Some Gods of El Paso

by Maria Dahvana Headley

Some Gods of El Paso by Maria Dahvana Headley is a short fantasy story of a couple on the run from the law for stealing and illegally trading in strong emotions in 1920s US.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Adult

21 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2015

About the author

Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times-bestselling author of, most recently, THE MERE WIFE (out July 17, 2018 from MCD/FSG). Upcoming in 2019 is a new translation of BEOWULF, also from FSG. As well, she is the author of the young adult skyship novels MAGONIA and AERIE from HarperCollins, the dark fantasy/alt-history novel QUEEN OF KINGS, the internationally bestselling memoir THE YEAR OF YES, and THE END OF THE SENTENCE, a novella co-written with Kat Howard, from Subterranean. With Neil Gaiman, she is the New York Times-bestselling co-editor of the monster anthology UNNATURAL CREATURES, benefitting 826DC.

Her Nebula,Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy award-nominated short fiction has appeared on Tor.com, and in The Toast, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Apex, The Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Subterranean Online, Glitter & Mayhem and Jurassic London's The Lowest Heaven and The Book of the Dead, Uncanny, Shimmer, and more. It's anthologized in Best American Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as the 2013 and 2014 editions of Rich Horton's The Year's Best Fantasy & Science Fiction, & Paula Guran's 2013 The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, in The Year's Best Weird Volume 1, ed. Laird Barron, and in Wastelands, Vol 2, among others. She's also a playwright and essayist.

She grew up in rural Idaho on a sled-dog ranch, spent part of her 20's as a pirate negotiator and ship marketer in the maritime industry, and now lives in Brooklyn in an apartment shared with a seven-foot-long stuffed crocodile.

Reviews

[Elena May · Rating 3 out of 5]

A whimsical, magical realism story about traffickers of emotions in the 1920s US. Cool style and fits the setting, but something in the plot felt lacking.

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a myth, as Lorna and Vix already knew, that everyone who sorrowed longed specifically and only for joy. Many people wanted darker medicine. Prohibition of alcohol had created a countrywide yearning for other forms of depressant—though no one referred to alcohol as such—and by the time Lorna and Vix met, ten years into Temperance, everything to do with high and low had become illegal. People were supposed to be living in the middle, but nobody liked the middle. New cures for pain were being distilled in basements and bathtubs.

review to come.

read it for yourself here:

http://www.tor.com/2015/10/28/some-go...

[Igrowastreesgrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really enjoyable read.

[Amy (Other Amy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soon after they met, Vix and Lorna realized there was a sweet market in fenced emotion, and though they’d never done this before, they started dealing along with their healing. The miracle makers had an easy supply of raw materials for what half the country craved. They had particular access to desperate love, which was cut with rage and sorrow, and for which people paid extra. Desperate love could be shot into a vein.

Despite the shift in their business, Lorna and Vix still thought of themselves as mainly healers. They were taking pain away from people, after all, never mind that they were transporting it across state lines and selling it.

A retelling of the legend of Bonnie and Clyde, if Bonnie and Clyde had been the saints we all seem to want sinners to be. And if Bonnie and Clyde had peddled sexual healing instead of bullets and operated during Prohibition instead of the Depression. Maybe I should just say this one plays fast and loose with a lot of things, but it takes a nice shot at what it's doing. Sometimes that's all I need from a story.

[SUSAN *Nevertheless,she persisted* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good short. The adventures of the thieves of emotions. Very clever.

[Lannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some Gods of El Paso is a pseudo-fable-ized picture of Great Depression America in Texas.

Lorna and Vix are people who are madly in love with sexual healing. They are literal people, but also metaphors for the zeitgeist. Gods, you could say, in the "spirit of nature" sense. Their adventures—written in a folk-like Bonnie and Clyde manner—showcase how the people of Texas first embrace carnality as a way of shedding their pain, then start abusing carnality as a way of "getting high" on the emotions it can bring, and eventually turn on carnality itself, condemning it entirely.

If there's said to be a villain, it'd be the Sheriff, one of the only other named characters. He's a bit like Frolo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He indulges in Lorna and Vix's sexual vices perhaps more than anyone, which is what drives him so hard to prosecute them. It's a very 'Murican story in that way, pointing out the common hypocrisies of people who villainize things they just feel bad for enjoying in secret.

I liked this story. It's an interesting, romanticized, metaphorical lens into a certain idea in a certain time and place. It's a very modern take, I'd say. It has a progressive, "free love" feel about it, and posits that the gods of this miraculous way of living showed up once when we needed them, but eventually got driven out of town.

[Yolanda Sfetsos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this very imaginative short story about a couple like no other. Lorna Grant and Vix Beller heal and help a lot of desperate people, and one day decide to deal these emotions. They might be helping people in their own unique way, but there are authorities that think otherwise...

