in high school and Kiyotaka decides to bring her on as part-time help. Like Sherlock Holmes, Kiyotaka is extremely perceptive and able to draw conclusions about people from the small details regarding how they behave and how they present themselves. It’s a slow burn, but no means a boring one.

Verdict: I’ll probably be watching. The end of the episode seems to indicate that there will be darker goings-on later in the series, which seems odd for a story revolving around work at an antique shop, but I’m willing to give it the benefit of a doubt.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Phantom in the Twilight

phantomintwilight

Why I Watched It: I didn’t have high hopes for this one, but the fact one of the characters is named Vlad and is a vampire tickled my fancy just right for the story about a Chinese girl who travels to London as an exchange student and gets to meet various monster boys.

What I Thought: The dialogue gets pretty clunky in places, and there are some London neighborhood shots that don’t look they’re part of London, but there’s just enough here that it might be worth a second look. Ton’s great-grandmother was a jet-setting Chinese woman who used to live in London and ran a business. It turns out that one of her ventures was setting up a cafe for Twilights, people such as werewolves, vampires, and other supernatural creatures, and Ton is led there by a spell she learned from her great-grandmother. The Twilights are set up to be the fighters and the eye candy for the series, but Ton might not turn out to be a slouch herself as her great-grandmother also left behind a crazy chain-rope weapon that she is now able to use.

Verdict: I might come back to this one. There’s enough to watch right now that I don’t think this is going to make the cut.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Seven Senses of the Re’Union

sevensenses

Why I Watched It: I don’t have much patience for MMORPG anime anymore, unless there’s an unusual spin on it, like last year’s Recovery of an MMO Junkie. This one involves a band of friends who used to game together until one of them passed away and then the group broke up. Years later, one of them reenters the game and finds the avatar of their dead friend is active and he gets the gang back together again to find out why.

What I Thought: The game world is nothing remarkable, being generic medieval fantasy, though it’s unusual in that it’s a permadeath game. Dying results in the player’s account being wiped. What I found unbelievable though is that the main cast was the best group on their server while they were in elementary school (so they can make their comeback as teenagers). Grade school kids and permadeath don’t work well together since failure means starting over from scratch. We don’t get much of what life was like for the band of friends after Asahi died, but Haruto is the main POV and has clearly given up on MMORPGs after she died. Presumably the perspective of the other characters will come later.

Verdict: I might come back to this one. Haruto is not sympathetic enough of a personality for me to really like him, so it’ll largely depend on whether the group dynamic is enough to sustain the series, or if other members of the cast turn out to be more interesting once they get a chance in the spotlight.

Where to find stream: Amazon Video (subtitled, subscription required)

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Intergalactic Medicine Show.

DP FICTION #43B: “The Fisher in the Yellow Afternoon” by Michael Anthony Ashley

You feel an explosion and wake up face down on a rocky patch of dirt. A spurt of blood fills your mouth with iron and salt, and you push to your knees, gagging, but all that drools off of your lips is soil and leaves and a few bitter-tasting pine needles. You breathe and spit, but the blood taste is gone. It never was. You exhale relief as the panic fades with the dream.

You raise your face to a clear yellow sky and chilly air, the white sound of water rushing over you with a comfortable, misty breeze. It’s the smell of the park when the elk are bugling and camping means nights in flannel over canned spaghetti, and no problem with the cold because it makes the heat of the fire so incredibly perfect.

And you hear an enormous voice. “Is that a memory?”

You end your moment with the sky and lurch to your feet, backing away from the rocks and slick bracken along the river bank, which you realize is very close. And straddling the river with its hind-claws—its left fore-claw gripping the soil on the far bank and its right fore-claw stirring down in the white rush—is the bear.

“Hello,” he says through the wet of his muzzle.

