'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 60

Short Stories 366:3 — “The Case of the Passionless Bees,” by Rhonda Eikamp

[image error]One of the nice things about listening to anthologies on audio is how neatly stories often line up with a walk of the dog, or of a particular set of chores. I listened to this latest from Women Destroy Science Fiction while walking the dog around the block a few times, and the performer did a really solid job with John Watson’s voice.

Yes, that John Watson. Now, I feel like I need to be honest here: I’m not a huge Sherlock fan really, and not widely read on Holmes, but this was a clever notion to play with. The science fiction at play here is in the form of “Gearlock” Holmes being a steampunk-android type being, and Watson being called to his home to help him deal with a murder on the premises—and how, as usual in a Holmes story, nothing is quite what it seems on the surface.

Eikamp’s world-building gives us a few key glimpses into a world where these automata are treated as less-than-human, with the exception of Gearlock due to his usefulness. That single point of reference crafts so much of this story’s world, especially from the point of view of a marginalized reader, and it really played out well. I really enjoyed this, which is likely the first time I’ve ever said that about a story inspired by Sherlock Holmes.

Short Stories 366:2 — “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate,” by Matisse Mozer

[image error]I love a good origin story, and I love the idea of dimension-hopping, so “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate” from Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) had the benefit of hitting both those buttons for me as a reader, and it ran with it throughout the story. We meet Rosa right off, in the middle of a thrilling escape that really isn’t going well, and the pace doesn’t really slow down at all.

If not for the lethal head-shots that happen shorty after the opening of the tale, this could have almost read as a rousing and exciting YA adventure, but instead it’s a story with a young woman raised as a pirate from the man who stole her from her home dimension trying to make a break for it to protect her version of reality, and a bored teen guy who is about to have a really strange day.

It’s got some great little moments (interdimensional pirate activity in a Starbucks), ends on note that made me want more (a recurring moment as a reader in Scourge), and yet presented a full and tidy little narrative at a hectic pace befitting an unusual pirate adventure.

Short Stories 366:1 — “Chocolate Milkshake Number 314” by Caroline M. Yoachim

[image error] This may be a terrible idea, but a quite a few years ago, back when I have a Livejournal, I decided to blog once a day about a short story. It was called Short Stories 365, and I managed the feat. For a whole year, once a day, a review of a short fiction piece. Those small reviews are all gone, alongside my nuked LJ, but it occurred to me that I could try again. And this time, I’ll be planning ahead, so as I read stories, I’m going to write and schedule reviews ahead of time, rather than trying to write them all the day-of (which was the only part of the equation that I was dreading from the last time I did this).

So, here we are. Day One. Only this time it’ll be Short Stories 366 because, y’know, leap year.

“Chocolate Milkshake Number 314” by Caroline M. Yoachim

From People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction, this tale strikes an incredibly difficult balance between certain doom and, well, a blooming romance. There’s a ship that’s roughly two years away from falling into a black hole. There’s no escape, the fuel isn’t enough, and that’s just that.

So what do you do when you’ve got two years left to live? Well, for the voice of the story, it begins with being polite. The food available on the ship is… reconstituted and replicated and from all accounts vaguely appetizing at best. The character’s favourite is a block that tastes kinda/sorta like pizza.

When an engineer offers to try and make them both a chocolate milkshake, she’s skeptical at best. And she’s totally right. It tastes like awful. But the next day the engineer is ready to try again. And again. And again.

What unfolds is a lovely relationship, with what I’ll absolutely come out and call an “adorable” ending, on a ship that’s doomed from the moment the story begins.

Sunday Shorts—Binaries by S.B. Divya

[image error]This flash fiction piece from People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction has a super-clever narrative conceit: it rolls out over a binary progression of years of the main character’s life. She’s 1. Then she’s 2. Then she’s 4. Then she’s 8, 16, 32… You get it. That it progresses beyond the 64-128 is where the science fiction kicks in, and the ways in which it does so are fantastic.

What is human once we’ve found a way to progress beyond a “normal” human lifespan? What is human once we’ve decided our bodies aren’t necessary? What is human once we’ve gone so far past what we were that memory of what we were is difficult?

In this case, Divya spins the story around a single loss in the character’s life before many of these leaps in technology and state of being, and the end result is a kind of anchor for the tale, and the way it loops around back to this point was science-fiction perfect.

Romance Writers of America

Dear board members and president;

I cannot put in strong enough terms the level of disappointment (and outright frustration and anger) I feel at the decision to censure Courtney Milan for her ongoing efforts and discourse to attempt to change the direction of the RWA and romance writing in general toward a more inclusive, representative place. By siding with Susan Tisdale’s ridiculous anti-racism tactics—all the more so given her letter was full of racist statements in and of itself—the RWA has lost the pieces of credibility it had barely begun to gather.

I’m sickened and disgusted by this choice. Understand: the decision itself is completely opposed to everything I believe (and everything the RWA has professed to stand for, which was the only reason I allowed myself to join in the first place, despite so much obvious homophobia and outright racism present throughout my interactions with the RWA).

To drop this on Milan quite literally the days before Christmas? The sheer cruelty and lack of professionalism on top of such a terrible, ignorant decision goes beyond the pale.

Please consider this my request to remove ‘Faux Ho Ho’ from consideration from the RITAs and my resignation from the RWA in any capacity, including taking part in the RWA-U Committee.

