#ShortStoryMonth Day Nineteen — “SCREAMING, CRYING, ALONE, AND AFRAID,” by Daliso Chaponda

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Turning a Theme Sideways

This Is How You Die is an anthology with a single unifying theme: machines made available around the world. The offer was tempting: with a simple blood test, anyone could know how they would die. But the machines didn’t give dates or specific circumstances—just a single word or phrase.

Oh man was “SCREAMING, CRYING, ALONE, AND AFRAID” good. First, although this is a contemporary story and more-or-less a murder mystery, it’s set in Zimbabwe, and the characters and culture involved spin the story differently than if it had been, say, downtown New York. I also loved the offhanded comment about the political race—it had never occurred to me that in a world full of Death Machines, revealing your result said something heroic would be a pathway to political gain.

The twist to this tale is having an investigator who decides to try—and succeeds—at testing the blood of murder victims, and in so doing wants to try to glean some information to track down what might be Zimbabwe’s first serial killer. The story is an excellent example of how uniquely the various authors are taking the Death Machine conceit, and going in unique directions.

That Daliso Chaponda is a comedian makes the twisted dark of this tale all the more amazeballs, really.

I also adore everything Chaz Brenchley has written (he’s a Brit), and though maybe it’s a cheat since I’m in Canada and the US is “another country” technically, I’m also gonna tell you to go grab everything Alex Jeffers ever did.