I recently read Seam and Solder and got swept away in it. Now, the same thing has happened with this story. I love how this author's writing style can place you deeply into a particular genre, and then manages to twist it just enough for you to realise you've tumbled into a magical, whimsical version of the world you thought you knew. She did the same thing with Magonia, which I absolutely adored.

Loved this story.

You can read it for free HERE And you should. ;)

[我是🌹 · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Vix gave her a look that said everything he’d ever loved about her, and she looked back at him, her eyes full. “We could count the stars,” said Lorna. “Maybe write a book. Sometimes, we’d sit and look out at the waves, and just do nothing at all,” Vix said, and kissed her finger.”

I can’t deal! *sigh*

This would’ve been a much better rating on my part, but the author left me hanging; plus, it was only 11 pages instead of the anticipated 21!😑I really wanted more of Vix and Lorna’s story so badly.
Here you have, two powerful healers and of an unusual kind, and despite the bittersweet impacts left behind from their supernatural “touch”, they were still forever entangled and overwhelmingly transfixed by each others somewhat nostalgic love; you could almost feel it coming through the pages.😩💗💗💗

I’m hopeful that Maria Headley will greatly consider revisiting this piece and allow it to become a full fleshed, stand alone novel; for this, is truly torture.

[Charlotte (Charlisabeths Nivis Pluma) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely little magical realism story about a Bonnie and Clyde couple of ex-sex workers, now magical healers via stealing emotions and reselling them during Prohibition. Very American in every way, but missing a certain something for me personally.

3,5 stars is more like it.

[Priya Bhakta · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In secret dens in Manhattan, high rollers mixed powdered powerlessness with seltzer and drank it with a twist. In New Orleans, the drink that had formerly been bourbon punch got drizzled with barrel-aged despair, and backroom saloons poured it by the ladle-full. Most people cut rage into lines and snorted it, all to feel a little of the old days, the vigor and foolish giddiness that came just before a bar fight."

Another Tor short story. I love the style of this one. A fantasy set in 1920s America. In a world where you're not supposed to be too high or too low, strong emotions are taken and traded as back alley transactions. Lorna and Vix are the best at these transactions but can they really sustain such a dangerous path when they're on the run? I would have loved to read more of this world.

Link to story on Tor.com here

[Kinsey_m · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love asci-fi, fantasy, magic realism... I can suspend my disbelief for almost anything except for magical cunts and cocks. Oh, and for sex workers who are not in it because they are being exploited or, at the very least, do it for the money. Sex workers doing it simply to cure people from their loneliness, that I don't buy. Although I guess that if God has given you a magical cock/cunt it must be your obligation to use it for the greater good.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, not bad, but I couldn't quite get into this story (about traffickers in forbidden emotions) enough to love it.

[Lata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a Bradbury feel

[Maxine Robinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a well written short story.

[Libby Stephenson]

I was not smart enough for this.

[Michelle Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sought out this short story because I'm interested in reading more of this author's work. I loved the love story in this. The idea of the couple trading and dealing in strong emotions was a bit difficult to understand, but once I let go of trying to figure it out precisely, I was able to immerse myself in the story more. Definitely worth the quick read, especially since it's free on Tor.com!

https://www.tor.com/2015/10/28/some-g...

[Starr ❇✌❇ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is very much Bonnie & Clyde, if Bonnie & Clyde were created of smoke and longing. This is a story of two healers, raw and in love, taking pain and selling it in the face of Prohibition. You don't get time enough to have more than a vague shape of the main characters, or the world, but they're painted against a known shape well enough that you can fill in most gaps. I'm a big fan of Maria Dahvana Headley, so the writing itself was the strongest point for me.

[Laura May · Rating 3 out of 5]

A poignant conclusion.

Available free online at http://www.tor.com/2015/10/28/some-go...

[Jennifer B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Lets you decide what it's saying about society.

[Starr Baumann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus christ, this author can write

[Mayumi]

Li aqui, marquei lido aqui: Some of the Best from Tor.com, 2015 edition.

História muito louca de um casal tipo Bonnie e Clyde que roubam sentimentos em vez de dinheiro. Eles parecem ajudar mesmo as pessoas, mas as autoridades não querem saber disso. Boa ideia, razoável execução que no fim das contas ficou meio vazia pra mim.

[Marco · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the style is exquisite, and some of the concepts quite interesting, the plot is a little too thin. After reading it I was left with the impression I just read a still rough but full of potential draft.
This is the story of a couple of magical sex workers on the run from the law for stealing and illegally trading in strong emotions in 1920s US.

[Alex Sarll]

There are beautiful lines in this, places where it reads like a Valente-style fairytale of prohibition...but there are other places where the set-up is a little too reminiscent of the notoriously silly film Equilibrium.

[sunhermit · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
A fascinating concept.

[Paige Pitzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really didn't know what to expect, but I absolutely LOVED this story.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting angle, and I kept thinking of Bonnie and Clyde since it had that kind of vibe.