'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 30

Short Stories 366:295 — “The Blessing Cookies,” by Laurie Stewart

[image error]This creeptastic story from Nothing Without Us was whatever you call a “slow-burn” in creepy horror fiction. It starts out with a woman with chronic pain and a strange, not quite explained job to do working in her kitchen to make “the blessing cookies,” and then slowly expands to show you this isn’t just a simple kitchen, or a cute holiday tradition, or a normal town. And it’s really effective at dialling up the shudder-factor a little bit at a time.

I don’t want to ruin the worldbuilding, but I will emphasize just how clever Stewart’s little nuggets of information are dropped. Yes, we’re baking cookies for a festival, one for everyone, that’s sweet and we’re hiding something in one of them, ah, so it’s like the little baby in a King Cake, and… wait. What happens to the person who finds the stone? Oh. Oh, dear.

The added layer on top of this story is the slowly building determination of the main character, who is doubting why they do the things they do, how important they might truly be, and whether or not they have it in them to fight a tradition that’s considered as sacrosanct as it is frightening. This character—who is fighting her own daily battles with pain—coming up against the little final twists Stewart nudges into the tale is what tips things over the edge into horror and a final shudder.

Short Stories 366:294 — “Those Beneath the Bog,” by Jacques L. Condor ~ Maka Tai Meh

[image error]

Well, sleep, it was nice knowing you. Okay, maybe that’s overstating (a little), but today’s foray into October stories is from Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction (edited by the brilliant Silvia Moreno-Garcia) and why did I let myself read stories about zombies? Well, because Moreno-Garcia. In fact, right in the introduction, she points out this will be a Canadian take, which means we’re getting more than your typical movie-zombie. And that brings me right to this story, “Those Beneath the Bog,” and how James L. Condor ~ Maka Tai Meh will likely cost me a few days of sleep.

Set in the north of Manitoba, the story opens with a married couple flensing (and otherwise preparing) the moose they’ve successfully hunted, and the arrival of other family in their canoe, who also intend to hunt. They also bring a dog, and at this point, my number one concern became “does the dog live?” There’s some brilliantly written tension between the older generation and the younger—old ways vs. new faith, specifically: divination and offerings, discussion of prayer—but when an auntie divines that two will die and the men decide their best shot at moose is in an area she believes is dark and evil… well. This is a story in a collection of zombie fiction, so you know where this is going, right?

The hunting group leaves (with the dog, jacking up my anxiety even further) and the divination of “two will die” has me in a total panic because what if one of the two is the dog (I realize I’m harping on this, but the dog growls and whimpers and is trying to tell the men to back off and they don’t listen) and of course, eventually, while we learn from the auntie back with the wife about what she believes is out there, we also see things play out to their dark end. It’s incredibly effective, and does so without descending into gore (though with some terrifying descriptions from the point of view of one of the two who don’t survive). Shudder worthy story all around, and all the more wonderful for doing so with a voice and setting so uniquely Canadian.

Short Stories 366:293 — “The Box,” by Stephen Gallagher

[image error]

Hammer Chillers, an audio collection from Bafflegab, of six short audio horror performances, was recommended to me by a friend who knows my scaredy-cat level of enjoyment of horror, and it’s off to a really strong start with “The Box.” We meet a former military man who teaches safety courses to future workers on offshore oil-rigs, and this includes a course on how to escape a helicopter if it has to “ditch” into the ocean. They get into their suits, climb into “the Box” (a frame on a crane that’s like a helicopter cabin), get dunked into a massive tank of saltwater, and escape.

Only.

One of the men refuses to come back after the exercise, saying someone tried to stop him—that’s untrue, there’s only the rescue divers there, making sure the people in the box get out okay—and when something similar happens again, the trainer decides to test out the box himself, in case there’s something wrong. The former military man, who has losses in his own history, realizes that’s the common thread: the men freaking out about the box? They’ve all survived something where others didn’t.

I think the thing I liked the most about this story was the different take on the hauntings. The story takes the “this thing is haunted” trope and turns it a few twists to the left, instead, and the last few lines of the story, when the military man is explaining just what he thinks has happened? They left a real shiver up my spine.