Though at this point I can’t help but feel it’s too late for the organization, and frankly feel it deserves to fade into obscurity, it would be worth taking a moment to learn about the “paradox of tolerance” and refresh yourselves to some basic truths: it is not intolerant to fight intolerance; it is not bigoted to reveal bigotry.

‘Nathan Burgoine

I Watched Cats So You Wouldn’t Have To But I Was Totally Wrong And Now I Need You To Go See Cats

Our weekend was overloaded with holiday events, which left both myself and my husband completely drained, and coincidentally, this same weekend happened to be the opening (and maybe closing?) weekend of Cats, and he decided the best thing in the world to recover from the weekend would be to see if the reviews of Cats—a whole genre in and of themselves—were truly representative of the experience.

I like popcorn, so I agreed, but then when I was standing in line waiting for tickets I spotted a large bag of Skittles and I had Cats panic and I grabbed them and put them on the counter with way too much vehemence and pulled out my Scene card and then all but whispered “Two for Cats, please.”

The women behind the counter said, “Are you sure?” and that’s when I knew all the reviews had to be true: this was going to be a thing.

“Yep,” I said, filled with the confidence of a gay man about to step into a movie adaption of a stage musical that could only be considered to contain a narrative if you did a lot of heavy lifting yourself.

Hey, I’ve listened to Starlight Express. I actively try to find queer representation in mainstream media. I can make narrative out of anything.

She frowned, looked at her screen, and then leaned over the counter to look past me to see who was manning the entrance area where they check your tickets.

“Damn. My manager is working, or I’d’ve given you senior tickets.”

“It’s fine,” I say, breezily.

“You have to pick a seat,” she says, showing me the touch screen. Two seats are highlighted in yellow, the default to where I’ll sit with my husband. The rest of the seats are an ocean of unclaimed grey-blue, with only two other seats currently showing as claimed.

“Those are good,” I say, moving past breezily and into something approaching regal.

[image error]My husband returns, eyes the Skittles but doesn’t comment, and off we go to the cinema.

The guy at the entrance to the theatre hallway stares down at our tickets for a few extra seconds, and I hold up my bag of Skittles. Read the room, ticket-man. We taste the rainbow.

We sit in our seats as the twenty-two minute ride of holiday themed commercials before the previews before the film start, and compare theories on why Ronald McDonald house gets two swings at the commercial bat. I’m betting it’s because it’s the holidays. My husband doesn’t see the connection. We open the bag of Skittles. An elderly couple arrive and sit down.

The lights dim, and we are go.

I once tried to explain Cats to a friend during the intermission of the musical we’d been given free tickets to alongside a friend of mine who used to get lots of free tickets to things at the NAC.

“It’s Cat Idol,” I said. “They’re all performing for the old dude, and the old dude is going to pick one that gets to drive off in a car, ‘Grease’-style. Most of it is basically just performed poetry, but the ‘Memory’ song was written for it.”

She’d stared at me like I was on something, which, fair. We waited for the lights to flicker then marched our way back inside to make it through to the end. It ended, and we went out for drinks after, trying to figure out if there was any charm to be had in the musical. We decided not.

All that to say, the opening of the movie does a really good job of explaining just that (though it still spends a lot of time saying contradictory things about what a Jellicle cat is) and I take a handful of skittles and decide as a game I’ll only eat them when I’m overwhelmed or emotionally affected in some way by the movie.

A human throws a cat, trapped in a bag, into a dump. I eat a skittle.

When the cat’s out of the bag (sorry), she’s revealed to be a sleek, white, beautiful cat, except she’s also a human and the end result of the CGI is something more akin to a Kzinti nightmare (at least the Kzinti wore pink suits) and I shudder a bit, mainlining skittle after skittle as all the other cats go on about Jellicles and the Cat Idol thing they’re doing and she decides her first name (of three, though this is a tease as we never get another name for her, but I have ideas and more on that later) is Victoria and I don’t know if this is a reference to tossing aside the monarchy or if I’m already reading way, way too much into this, but that’s her name and she’s kind of a pretty ballerina and the other cats invite her along to meet the Jellicle cats who are competing for Cat Idol. Magical Mister Mistoffelees is kind of goofy and cute and invites her along and that’s sweet, especially with his “gay drama club boy” vibe. Basically, Triple-M and  Mukustrap drop the whole “terms and conditions” on her while gyrating and hissing.

Oh, and she should be careful of Macavity or something. He’s, like, evil or whatever.

(Oh, and the prize is totally a Danny-and-Sandy-in-Grease sendoff into another life.)

Anyway, off we go, and we meet the first contender, Rebel Wilson (in the role of Rebel Wilson), who is, I guess, a kitchen cat who trains mice and cockroaches to sing and dance and wants a new life because she’s tired of being in the kitchen or something.

Also, at one point she strips off her outer layer of cat fur and reveals beneath she is wearing a stage outfit over another layer of cat fur, and I’d like to say this is the most disturbing thing about her time on the screen but she also randomly eats cockroaches with human faces who dance on the top of a cake one assumes humans later eat, so I can’t stress enough you’ll need one of the super large bags of skittles.

I should also point out that Victoria, our pretty/horrifying white cat, does something fucking amazing to this movie: she gives Cats an actual fucking narrative. Like, her being there, being the one without a clue what’s going on beyond being abandoned yet still hopeful (and somehow amazingly good at ballet) means the audience is told a lot about what’s going on, but also she’s the newcomer everyone is okay with because she’s pretty (to them, need to stress that because horrifying) and therefore totes allowed to come along for the ride. As far as inclusivity goes in most films, she’s a pretty white lady-cat, so, y’know, truly this is groundbreaking.