He is huge. Impossibly. The river tumbles down a falls and through the bear’s legs and off into mist down the second falls, where the woods and the rocks and the world seem to end. The river is too wide for the rotted trunks to reach across where they’ve fallen, and yet the bear stands across. And you watch as his right fore-claw snaps up from the river, trailing silver droplets, and flicks the strong, twisting, desperate body of a fish into his jaws. He eats it whole.

“Don’t be a cliché,” he says, and you know he means the question you’d taken a breath to ask. You feel embarrassed, and then immature for the embarrassment, but you can’t help it. Bait or no, you take the challenge. And instead of “where am” or “how did,” you decide on “what the.”

“Are you really a bear?” you ask.

He takes another fish, this time lopping it in half with a bite and flinging it aside so that its back half flies into the woods streaming entrails and a rain of blood. “There are no bears here,” he says.

The river is crowded with fish. You can see them just below the surface where the rushing white foam occasionally separates to give clarity, all swimming against the current. Even as the bear says “here” a fish leaps out of the river, thrashing and aimless. The bear rakes it in mid-air and the fish lands near you in a skid of dirt, split by three gashes along its body.

You step close and see that it’s a big fish, and the mess of its organs is very still, and there is no gasping like you expect. Something is very wrong. You pinch the tail. It feels like suffocating in a hot adobe hospital from a throat closed by snake venom and being too young to go this way, mierda, too young. You let go of the fish and leap back. God damn. God damn, what is that? Who is that?

“That’s not a fish,” you say.

“There are no fish here,” he says with three fish squirming in his mouth. He grumbles pleasure around the tearing of their scales by his teeth.

You run. With the roar of the river at your back you dodge the rocks and fungus-ridden trunks that the erosion has brought down. You scramble over a big rock with its inch-thick moss and jump off to land in the shadow of the trees of the heavy green wood with your slippers thudding wet in a cluster of mushrooms. (You’re wearing pink slippers.) The low leaves are wet on your face as you push far away from the bear. (Slippers. Isn’t that strange?) Fish bones lie among the roots, their rot feeding the trees, which are old and soon to fall to add to the rot, the fungus and mushrooms the only brightness.

Eventually you overcome the panic and you start to think again. And you slow down. You stop. You think about the bear and the river and the fish and the falls while you pace tree to tree, while you watch that yellow sky and taste the air full of moldy years, and soon you turn around and follow the sound of the rushing water.

You find the bear straddling the river eating fish, snatching fish from deep in the stream, snatching fish from near the surface, swatting or biting the ones that leap. Two at a time. Four at a time. Some are small and bright and young. Some are old with milky eyes. The one from the bank is gone. In his belly, you know.

You’re afraid to ask. But you ask.

“Those,” you say of the fish being slaughtered, “are they people?”

“Sort of,” says the bear.

“Souls?” you ask.

“That’s closer.”

You try to remember the dream that woke you here. It was terrible, and more important than anything. And you can’t remember any real part of it. Just the feelings, and they’re fading.

“This is all you do?” you ask. “You eat them?”

“They’re delicious,” he says with a simple black madness in his eyes. “The fast ones are delicious. The slow are delicious. Big, small. I love the taste.”

“Are you Death?”

The enormous and magnificent bear, with his perfection of fur and hugeness of musk and multitude of teeth, who feeds from this river and all of its millions of fish as they thrash ceaseless against the current, the being and master of this place, he nods.

“But not God,” he adds.

“No,” you say. And he seems offended, though you’ve only agreed with him.

“Am I dead?”

“Absolutely.”

You sob. It’s what you expected to hear and still it hits you with horrible sharp stabs in your chest, and you bend with your hands on your knees and sob with a grief you don’t understand.

“There are no tears here,” says the bear.

But you’re crying. You kneel down by the water and look past the foam to the fish swimming with every bit of muscle in their bodies, some thumping against the river rocks, some dodging. Their wild silvery mass is in one place rhythmic, the long shapes in sinuous concert like a dance, and in another place chaotically brutal with each swimmer thrashing against the other. You want to jump in. You need to jump in. You need it more than you can stand.