Short Stories 366:292 — “The Kevlar Canoe,” by Marie Bilodeau

[image error]

By now, if you’ve been paying attention, you know to expect something coming at you sideways from any Marie Bilodeau story. This expectation is honestly a joy, so when I saw her name on a story in Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories, I was so ready to enjoy whatever she threw my way. And boy did she throw some stuff my way. We meet a Voyager (as in, les Voyageurs) in his canoe, but he’s not paddling, oh no, he’s soaring through the sky and did I mention there’s Kevlar attached to his canoe and also he’s hunting demons?

Yep. We’re in a Bilodeau story. The mix of French Canadian mythology and culture alongside a dark story about this man fighting off a demonic eruption is fantastic. For one, having the demon focus/portal/break-into-our-reality-thingie be the ringing of a bell of a church? I mean, come on, who doesn’t love that? Having possessed nuns try to stop the Voyager from dealing with the problem? Chef’s kiss, all the way. And at no point does Bilodeau slow down, the Voyager doing everything he can (alongside his faithful semi-sentient canoe, of course) to make this town safer for the populace by hacking those demons to bits. It’s a darker, borderline-grim tone than most of the tales in this anthology, and a perfect fit for an October story.

There’s something so joyfully chaotic in Bilodeau’s style and yet the world-building never feels anything less than purposeful. It’s one heck of a tightrope to walk, but Bilodeau does it, every damn time. It’d be annoying, frankly, if it wasn’t so enjoyable. “The Kevlar Canoe” even drops a tiny little seed of an origin story amid the demons and the chaos and the axe play, and you just know that little story is waiting for a day of its own, too. Or at least, I hope it is.

I was lucky enough to reach out to Marie Bilodeau to ask her where the idea for this one came from, and… like I said, sideways:

I grew up on the story of la Chasse-galerie, an old tale with the usual Québécois tropes: don’t make deals with the devil, don’t drink, and for all that’s good and just, don’t get in that flying canoe! (Okay that last one isn’t a trope, but I like canoes.) In the old tale, the canoe is a means to an end – a metaphor for poor choices as defined by a Catholic guilt-driven culture. But what if that canoe got to be something more? What if, for fun, the canoe was an instrument for forces of good, instead? The Kevlar Canoe is a nod to an old tale but with a new twist. Times have changed, and maybe stepping into the canoe isn’t such a bad idea, after all.

Marie Bilodeau

Short Stories 366:291 — “The Treasure of Abbot-Thomas,” in the style of M.R. James

[image error]Having listened to the first two stories in this quartet of horror story productions, I found the first to be the kind of horror story I enjoy the most: the sort where the protagonist(s) may be damaged, but they’re not completely defeated, and as such, there’s a sense of survival or hope—or an outright turning of the tables—and the evil does not (completely) win. The second story was a reverse of this, innocence lost, and though evil suffered a mild set-back, the reader is left with a sense that the larger machinations will go on, and no one will miss the cast aside who are sacrificed.

So I went into this third story from The Conception of Terror completely unsure as to where it would head, which I think added to the will-they/won’t-they on behalf of the protagonist’s survival. “The Treasure of Abbot-Thomas” has a marvellous set up: A woman is hired to be the new head of history at a boy’s school (and, I’ll add, is in a relationship with another woman, huzzah for some visibility) and is asked shortly after joining the staff if she’d mind being the person to go to the funeral of a former head of the history department at the boy’s school—because no one else wants to go.

There she meets a former student, who is starting to have memories of his time with that teacher, and as accusations explode about the horrors this former teacher may have inflicted upon his prey via the guise of a treasure hunt (the prize for which was “alone time” with the teacher in question), this former student and new teacher realize that there’s one more treasure hunt in place, and they’ve received the first clue. What follows is a descent into a mix of psychological and from-beyond horror, but while the journey was fantastic, the ending did fall a bit weak. I had to replay it, rewinding the performance and listening again, as—unfortunately—it was so ambiguous as to almost be a non-ending, though the listener is, I expect, supposed to assume the worst. Despite that ending, though, the performance and the journey to it were great, and I was completely engrossed.

Short Stories 366:290 — “The Last Drag Show on Earth,” by Matthew Bright

[image error]I’m cheating just a little tucking this story into October, but in fairness, I’m not a fan of horror but I do love a good ghost story and this story has ghosts in a few senses of the word. It’s from Matthew Bright’s wonderful Stories to Sing in the Dark, and it’s the last story before the novella that closes out the collection.