We move onward (in the barest sense of forward motion) to Rum Tum Tugger who is a bad-boy rebel or something and is never satisfied and I totally wish this was Hamilton instead but here we are and I can’t look away so there’s at least that. He takes them to a bar (it’s a milk bar, and I should point out there’s some huge dissonance in this movie’s setting. Is this human London? Cat London? Some quasi-in-between London? It’s impossible to know. One minute we’re in a human kitchen, the next minute there are wanted posters for Macavity in an alley—which leads one to think the cats did that, given a later song about how Macavity always has an alibi so the cops wouldn’t be looking for him and I eat another skittle when I realize all the signs and billboards around whatever-the-fuck London this is are cat themed, with the exception of “Kay-Nines” which… a dog reference, I guess, I don’t know, more skittles).

By the time Rum Tum Tugger has moved off because he’s just that cool, we catch our first glimpse of Jennifer Hudson (“THANK FUCKING GOD,” I mutter around a mouth of skittles and my husband pats my knee knowingly) and we learn that the other good looking women cats are all bitchy about how Grizabella (I shit you not, that’s her name) isn’t pretty and she’s been around and it’s totally clear we are slut-shaming and poor-shaming and even being ableist because Grizabella sings about her scars and her coat and Jennifer Hudson is miserable and I chomp skittles angrily because this cannot stand.

Victoria realizes Grizabella is obviously a cat of quality, but the other cats are mean and Grizabella leaves and now I hate all the other cats and I’m nervous the addition of an actual narrative via Victoria is going to turn into the pretty white cat saving the scruffy black cat and this bag of skittles might not last. Her second name could be “the White Saviour Cat.”

By this point, James Corden (playing the role of James Corden) has noticed Victoria is underfed and abandoned, and takes her on a tour of garbage cans and everyone eats distressingly not-quite-realistic-but-still-sincerely-grotesque bits of garbage can food while he explains he’s proud of his size (but also shy about it) and then we get a teeter-totter fat-joke and there’s more gross eating and stuff, but the cats seem happy about it.

Oh, and by this point I think Rebel Wilson has been kidnapped by Macavity who apparently has dust teleportation powers. He also nabs James Corden after that, via garbage can. I don’t remember if he kidnaps Rum Tum Tugger, actually. It’s hard to keep track, and really, it’s not like you care exactly since all of these cats are basically the 1% so far.

Victoria ends up taking a brief detour with Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer where she almost gets caught by a dog, but Magical Mister Mistoffelees helps out and honestly the M&R song is so annoying and all they do is run around the house breaking shit and stealing shit and trying to low-key corrupt Victoria or something but once again I’m sucked in by the sheer confusion of how large or small these cat-people-horrorbeings are supposed to be. Are they cat-sized? Human-sized? Somewhere-in-between? Because sometimes they can slide down a bannister and it’s wide enough for them, but other times they’re sitting on chairs or in a bed or tall enough to hold a door closed or wear a woman’s diamond ring around their wrist and it’s just too much. Also, Triple-M is starting to be my wee hero, honestly, because he’s obviously not very good at magic but he stops to try and help Victoria anyway.

So, off they run after dealing with the doggo we never see (it only barks, so unlike the mice and cockroaches, it seems to be completely dog, rather than some sort of amalgamation of human-and-animal, and what are the rules about who gets to be sort-of human in Cats, anyway?) and we finally get to meet Old Deuteronomy.

Dame Judi Dench is Old Deuteronomy and we just watched Skyfall last night, so we’re both having massive dissonance, especially since M is in a fur coat doing drag or something and my husband squeezes my thigh again and we both choke on our laughter. We learn that Old Deuteronomy is frail (but she rocks that fur coat) and maybe has lived ninety-nine lives (that seems like eleven times what other cats get, so now I’m wondering if the big reveal is actually that Old Deuteronomy says the other cats get to move on to another life but this is really some dark horror story where she drains their essences for herself and has convinced all the Jellicle cats they’re auditioning for a new beginning when really she’s the vampire of Cats but I’m probably overthinking things again and the skittle bag is dangerously low).

The cats all head off to a broken down theatre or something (which is oddly sometimes the right size for them again, and I’m not kidding when I say you could spend the whole movie trying to figure out the scale of cats to things) and there’s another glimpse of Jennifer Hudson cat and she is just so sad and broken, you guys. So sad.

Victoria sings a “that’s sad, and I wish she’d come here because I, too, am living a sad life because I have no memories at all and at least she has memories and therefore we both suffer” song and you guys, this is so straight-cis-white-allosexual-woman-feminist I cannot, and neither can Jennifer Hudson cat because she leaves. Old Deuteronomy, on the other hand, sees all this go down and is “You know, kid, you’ve got potential. You could be a Jellicle cat someday,” and I add another tick in the Dame Judi Dench is a vampire cat column.

(Oh, also at some point we find out Macavity has been teleporting the Jellicle cats he kidnapped to a boat on the Thames or something, and Growltiger the cat is mean and helping him and James Corben makes a pretty tongue-in-cheek joke at the libretto and we laughed so it was a good joke.)

Anyway, back at the Jellicle ball, next up is Sir Ian McKellen and I’m having another moment because Magneto is licking milk from a bowl and he looks like a sad old man rather than the guy who can lift the entire Golden Gate Bridge with just his fucking will, and I refuse to downgrade him, so whatever.