You never see the bear’s claw. You only tip yourself forward to drop into the water and the claw swipes you, knocking every sense into blackness, and you land hard on the bank. And slowly, in the brown drooping ferns, you come back to yourself.

You force yourself to stand straight, hands atop your head to ease the ache in your chest, and you pace along the bank while the bear devours fish. The pacing helps you ignore the queasy sound of his meals and the need for the river and your rage at the bear. Pacing helps you think. And you know this is a habit you have, though there are no memories attached to it. No memories at all.

“How did I get here?”

The bear chuffs. “The cliché.”

“Whatever. Just answer.”

The bear yanks out a fish. “I yanked you out.” He crushes it so it bursts, and he licks the meat from his claw.

“But you didn’t eat me.”

Silence.

“Why didn’t you eat me?”

More silence. Even the river seems hushed.

“You don’t want to say,” you tell him. “Why not?”

The bear says nothing. He catches fish and eats them, but all the relish is gone, all the flair gone flat and mechanical, claw to mouth to water to mouth, until finally he nods and the moment passes. The river sound roars back to life. The bear knocks a huge fish high into the air and snaps it on the way down.

“I don’t want to tell you,” he admits. “But I will because you’re interesting. You jumped out.”

“Out of the water?”

“There’s no water h–”

“Just tell me!”

“No. I already said, I yanked you out of there.”

“If not there, then what–” And you realize it. “I jumped out of your mouth!”

The bear chuffs.

And you make a choice in that instant, all at once. You’re going back into that river. Fuck this bear. Fuck death. You’re going back. And you know he knows what you’re thinking and you don’t care because the need in you is big enough and mean enough to crush him alive.

“Not likely.”

“I jumped out of your mouth,” you declare to him. “I had my way. I’ll have it again.”

The bear swings his massive head toward the near bank and fixes you with eyes of emptiness, and he roars. The river roars. The rocks roar. The fever-bright mushrooms flare to mad color. The trees and the ferns, the soil under your feet, every molecule around you whips with the explosion of his voice, throws you down hard. You cover your ears and press your face to muck, the old leaves dancing to the vibration, but the roar grinds through you no matter how you brace. And all you can do is take it.

When he’s finished, you’re covered with bits of gnawed fish, you’ve learned you can feel pain in this place, and you have a plan.

You lie where you’ve fallen for a long time in the cold mud, watching him. You watch the bear massacre the fish like a two-year-old ravaging the boxes and wrapping paper on the floor of the living room, high on cake and ice cream and attention. The river mist is a sporadic touch on your cheeks. Your heart aches so sharply you wince.

When the bear knocks a leaping fish to the far bank and turns to devour it, you jump to your feet, dash to his rear, and leap from a rock headlong for the water. The hind leg this time, it kicks you so hard you come to your senses back in the trees, the river out of sight. You brush yourself off and limp back to the bank to sit, and wait, and try again.

You don’t count your tries. You can’t track the time. There’s no time here, he says needlessly. You only know that he swats you every time.

“What’s down there?” you ask of the edge where the river disappears.

The bear shrugs a shoulder.

“Do any of them go over?”

“A few,” he says.

“What about up there?” you ask of the cliff from which the river seems to originate, the fish fighting madly for that goal.

The bear shrugs both shoulders. “Fewer,” he says, spraying guts from his mouth.

“Do you know them, the ones you eat?”

“I know them all.”

“How many have there been?”

“There are no limits–“

“Fine, fine, just— You must like some more than others. Which are your favorites? And why?”

The river’s noise hushes. The bear says nothing as he catches fish and eats them, returning to the mechanical rhythm once more. Finally he nods and the moment passes. The river noise climbs back to its height.

“Jemet, no fear in her, none at all. Bad Foot for the very wild dreams. Wei Wei and Li Jing, brother and sister, nearly psychic. G!au, two lions killed with his bare hands, proudest one ever.” And on he goes. He likes to talk, to brag, even when you’re not listening.