It’s a speculative fiction piece set in a nebulously futuristic Manchester, on Canal Street, where the queer community gets together, and it features a particular bar on a particular night. The night in question is the last—the bar is set to be destroyed—and so the drag queens (and one in particular) put on one final show, for all the customers.

Some of whom arrive from the beyond.

Narratively, there’s a lovely set of tales being told here (and at least one that’s deeply sorrowful), and the counterpoint of the story’s futuristic traces (drag can be accomplished now with personally worn VR units that project the look you want, for example) adds a layer of slight ambiguity. When the drag queens talk about the ghosts in the audience, are they being literal, or..?

This is a story about a final hurrah, a last performance, and the way an entire era of a particular culture can be bound to a place, if not a time. The title makes the story seem sadder than maybe it is—again, there’s ambiguity here—but overall, there’s just enough shiver to this one to satisfy on both the spec-fic front and the queer front.

Short Stories 366:289 — “each thing i show you is a piece of my death,” by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer

Okay, then. Recently, I was chatting with some friends about a book, House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, and the two of us who’d read it were trying to explain it to the three who hadn’t, and it was kind of amusing because we were more animate than coherent. This brings me to “each thing i show you is a piece of my death,” which almost immediately reminded me of House of Leaves, but in an internet-meme way, rather than, uh, a house-bigger-on-the-inside-than-the-outside way. Both stories start with a single kernel, then build layers of story on top and around, until you realize you’re not only “up” through those layers of stories into wider tales all affected by the kernel of the initial creepy thing, but also that creepy thing is also rising up with you, spreading and reaching out to all these new participants in the greater narrative.

What I’m saying, basically, is this is creepy-as-hell.

So, the kernel in this case is a pair of filmmakers who are trying to put together a new project (and get a grant for it) around the idea of connecting snippits of footage from multiple people into a sum-greater-than kind of whole. One of the footage pieces they get is supremely disturbing: a video of an apparent suicide, the quality of the footage of which seems “off” and dated. It couldn’t be real, certainly. Right?

Right?

What follows is a kind of slow spread: the man in the film seems to show up elsewhere, in the background of other clips, of other movies, even on things completely unrelated to the project these two filmmakers put together, and the spread of it is interspersed with interviews, e-mails, investigations and the like, jacking up the tension notch by notch throughout, and leaving a nice “hey, how about a nightmare tonight?” package right in the middle of the subconscious for later delivery. I’m sure I’ll be signing for that particular package in the future. Gah. Anyway, don’t take it from me, you can go read it yourself over on Apex.

Short Stories 366:288 — “Search and Seizure,” by Shannon Barnsley

[image error]Despite not always loving horror, I do love a good ghost story, and this one, from Nothing Without Us, puts a medical system spin on the “haunted by someone you failed” trope in a way I really, really enjoyed, as it put me 100% on the side of the ghost. Barnsley gives us Cassie, a young woman who is having seizures and trying to get a diagnosis, but the doctors continue to dismiss her as there’s nothing visibly wrong. It’s her iron. It’s her lifestyle. It’s all in her head.

When the worst happens and this lack of functional help becomes lethal, Cassie finds herself still kicking around, and a little confused at first. She occasionally sees others, but there’s a sense of something undone for her, and she finds herself hanging around the hospital, and a particular doctor in particular, with a slowly dawning realization that there’s perhaps no justice to be head, but maybe she can at least find a little bit of satisfaction?

The whole notion of “the real experts are those with the condition” is drawn to a sharp edge with Cassie, through a lens of haunting and ghosts and the supernatural, and the end result is a character in a terrible situation (I mean, she’s dead) who still manages to have such a strong sense of purpose and animus. And, as she grows in her ability to affect the world around her, her choices and what she does with those ever-growing powers, and the eventual ability to be heard? Well. I left this tale with a smile on my face.