Also, Magical Mr. Mistofelees is there, and he’s being so attentive of Gus (that’s Magneto Cat) I decide it’s obvious he has that drama boy queer crush thing gay boys get for amazing queer icons and then I realize in stunned horror I am creating headcannon for this experience, and the skittles are getting dangerously low.

Gus performs on the stage again, and Triple-M manages to get off a weak spell with his wand (read: gay crush power akin to a Sailor Moon moment) and Magneto Cat’s song is totally “I preferred it when the old queens were in charge” and this isn’t subtext people, it’s just text.

After his performance, Gus is drawn into an alley by Macavity who asks for an autograph and a moment happens that’s just so incredible I’m not sure it’s possible for me to do it justice, but he uses his magic to kidnap Gus, but this time he does it by flicking his wrists and saying “Macavity!” in a stage-whisper and the little dust cloud forms an M and my husband and I just lose it. Like, we’re trying not to be those guys in the theatre in deference to the other couple who honestly don’t seem to be there ironically, but it’s just…

“Macavity!” Whoosh! I’m going to be doing that for weeks. WEEKS.

Next up is a train cat and honestly I don’t care although he can tap-dance really well but he’s also CGI and that’s another thing about Cats: since it’s CGI I can’t tell if someone actually did these moves, and it was captured, or if it’s all just done by computer, so I don’t know if I should be wowed or not and decide to instead wonder why the railway cat wears a cap and pants and suspenders but no shirt, but then again most of the cats wear nothing so are they naked or is this kind of like kinkwear or did a human dress him up in little cat-sized pants because it’s adorable?

And are there even cat-sized tap shoes? And wouldn’t he need four of them, not two?

Anyway, his performance ends with a spin but then he gets hoovered up into the air and vanishes because Macavity and the cats are all “Oh shit!” but then Taylor Swift arrives.

Okay. I need to pause for a second.

Bombalurina (that’s her name, I’m serious) descends from the ceiling sprinkling catnip from giant shakers and the catnip is glowing and cats accidentally snort it and she’s singing the praises of Macavity and it’s fucking surreal and glorious, okay? I think she’s doing some sort of accent (I admit, I was just sitting there with my eyes wide open and my jaw slack because of the glowing catnip snow-fall going on) but either way, she takes the lead on a big number all about Macavity and how he’s a genius criminal who’s never been caught because he always has an alibi (which makes the wanted posters make no sense all over again because how can he be wanted if he’s never committed a crime that’ll stick to him) but she also says he’s a ginger cat which makes her a less than reputable source given he’s completely black. You know this because Macavity arrives and…

Y’all.

I cannot stress how all these cats have been, up to this point, disturbingly horrifyingly not-quite-human-but-definitely-not-enough-cat and then Idris Elba cat shows up without his hat or trenchcoat for the first time and suddenly there are thoughts and I catch a glimpse of what it might be like to be a furry because he’s hot.

Like, Idris Elba cat could get it.

When the number is done, Macavity is all “I stole all the other contestants, Cat Idol is mine,” but Old Deuteronomy is not having that shit at all and says she doesn’t have to choose him just because he’s the last cat present or something so he flips out and kidnaps her, too. On the boat with all the other captured Jellicle cats, and that mean cat and Macavity decide Old Deuteronomy is gonna walk the plank. It’s looking grim, is what I’m saying.

Meanwhile, everyone is coming out of their coke—sorry, catnip—high and they realize the doings that has a’happened and they’re ready to quit, but outsider Victoria realizes that Triple-M is also magic, so she aims her manic-pixie-girl-cat vibes his way, and he decides to give it a shot. (Headcannon is modified to shift Triple-M the drama boy gay cat into Triple-M the drama boy bi cat because there are feelings thicker than catnip in the air).

What follows is likely the biggest miracle of the entirety of Cats, if I think about it. By injecting the narrative through Victoria cat, and turning Macavity into a catnapper, and then having it all rely on Triple-M to bring Old Deuteronomy back, and furthermore having Triple-M be a nervous queerling with confidence issues, the song “Magical Mr. Mistopheles” turns from charmless earworm into a coming-of-age, coming-out, no-one-sees-me-where-I-really-am, finding-my-queer-strength anthem and I am here for it.

(He also describes himself as black from ears to tail and we can, like, see his white nose and chin and tummy so he’s got the same visual awareness problem Tay-Tay cat has, but whatever, he’s a queerling just coming into his own, we’re not always good at seeing how amazing we already are).

Over the course of three attempts, Triple-M manages to put lead in his pencil (that’s not a metaphor, he’s using a pencil as a magic wand, okay?) thanks to one more try at Victoria’s behest and whoosh! The judge is returned, and the Jellicle Ball can continue, and okay, he didn’t rescue the rest of the contestants but that’s fine; they start rescuing themselves thanks to Rebel Wilson’s weird cat-skin-over-her-own-cat-skin thing (still horrifying) and some antics or whatever.

So! Cats are in place, and Victoria spies that Jennifer Hudson cat is once again within visual range and she calls to her and walks her inside while the other cats try that Game of Thrones “shame shame shame!” bell thing (they don’t have bells, but it’s totally what they’re doing with their eyes and their hissing) but then Victoria is like, “Sing!” and I wilt into my chair because unless I’m mistaken it’s totally playing out that super pretty white cat is giving Jennifer Hudson cat the confidence she needs. Jennifer fucking Hudson. I decide it could also be her giving up the microphone, though, which is so much mental gymnastics but it helps me get past the moment and then we get back to ‘Memory.’