You leap for the river and he smacks you back. You walk the woods and study. Most important, you ask him more whys.

What you learn:
A. You know you’re real. You remember your Descartes. Cogito ergo sum. So you want what you want. No room for doubt.
B. Everything comes here to die. The trees and other plants are wilted and brown, and you find an incredible number of bones. You dig. The bones go deep.
C. He’s a creature of habit.

The pain inside is a constant ache and you weep now at odd moments with a disturbing lack of control, but you know what you need. You’re ready. You position yourself at the best place on the bank where the leap to the river is brief and the water swirls in fast eddies. When you hit the water you’ll fight for the deep among the other fighters, so long as you can keep your mind. And that’s a thought that nags you: you don’t know what will happen when you re-enter. You don’t know how you’ll be.

“It’s odd that you think this will work,” says the bear.

“You have your nature, and I have mine. Don’t you want me to leave?”

“No,” says the bear.

And here’s the moment. Here it is, you know, and the stabs in your chest make you squeeze yourself to keep from screaming. “Why not?” you ask.

Silence. The river’s sound falls to a gurgle. The bear says nothing as he moves mechanically. Rhythmically. Predictably. You wait for his claw to shove a fish into his mouth, those eyes staring off, vacant, and you leap. You leap right under that massive arm, your face passing through the river water dripping from its fur, the stink of fish blood thick all around you. You know his speed from his countless smacks. You know the timing when he’s lost in thought. You’ve studied. And yet passing beneath jaws as long as cliffs and teeth as wide as crags and a head so large it blots the yellow sky, you feel those eyes come back to focus and that claw jerk to snap you up. Too soon. Too quick.

Too late. You hit the water in a shock of pain and cold as behind you the voice of Death admits, “Because you can’t be friends with food.”

You swim. You fight. You pull against the current with the other fish smacking against you. Death’s claws spear the water and you twist away. Down. Down. And down until the yellow light fades and the thumps of striving tails become distant. And you are simply you. Only you. Beating against the current.

You hear crying. You hear the babies calling for you. “Mommee! Mommeeee!”

You wake up with a start. A spurt of blood fills your mouth with iron and salt. You try to spit and something in your chest rips. You try to gasp and the pain rockets into your skull.

“Mommeeeee! Mommy help!”

Think. Oh, Jesus. Think. Focus. You force your eyes to make sense of the light and you realize right away that the car is tilted wrong and the windshield is shattered. Red darkness comes pushing at the edge of your vision, but you can count the lengths of iron rebar jutting from the back of the truck through your windshield and into your chest, three of them, low, center, and high, your ribs scraping when you lift your head to look. And you’re weeping, no breath to sob, and your hand is reaching for the glove compartment because you smell gasoline. And the babies are in the back.

“Mommy, I’m stuck. Mommy! Mommy please!”

You wrench open the glove compartment. Something rips where your heart should be, and you want so badly for the breath to scream. There isn’t any.

You die.

The claw grabs you, squeezing, as you fight against the current, and it snatches you upward and into a wash of old yellow light. The bear’s jaws come closing but you twist against the fucker and you’re free, falling. You hit the water, pulling hard.

“Again!” he calls as you go under.

This time you come back remembering–six days in a row on-call and now sweatpants and pink slippers on your day off, rear ended at the red light and the explosion of your car slammed against the work truck ahead–and your hand is already rummaging through the glove box when your eyes snap open. Your hand is wet and sticky with black ooze, and you know the colorblindness is a sign of head trauma, and the speed of the blood spurting from the wound above your breast means catastrophic damage to the subclavian artery, and your sticky hand closes on the multi-tool. You fling your arm and throw the multi-tool into the back where it lands in the middle, between Olive strapped in her car seat and Weaver struggling with the tangle of his seatbelt. Escape hammer and seatbelt cutter in one. You’ve taught him how to use it. Always teaching. Immune to the rolled eyes. Not a cool mom. But that’s fine now. That’s fine.