Short Stories 366:287 — “Goodbye is a Mouthful of Water,” by Dominik Parisien

[image error]

Yesterday’s brief respite from the month of dark and creepy notwithstanding, today’s story, found in Playground of Lost Toys, is an atmospheric and slow-building-shudder of a story from Dominik Parisien, who I’ve been lucky to meet a few times via Can*Con and the Prix Aurora Awards (Dominik, who edited the fiction content, co-won the Aurora for the anthology Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction alongside his co-editor Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, who edited the non-fiction).

“Goodbye is a Mouthful of Water” is a very short story, but it packs a solid punch into each page. A town flooded in the past (purposefully, as part of a reservoir), a grandfather with a knack for influence over a grandchild, a mother trying to protect her child from that influence, and a child feeling a pull to do… something, and seeing the dead in the water (though surely no one was actually drowned by the dam, no?). The trips into this drowned village, where the grandfather took the child, form a kind of shifting unstable foundation for an uncertain future, and as that moment comes due, I was squirming as a reader.

The imagery of looking down into water and seeing a whole village beneath is already powerful enough, but Parisien adds a foreboding throughout, a tick-tock (or drip-drip-drip, perhaps) of tension rising as the child grows, knows something must be done, and sets his sight on the dam, or the village, or the water. It’s a superbly atmospheric and creepy little tale, woven in a kind of warped and damaged way from the love between a grandchild and grandparent given only a darker path to expression.

Short Stories 366:286 — “A Match Made for Thanksgiving,” by Jackie Lau

[image error]I realize this is the middle of horror month, but allow me a brief departure for Canadian Thanksgiving. And by “brief departure” I mean “fun and sexy novella from Jackie Lau.” “A Match Made for Thanksgiving” kicks off Lau’s holiday-themed quartet about the children in a single family, and the matchmaking parents and grandparents who really, really want them to hurry up, settle down, and have kids, already. We meet Nick Wong, a high-powered type living in a penthouse in Toronto (so, y’know, wealthy and high-power) who is originally from Mosquito Bay, Ontario (so, y’know, not the kind of place with penthouses) and he enjoys his life. He has one-night-stands at the end of his work-weeks, hangs out with buds, enjoys the vast array of restaurants available in Toronto, and in Toronto, he doesn’t feel so completely different. Toronto has all those wonderful traits, none of which his (predominantly white) small hometown can offer.

That one-night stand part comes into play right off the bat when he bumps into Lily Tseng at a club, and overhears her quite literally asking how hard is it to get a one-night stand, anyway? He offers, she accepts, and they have a fantastic night—one he can’t quite shake off, for some reason. When Nick is asked home for Thanksgiving, he figures it’ll be a quick overnight or two, and a good chance to clear his head of that night with Lily, which is still lingering, only his family has played matchmaker and it turns out they’ve brought guests to dinner, including Lily. Except Lily is a date for his brother. And it turns out she’s the daughter of a good friend of Nick’s mom. And… well.

What follows is a wonderful rom-com ride, with Lily admitting she was trying to get out of her shell and act impulsively and differently because of a bad break up with a guy who felt she was “boring,” alongside Nick realizing he is thinking of Lily way too much for a one-night stand (and is he actually jealous of his older brother, because that’s never happened before). The family scenes are hysterical, and while there’s a bit of angst between the two—Lily not feeling “enough” in many ways for Nick’s lifestyle, Nick not sure how to deal with these new feelings of settling down he’s not contended with before—at no point does the novella go so bleak as to ruin the upbeat, rom-com vibe. I really enjoyed it, and bounced right to the next in the series.

I got to meet Jackie Lau at a Romance Writers meeting in Toronto a while back, so I snuck her a “where did the idea come from?” e-mail, and here we go:

I enjoy writing about holidays, partly because I love writing family, and holidays are a great time to bring family together! There are a bunch of romances centered around American Thanksgiving, but I’d never read one about Canadian Thanksgiving, so I decided to have a go at it.

I am biracial (Asian mother, white father), and it’s rare to find romances with biracial characters whose parents are still alive and together. So, I wanted to write about biracial characters whose parents are happily married.

The Wong siblings were raised in small-town Ontario, and they all have a slightly different relationship with their hometown—only one of the four of them still lives there—as well as their racial background, though this isn’t the focus of the books. Although I’m from Toronto, my husband is from a small town near my fictional town of Mosquito Bay, so that was part of my inspiration for the setting.