And Jesus.

I don’t know if I can explain this properly, but Jennifer Hudson cat sings from a place of primal sadness and she is crying and for the first time I do not believe those are CGI tears, those are real damn tears and she collapses and can’t go on and I’m ready to clap or raise a lighter or whatever “I believe in fairies” thing I need to do for her to keep singing and then…

Then?

Then Victoria cat takes up part of ‘Memories’ and I am not having it. Jennifer Hudson cat did not just spent two hours emoting misery like some sort of anti-Vulcan high colonic for you to come in and take some of her damn song, Victoria. She. Did. Not.

Luckily, it lasts only a moment and then Jennifer Hudson cat blasts it out of the freaking park and it’s clear to any damn cat that she’s the one, which Old Deuteronomy confirms because she’s no fool and we have our winner and fuck me if there are just enough skittles left.

Grizabella gets to float off into the sky and be reborn (and she’s goddamn earned it so I decide Dame Judi Dench cat is totally not a vampire) and the cats gather around a statue to watch her fly off as the sun is rising and then Dame Judi Dench cat sort of closes things out with a spoken-work-poetry delivery about what cats are and, listen.

At one point, Dame Judi Dench is flicking her tongue, folks. She is flicking her tongue which means someone told her to do that, or she just threw herself all the way in, and either way lesbians everywhere (and not just a few bisexuals) just discovered some feelings.

And that’s Cats. It’s… unreal. Horrifying and engrossing and brilliant and I wish I could see it for the first time ever all over again and I need to own it and have showings with my friends whenever edibles finally come to market.

Oh, and Idris Elba cat?

Call me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Shorts—A Winter’s Tale by Catherine Lundoff

[image error]There’s just something about winter that lends itself to magic. Fantasies and fables around the coming of the snow are plentiful, and yet I never quite tire of fresh new takes on the notion, and Catherine Lundoff’s “A Winter’s Tale” found in A Few More Winter Tales is no exception.

Here we travel with a young woman, Sanna, in a northern land, and she encounters a personification/embodiment of winter, but there is a connection that is both immediate and, perhaps, dangerous. A chance encounter and an act of kindness both seem small at first, but Lundoff weaves this lovely sense of magic in the North Wind, of cloaks and snow and seasons spun out of balance, and soon things are in peril.

Ultimately, I loved the cycle of the story, the sense that this is—like the seasons the story speaks so eloquently of—a telling and a retelling and this story will happen again and again. It’s a story about winter I’m happy to take in and hold as a mythology.

Sunday Shorts—The Seventh Floor of Barbara Ireson by Nick Campbell

[image error]Some of my favourite holiday stories are merely set during the holidays. They’re not vast tales of how the holiday spirit changes a person, nor are they all about the spirit of giving or the like. They just happen to occur as a side-effect of the holidays, while someone is shopping or the like. Such is “The Seventh Floor of Barbara Ireson,” from A Few More Winter Tales.

The Barbara in question (Barbie to her parents) is shopping with her parents, or rather, is tagging along and bored out of her mind while her parents shop, and wheedles her way into being allowed to go to the sixth floor where there are ‘Books and Records.’ She will wait there for them, she promises. They finally relent, she enters the lift, and exits… somewhere.

Campbell has such a brilliant way with words here. The story reads like a contemporary Alice or Narnia—here is a little girl who realizes she’s somewhere she shouldn’t necessarily be, but frankly life isn’t as exciting as books and really, this feels like an opportunity, so… Barbara is in. The delight of the ending is as much in the subversion of the kind of theme most holiday stories have as it is in the joy of this particular kind of otherworldly visit tale.

The Doors of Penlyon

Every year for the past few years, I’ve re-written a holiday story through a queer lens, retelling it as a way to retroactively tell stories to my younger self that include people like me. The first year, I wrote “Dolph,” (a retelling of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Then I wrote “Frost,” (a retelling of Frosty the Snow-Man), “Reflection,” (a retelling of “The Snow Queen”) and “The Five Crowns and Colonel’s Sabre,” (a retelling of “The Nutcracker and Mouse King.”)

This year, I wrote “The Doors of Penlyon,” an adjacent retelling from “The Christmas Hirelings” that also crosses over with my YA Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks, in that I made Mr. Tom Danby, the instigating character of “The Christmas Hirelings” to have the same speculative heritage my main character Cole has, albeit at the turn of the century.

I tried not to spoil too much from “The Christmas Hirelings” (since I don’t think it’s as well known as many holiday classics) but the short version of the story is this: Tom Danby, itinerant bachelor (I mean, come on!) is staying with his friend, Sir John Penlyon and John’s niece, Adela, over Christmas who aren’t feeling it. Adela mentions Christmas is always better with kids, and Danby jumps up to declare a great idea: hiring children to make their Christmas more delightful. That there’s a twist to which children show up is, of course, the whole point, but the point of the story I’m playing with is when one of those children gets truly sick, they call for a London doctor to visit, who can’t do much to help beyond what the local doctor and nurse were already doing, given what he has available.

And then I thought of Cole, and the teleportation powers he possessed, and wondered what would happen if Tom Danby was also like Cole.

I hope you enjoy.

[image error]

The Doors of Penlyon

Tom Danby listened at the door, his fingertips not touching the handle nor wood, not daring the temptation—the temptations—such contact with reality might cause him to consider. Penlyon Place cool and dark around him, warmed only by fireplaces and the misery of all those under its proud roof, and he had not slept much in the last nights.