“CUT!” you scream with all the breath you have, and you die.

The bear claw pierces you this time, and it’s not the same as the hot animal pain of the rebar in your heart. It’s a slash of nothing. A tatter of you gone.

Instead of pulling away you twist into the claw, feeling it rip deeply. But you’re free.

“Three times!” calls the bear, delighted.

You’re turned in your seat, cold air seeping into your broken cavity, the horrific, greasy smell of fire signaling panic even as your thoughts twitch in jagged fits. The car is burning, and it’s over. You know it’s over. You have nothing left.

And all at once, it’s fine. Your boy. Beautiful boy. He’s free, and he has his sister free, and long arms are reaching through the shattered window and pulling them out, the multi-tool falling to the white litter of glass beside the cut, gray, frayed piece of seatbelt.

“I can’t get to her!” shouts a fish. “Leave her!” screams another. “Get out! It’s going up! Get out of there!” The claw ignores them and snatches you out.

It’s not hard to fight him anymore. You simply give everything you have. You twist and thrash, and this final time you land back on the bank. When you stand, you’re in your slippers.

“I nearly ate you,” he says, his tongue rolling fish meat behind his teeth.

“It’s what you do,” you say.

The bear chuffs. “Getting away is what you do. Four times. That’s impressive,” he says, and means it.

“Is that a record?”

“Not even close. But it’s still very impressive.” He splashes with both of his front claws and shoves a mass of writhing bodies into his mouth. The first bite makes a wet burst, loud even over the river. “What do you want to do now?” he asks.

You think about it, and point. “I may go up there,” you say of the cliff from which the river originates. “Or down there,” you say of the falls into which it disappears. “Or I may just ask you questions. Why do you care?” you ask him.

Silence. The river becomes hushed. The bear says nothing. He catches fish and eats them, but all the relish is gone, all the flair gone flat and mechanical, claw to mouth to water to mouth. You watch one writhe in his grip, fighting for life.

You leap from the bank and knock it loose.

© 2018 by Michael Anthony Ashley

 

Author’s note: “The Fisher in the Yellow Afternoon” was a round 2 contest submission for WYRM’s Gauntlet 2016.  The prompt was to write the story of a character who has recently died, telling what led to the disappearance and what may be coming next.  The catch was that it must be written in second person POV.  The Gauntleteers, as we were named, were given one week.  Aside from proofing edits and a change to the last line, the story you see here is unchanged from the competition.

 

Michael Anthony Ashley is a 2004 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and a longsuffering ghostwriter of nonfiction.  He has published short stories with Beneath Ceaseless Skies, flashquake, and the Czech publication Pevnost.  In his daylight hours he works in public health, helping to broker the peace between bacteria and humankind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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BOOK REVIEW: It Devours by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

written by David Steffen

It Devours is a standalone tie-in novel based in the universe of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast and the Welcome to Night Vale novel, released in October 2017 by Harper Collins.

Nilanjana Sikdar is a scientist and a member of Carlos’s team in Night Vale, which Carlos calls the most scientifically interesting town in the world.  The team performs very important experiments, such as making machines that go flash and then bang, or measuring the effects of being disappointed in potatoes.  Nilanjana does experiments that involve growing bacteria.

Disaster strikes in Night Vale.  Not that it’s… all that unusual for some kind of disaster to strike, mind you, but this is a very mysterious disaster which no one understands.  Giant holes have been opening up and swallowing random bits of town, and the local chapter of the Church of the Smiling God is rumored to be responsible.  Carlos tasks Nilanjana with investigating the phenomenon to find out what is causing it and how to stop it.  On her first visit to the church, she meets Darryl, one of the church’s most committed members and strikes up a… friendship?  Or is it a romantic relationship?  Or, wait, maybe it’s all just a pretense, there’s something weird about Darryl and the way he smiles…

It Devours continues the oddball comedy horror that the Welcome to Night Vale podcast and prior novel are known for, and it does a great job, as ever.  Like the prior novel (and unlike the podcast) it does take the form of a more traditional narrative arc instead of being the shapeless semi-plotted form that the podcast takes.  You don’t need to have listened to any episode of the podcast, nor read the prior book, to enjoy and understand this one, though you might miss a small amount of in-jokes.  This one takes on one of my favorite topics, where science meets religion, with our two main characters being a scientist and a religious devotee, and has some interesting thoughts on the subject.