In all his life, Tom Danby had never hated a door as much as he hated his one right now. Doors had been his friends since he’d come into his own strange and certainly unmonied inheritance, and he was used to doors as companions, if not outright collaborators.

He’d once heard someone say “No door is closed to Mr. Danby, as he seems to have a way of opening them all.” They’d intended it as a mild jest at his station, he assumed, and how many people so much higher seemed to take him in. For it was true Mr. Danby, errant bachelor, needed never worry about having no real address of his own. He stayed with personages, moving from one place to another, one invitation to another, and was welcome almost everywhere.

It wasn’t why Tom Danby loved doors, of course. But his own reasons were by necessity a secret, and had nothing to do with something as banal as social status.

For doors in the hand of one such as Tom Danby (for it should matter to point out Tom Danby was not alone in his peculiarity of doorways) were not just doors.

No. Similarly, conversations were not just conversations. Not if Tom Danby put his mind to it.

At a look, Tom Danby might not garner a second glance. He was not displeasing, but nor was he handsome, though he maintained a neatness that greatly compensated him overall. He had grey eyes no one would mistake for blue, brown hair that was beginning to silver now he approached fifty, and was of middling height and slender of build.

If pressed for a reason as to why those grander people enjoyed the company of Mr. Danby, they would all agree he was of good spirit, had grand—if often odd—ideas, and that somehow, being around Mr. Danby elevated one’s mood.

Tom let out a breath, exhaling slowly, and closing his eyes. He hadn’t elevated anything at all here in Penlyon Place, and now…

Moppet. God. What had he done?

He could hear the little girl breathing. It was an unhappy, unhealthy sound, and though he tried to take comfort in the existence of her breath at all, there was a gurgle to it, and it strained as though a wolf sat upon her chest.

Dr. South had spoken with Sir John Penlyon and Tom Danby, and though Danby had hoped he’d echo the words of kind Dr. Nichols, the local doctor, of how children often did well against maladies of the lungs, instead, Dr. South—London’s best in the care of children—had made comment to the unusual nature of Moppet and…

This is all your fault, you contemptable fool.

On some level, Tom Danby had enough grace to understand his lack of control over the whims of disease and infection, but it was cold comfort in the moment. This child—this child who was more than anyone but he in this grand manor knew—was on the edge of death and she was only here on his whim.

If Adela had not mentioned children. If Tom had not seen, for just that moment, the thinnest wedge he might use. If Sir John Penlyon hadn’t been ever so slightly open to the thought.

If Tom hadn’t inspired.

He’d been working the words, sitting comfortably by the fire. Listening, as always, to Adela and Sir John as they spoke, and Adela’s attempts to berate Sir John for his lack of joy in the season had finally turned to her recollections of her childhood Christmases, and how much more wonderful Christmas had always seemed as a child, and then…

“Ah, there you’ve hit the mark, Adela. Christmas is a splendid institution in a house where there are children,” Sir John had said. “Christmas can hardly be made too much of where there are children in question.”

Tom didn’t dare rouse from his position, but the thrill of the conversation ran through him. He could feel these moments with that otherness he’d had since his twenties, and so, he pressed those words in his mind, aimed them squarely at Sir John, and nudged at the doors in Sir John Penlyon’s mind. Those doors, too, were friends to those of Tom Danby’s ilk, and frankly, the sort of doors Danby preferred. People spent a lot of time closing the doors inside them.

Tom Danby took great pleasure in opening them, when the opportunities presented.

He smiled as Sir John Penlyon waxed poetic about the spirit of the season being all about children.

It was enough. Feeling the change in the room, Tom Danby outlined the most ridiculous plan. He would, for Adela and Sir John, hire some children to make their Christmas as enjoyable as one had ever been.

Adela’s amusement had shattered into outright disbelief as Sir John readily agreed. He’d even written Tom a check, which was a good thing, as the plan in Tom Danby’s head would require at least a quartet of train tickets.

Yes, many doors had been closed through Sir John Penlyon’s life, and it was time for Tom Danby to air them out.

He’d been so damned sure of himself. It was such a simple arrangement to make, and the children in question had always adored Uncle Tom, even without knowing exactly why he’d known their mother. Taking the train with them had been more pleasant than he’d imagined—it had been a while since Tom Danby had bothered with the railways—but there were rules to these sorts of things.

There were rules.

Tom’s hand shook, barely room for a breath between his fingertips and the wooden door.

*

“Dr. South,” Tom pitched his voice low, not wishing to catch the attention of Sir John or Adela, both of whom had now retired to the purgatory of the sitting room. He’d not seen Laddie or Lassie this morning, and briefly wondered how Moppet’s elder siblings were handling her illness, but the thought was quick and easily nudged aside.

For they were well, and well children could be thought of later.

The ill, on the other hand, demanded attention.

The doctor turned, nodding and stepping just a little further into the front hall. There, they would be able to have a quiet conversation, and Tom Danby’s estimation of the doctor rose no small amount in the moment.

He was taller than Tom, perhaps a few years younger, and perhaps handsome in a gentle way,  though the man’s long travels to Penlyon and near lack of sleep thereafter had left deep smudges under his dark eyes.

Face to face with the man, Tom shored up some courage from what little remained, and asked what he needed to ask.

“Is there anything—from near or far—that might help the situation?” Tom said.

A small line appeared between Dr. South’s eyebrows. His lips parted, and he drew in the slightest breath, but then he closed them again. The line deepened.

“Doctor,” Tom pressed, and now, spurred on by that simplest tell from the Doctor, reached out and took the doctor’s forearm in hand. “It was in the way you spoke of what you could do, rather than a grander sense of everything that might be done. I’ve no doubt of your skill, nor your compassion, if indeed there’s something you didn’t mention given the hopelessness of, say, geography, but please. If there is anything.” Tom Danby swallowed. “Even elsewhere.”

Dr. South’s countenance softened to one of compassion, and once again Tom was struck by how gentle the man seemed in so much of his manner. When he spoke, his voice was whisper soft, as though he feared it might slip beneath a door and stray to the ears of the heartbroken who waited, and be mistaken for hope.

“If I had every tool at my disposal, I would try a treatment in particular, yes,” Dr. South said. “But some things do not travel well, and even were I to send for them, were able to bring them from London, by the time they arrived…” He did not finish the sentence.

The unsaid was well clear enough. The timetable would have such a treatment arrive after it would be of no use, one way or the much worse other.

“Still,” Tom said. “If I might indulge the question? I understand you, I promise, and I would never be so cruel as to offer Sir John or Adela something that could never be.”

Dr. South hesitated a good long moment.

Please, Tom thought, leaning the thought in the doctor’s direction. The truth costs nothing.

He inspired the doctor.

Dr. South finally spoke, outlining what he might have done, where Moppet in London with him, and he had at his fingertips all that science might offer to aid in her recovery.

Tom listened carefully, asking only a question or two in the face of Dr. South’s eloquent explanations. When Tom thanked him, Dr. South’s hands both twitched, as though they intended a glad handshake or simple touch. A small flush had risen on the gentle man’s cheeks, and it helped him cross the line to handsome after all.

“You musn’t tell them,” he said. “There’s no way…” Once again, he let his sentence fade.

“Of course not,” Tom agreed readily. “But I thank you. Truly.”

His own hands felt empty in the moment. Tom Danby knew his own cheeks were alight.

Dr. South bid him a good evening, his voice softer still, going to a greatly earned sleep. He assured Tom the nurse would rouse him were anything to change, but otherwise, the doctor repeated clearly, there was nothing anyone could do but pray, and sleep, and hope.

Tom forced a smile and agreement both, but knew better.

*

Tom Danby listened to Moppet’s struggling breaths for a few seconds more, then pressed his fingertips against the door handle.

The world waited, as it always did.

Tom turned the handle.

*

After a dreadful breakfast, Tom waited for Dr. South outside Moppet’s door. The doctor closed the door quietly behind him, and they walked together towards his leave-taking.

“May I ask,” the doctor said, then hesitated, aborting the sentence.

“I brought the three children here to enliven the season,” Tom said. “Their mother is on her way.”

Dr. South nodded. “That’s good.” He swallowed. “I had heard Sir John had… lost his own daughters. His eldest to illness, and his youngest to… chance.”

“Yes.” Tom eyed the gentle doctor, and their gazes met long enough for each to confirm everything the other already knew.

At the door, they were joined by Sir John and Adela.

Dr. South eyed them all.

“The outlook is brighter today than it was last night,” he said. “But I mustn’t promise too much. We are not out of the wood yet. Please let me have an occasional telegram to say how she is going on. She is a dear little child—a most winning little child.” This he seemed to aim at Sir John, though he glanced at Tom again thereafter. “I have seen the loveliest children who did not interest me half so much as that quaint little face of hers, with the large forehead and the dark deep-set eyes. I hope her mother will be here today.”

And with that, the London doctor left.

*

While Tom Danby had never been to the very hospital where Dr. South worked, he’d been to London on the regular, and to Tom’s peculiarity, that was more than enough. He chose a block he’d frequented often, stepping out from the front door and eyeing the street just long enough to get his bearings before heading toward his destination.

From there, it was as simple as anything else he’d managed by door.

He recalled the doctor’s soft voice, remembering every word as he selected the things he needed, and it was only as he turned to leave the chill of the room with its bottles and containers that he paused to consider once more, hand raised but not quite touching the door.

It was possible the others wouldn’t ask. At least he’d the cover of the night to raise his chances of being undetected. It was always day somewhere, but then and there, Tom Danby didn’t care, and if this gamble paid off in one regard but cost him in another, he’d pay that price.

He touched the door. Beneath his fingers, he could feel the pulse of others like himself. Muses all, awakened to the pathways between all doors sometime in their twenties, as he had been. Beyond that, he could feel all of everywhere—every door he’d ever passed through, every room or building he’d ever entered or left. Every door went to every other door, if someone like Tom Danby turned the handle.

Big Ben began to chime the hour.

The very best of science in hand, Tom Danby stepped through the door from the hospital in London and exited the door to Moppet’s room in Penlyon Place, a swirl of night air mixing with the warmer air inside the manor in a twist of mist gone between blinks.

Sir John’s clock finished chiming.

Tom Danby turned around, opened the door to Moppet’s room as quietly as he could, and went inside to speak to the nurse of some last-minute adjustments.

*

It wasn’t long after Moppet was well that Tom Danby received the telegram from Dr. South. He read it twice, and told Sir John and Adela and Moppet and—of course—Moppet’s mother of the doctor’s relief at Moppet’s recovery. It was a small moment lost along the much grander one unfolding, of course, but it felt important to Tom to include the doctor, even just by his word, given the situation.

Word from the doctor, when there’d been no word from the other muses, had also struck Tom as mildly ironic. Those who could feel him come and go through their own connection to everywhere had indeed turned out not to notice anything amiss.