Also, I don’t often think much about book design besides just cover art, but this has a really eye-catching book design with the bright yellow cover, the purple-edged pages, and the toothy inlay.

It is eligible for the Hugo and Nebula awards this year (and is on my personal ballot for each).

GAME REVIEW: Super Mario Odyssey

written by David Steffen

Super Mario Odyssey is a new 3-D platform action game in the beloved and long-running Super Mario series of games, released by Nintendo for the Switch platform in October 2017.

The villain Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach, for the bajillionth time, and he is going to try to force her to marry him.  It’s up to Mario to rescue her with his new sidekick companion Cappy, a shapeshifting and possessing ghost hat.  Mario throws the hat and it latches onto an enemy and transfers Mario’s control over the enemy’s body, so Mario can become a Goomba or a Bullet Bill or a variety of new enemies introduced for this game, giving him their abilities for enhanced attack or mobility.

Mario travels using a hat-shaped airship that is fueled by power moons (apparently a slight variant of the power stars collected in Super Mario 64?), so most of the game is spent trying to find power moons to build up enough power to reach new lands as Mario gives chase to Bowser, to try to catch them to stop the wedding.  Bowser has also hired a band of mercenary rabbits to help with wedding planning, who mostly spend their time picking fights with Mario while Bowser escapes.

Not to overexamine a children’s game, but if this were not a beloved children’s franchise, and/or if the graphics weren’t so cartoony, I would think that people would be more bothered by the ethical issues here.  We have a hero who uses a ghostly familiar to possess the bodies of enemies and bystanders to put that other creature in the way of bodily harm for his own objectives.  I mean, obviously Bowser is a villain here, kidnapping Peach and trying to force her to marry him, but I think Mario might be more in the wrong than Bowser here, kidnapping stripping the autonomy from random apparently sentient (at least some of them) creatures and endangering them along the way.  If it weren’t such cartoony graphics, that would be straight up grimdark fantasy territory there.  It’s pretty messed up, if you think about it.

Visuals
The cartoonish look you’d expect for a modern Mario game.

Audio
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the audio, so I guess it’s pretty much what you’d expect?

Challenge
I wish that the bulk of the game were somewhat more challenging.  I breezed through quite easily, collecting enough power moons without any particular effort by just interacting with anything that seemed to be a little bit unusual.  I think only one or two boss fights took more than one try, and the number of power moons you have to collect to get through the main quest of the game was not a major obstacle.  There are some things that you can unlock after the main quest that involve extra levels that are significantly more challenging than the main quest.  Those are difficult enough to be challenging, but even then much of the “challenge” is more frustration over very long levels without save points so that you can play perfectly for twenty minutes but then misstep into lava and then you have to start over again.

Story
Super weak.  Recycling the same old Mario story.  Could we be done with the “Bowser kidnaps Peach and then Mario goes to rescue her”.

I mean, is it too much to ask to let Peach have some agency?  Why does she always have to be the object of the game?  We had Peach as a playable character in Super Mario Bros 2, and she’s been a playable character in Super Smash Bros games, can we give her a chance to be a playable character again?

I mean, you could even use the existing structure to try something new, like have Bowser kidnap her but then she as the playable character fights her way away from Bowser to save herself, maybe at some point meeting Mario on her way out and they becoming a fighting team or something, or Mario is player 2 of a multiplayer game or something.  I don’t know, I feel like the Mario story team could find something new after decades of Mario games.

Session Time
As with any Switch game, easy to sleep and wake at will.

Playability
Simple enough controls, with some of the complexity that is there seeming unnecessary (i.e., you have several different kinds of ways to jump slightly higher, what’s the point?).  There are some additional controls you get if you are using the dual handheld scheme, which means that if you prefer the snapped-onto-the-mini-screen handheld system you don’t get some of the functionality.

Replayability
The “main” quest of the game only requires you to find less than half the power moons that it takes to unlock harder areas, and when you beat the main quest it unlocks a bunch more of them.  So, there’s probably more of the game AFTER the main game then there is before.  If you want to find all the power moons and buy all of Mario’s outfits and unlock all of the areas and buy all of the collectibles, this will probably keep you busy for a while.

Originality
The plot is the same plot Mario’s pretty much always had.  The gameplay for most of the motion mechanics is pretty similar to all the others since Super Mario 64.  The main difference here is the hat sidekick and it’s posession mechanic.  Since you can borrow the bodies of enemies and friends along the way it does keep the gameplay a little fresher because new levels will make available new bodies for Mario to take over.  Some of my favorite games of all-time involve being able to change into different forms in some way or another to keep the gameplay fresh, so this is a sound design strategy.

Playtime
I finished the main quest in about 20 hours, and unlocked the harder areas in maybe another 10 without really major effort.

Overall
Same old Mario plot with familiar play mechanics when you’re in Mario form, but this game offers the new mechanic in the form of being able to “borrow” the form of many enemies (and friends) in order to mix up the gameplay and allow new abilities to experiment with.  The game is not very challenging, so experienced gamers may be disappointed by lack of difficulty.  And in my opinion it doesn’t have the novelty and awesome level design that Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 have because of the weird gravity mechanics.

Not a bad game unless you’re an experienced player looking for a real challenge. $60 for digital download from Nintendo or physical cartridge from various retailers.

 

DP FICTION #43A: “Glass in Frozen Time” by M.K. Hutchins

I freeze time. The frothing soap suds in the sink become glaciers. Dust motes hang in the air like stars. And I move.

I catch Sadie’s plate of mac n’ cheese before it splatters to the floor. While I’m there, I wipe down the table, fix Sadie’s pigtails, then — what the heck — I run downstairs and start a load of laundry.

Then I’m at the kitchen sink, water streaming, motes spinning, and Sadie’s three-year-old voice bubbling merrily on. “— I so happy to go to my Nana’s house!”

“Me too, sweet pea.”

She tells me about her grand plans for the day, including raiding the freezer for cookies. In the middle of it, a wild gesture knocks her juice cup. I freeze time and catch that, too, before any damage is done.

A warm thrill spreads over me as I finish the dishes. Tiny catastrophes make other parents late, but not me. We’ll arrive on time and spotless.

At least in my own home, I can control all the variables.

***

Eli comes home late. I can stop time, but I can’t stop his limp. My throat tightens, just hearing the uneven thud-thump of his real and his prosthetic foot. How can he be safe in the field now? He can still turn invisible, but he’s not exactly stealthy anymore.

Eli doesn’t glare at me. He folds me against his chest and kisses my cheek. Like always. “Did Sadie have a good time at your mom’s?”

“Of course.”

Eli glances around the house. My immaculate house. I alphabetized the spice rack today and organized the picture books by word count, starting with Moo, Baa, La La La! and ending with The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.

But a frown creases Eli’s face. “I don’t think this is what the League had in mind when they gave you vacation time.”

“Mandatory leave time,” I correct, my breath twisting in my chest like an over-tightened screw. “Don’t lecture me again, Eli. I’m just…I’m just a little perfectionist. That’s all.”

Eli holds my gaze and speaks in his calm, rational voice — the one I’m used to hearing during mission planning meetings, not at home. “That isn’t all and it’s not a little. It’s not good for you or Sadie.”

Now he wants to bring our daughter into this? “Sadie’s safe. Of course that’s good for her.”

I slow time to watch his reaction: a tiny shift of his head, the tightening of the corners of his mouth. He disagrees, and he’s not ready to drop this yet. I wish he would. I let time flow.