Dr. South, on the other hand…

The end of the telegram Tom Danby did not share with the others. For it ended with: Do stop by when next you are in London. It could have read as a request to the casual eye, but by the fourth or fifth reading, Tom was rather sure it was intended as an imperative.

And so that very morning Tom Danby took his leave of Sir John, calculated how long it would reasonably take to get from Penlyon Place to his next accepted invitation, and found himself with over a week to his own devices, whereby he took the opportunity to grasp the door at the train station local to Penlyon Place and return to Dr. South’s very hospital in his more direct—if peculiar—route.

At it so happened, the Doctor was free to see him, and Tom Danby entered the man’s office, and was soon in his presence.

They regarded each other—dark eyes meeting grey—for a few breaths.

“There is a manifest kept,” Dr. South said, instead of any polite greeting Danby might have expected.

“A manifest?” Tom said.

“Of medicines.” Dr. South gestured to the chair across from his desk, sitting behind it once Danby sat.

“Ah,” Tom said.

Dr. South regarded him again. “I’m pleased she recovered.”

Tom nodded, a genuine smile lighting his face. “So are we all.”

“And her mother?”

“Arrived,” Tom said, then added, meaningfully. “And stayed.”

Dr. South’s smile did nice things to his eyes. “You know, I’ve asked around about you,” he said, looking down at his desk top, and smoothing away some invisible bit of dust.

“Oh dear,” Tom said. “One hesitates to hear more. I’m sure someone was happy to tell you of my itinerant ways.”

“Indeed,” the doctor said, though he said it gently enough to remove any sting. “But, it seems, you are invited wherever you go.”

“As you invited me yourself,” Tom said, countering with his best smile in return and pulling out the telegram.

Dr. South paused, eyeing it with a small turn of his lips. The overall look on the doctor’s face was triumphant, and Tom realized his mistake too late to take it back.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “A telegram I sent yesterday. And here you are. The very day after.”

Tom waited. He didn’t really have any response he could make. His own eagerness to attend the doctor’s company was to blame.

“The manifest…” Dr. South swallowed. “The night we spoke. The same night. By the morning recount…”

Tom realized he found the good doctor’s habit of letting sentences fade more than a little endearing. Tom imagined it made many people feel obliged to fill in the gap.

He didn’t.

Dr. South let the silence hang a moment longer. “If I were to ask the nurse who treated Moppet, or the local man, Dr. Nichols, about what treatments were suggested in my name, I can’t help but feel I’d have a mystery on my hands.”

Tom blew out a breath. “I believe you are correct.”

Dr. South’s laugh was as soft as his voice. “And if I were to investigate the trains from Penlyon Place to London—a trip I took myself, one significantly more than a day to achieve when I left at first light—you are, I think, not going to satisfy even my mildest curiosity over discrepancies to your arrival time, are you, Mr. Danby?”

“Please, call me Tom.” Tom said. “But let me ask you in return: if a mystery turns out for the best, it might be worth leaving it as such, would it not, Doctor?”

“Charles,” Dr. South said. “If you’re going to offer me not so much as a crumb to explain…” He waved a hand in the air, as if to encompass everything around him. “You can at least call me Charles.”

“Charles, then,” Tom said. He rose. “I appreciate it.”

The doctor laughed again, rising himself. “I’m sure you do.” He shook his head, then eyed the clock. “Have you had dinner, Tom?”

Tom shook his head. “No. Not yet.”

“Well,” Charles said, the lightest of flushes crossing his cheeks. “If you would like, you may consider yourself invited. I know a place nearby. If you won’t give me crumbs, they’ll give me a whole meal.”

“As you say.” Tom Danby smiled. “And I’m never one to turn down an invitation.”

 

Faux Ho Ho — Now Available!

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Today is the day! Silas and Dino hit the (digital) shelves of all the various e-tailers out there, and Faux Ho Ho is officially out in the wild!

The Blurb:

Silas Waite doesn’t want his big-C Conservative Alberta family to know he’s barely making rent. They’d see it as yet another sign that he’s not living up to the Waite family potential and muscle in on his life. When Silas unexpectedly needs a new roommate, he ends up with the gregarious—and gorgeous—personal trainer Constantino “Dino” Papadimitriou.

Silas’s parents try to browbeat him into visiting for Thanksgiving, where they’ll put him on display as an example of how they’re so tolerant for Silas’s brother’s political campaign, but Dino pretends to be his boyfriend to get him out of it, citing a prior commitment. The ruse works—until they receive an invitation to Silas’s sister’s last-minute wedding.

Silas loves his sister, Dino wouldn’t mind a chalet Christmas, and together, they could turn a family obligation into something fun. But after nine months of being roommates, then friends, and now “boyfriends,” Silas finds being with Dino way too easy, and being the son that his parents barely tolerate too hard. Something has to give, but luckily, it’s the season for giving. And maybe what Silas has to give is worth the biggest risk of all.

Faux Ho Ho is my first “fake relationship” trope book. It’s also a queer holiday romance novella, and it’s another trip to my fictional gay Village. If you’ve not read Handmade Holidays or Of Echoes Born, don’t worry, you don’t need to have visited the Village before. Faux Ho Ho is just as good an entry point as anywhere else (but if you’re curious, the full list of Village tales is here.)

Purchase Links!

As of right now? Available at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, direct from Bold Strokes Books, Kobo, and anywhere else quality queer e-books are sold. (I’ll keep editing these as I check to see them go live).