“She’ll never learn to be careful or clean up after herself if you’re always making things perfect,” he says. “You can’t actually control everything.”

“I know.” But I can control my home. I have to be able to control something.

Eli lays a hand on my shoulder. “That card’s still on your nightstand, Allison.”

The card our League general gave me right before he kicked me out on mandatory leave. My throat constricts. “I don’t need it.”

“You ought to call,” Eli persists. “Go in.”

Eli should be the one having a hard time adjusting, not me. “You know,” I try to joke with him, “most people would be thrilled to have a spouse who never nags them to do the dishes. I can’t believe you’re complaining about a clean house.”

Eli doesn’t laugh. He holds me closer and strokes my hair.

***

I set down my water glass and get back to scrubbing the window track with a Q-tip. Soon, it will be as shiny as League Headquarters. No dead flies. No spots of grime.

“Thirsty,” Sadie declares, hopping down from the table and her crayons. Her feet patter across our spotless tile floor.

“Water, milk, or juice?” I ask, still bent over the window. It’s almost finished. Almost perfect.

The tinkle of broken glass and a sharp little “Ow!” cut through my ears and stab down at my heart.

Reflexively, I freeze time. I turn. My water glass is nothing but shards now between Sadie’s feet. A drop of scarlet blood wells up on her heel.

I am too late.

I freeze, too. My lungs refuse to work. Air becomes concrete in my lungs. My stomach tightens and tightens into a black hole. My tongue is a boulder, clogging my throat.

This isn’t a mission. There are no villains here. I should be able to control it.

But I can’t even hold onto time. It slips away. The glass skitters across the floor, Sadie turns her head, the motes spin.

But I am still frozen as panic crushes my throat.

Sadie turns her foot to look at the small gash. “Mommy!” she wails.

I can’t answer.

“Mommy!” she demands.

I couldn’t stop her from getting hurt.

Sadie plants two fists on her hips. “Mommy! You pick me up now!”

A thread of breath cracks through my throat, into my lungs. I can’t think straight, but I can obey her simple order. I pick up my child.

“To the sink!”

I step carefully around the glass.

“Wash it, Mommy.”

I wash.

“Now dry.”

I dry.

“Band-aid!”

I set her on the counter and pull the first-aid kit down from the cupboard. Sadie holds still while I smooth the bandage over the tiny, angry wound.

“Kiss it better.”

I give her a tiny kiss. She smells like soap and cotton.

Sadie pats my cheek, smiling. “Mommy, you are silly. Nana knows how to do all that without being tolded.”

“Tolded?”

“Yup. And she has kitty band-aids.” Sadie glances at the floor. “Do you need help cleaning up your messes? Nana helps me.”

“You make messes at Nana’s?”

She giggles. “When you go on your last mission with Daddy, I open all the paints! I paint me, I paint the walls, I paint the carpet!”

My mother didn’t tell me that. Maybe she knew I had other things to worry about, after that mission.

I grab a broom. I sweep up the mess. I make cookies with Sadie and then build towers of blocks for her to crash. I ignore the window track. As soon as I get her nestled down for quiet time with a few books, I pick up the card on my nightstand.

Emily Perez, LPC. The League’s recommended counselor for traumatic stress. My throat squeezes tight, but I imagine Sadie’s voice giving me instructions.

Pick up your phone.

Dial the number.

Wait.

Say hello.

© 2018 by M.K. Hutchins

 

Author’s Note: As a mom and as someone who daydreams about magic and super powers, this story came easily.

 

M.K. Hutchins regularly draws on her background in archaeology when writing fiction. Her YA fantasy novel Drift was both a Junior Library Guild Selection and a VOYA Top Shelf Honoree. Her short fiction appears in Podcastle, Strange Horizons, IGMS, and elsewhere. A long-time Idahoan, she now lives in Utah with her husband and four children. Find her at www.mkhutchins.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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