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“The Dead”

A little girl knows that the dead go to the moon, because that’s where her dead mother says she is, and both her and her widower husband miss each other (well the loneliness of the dead is a little more intense) but the father’s fear of death outweighs his yearning for his wife. Contains a scene where the girl describes her father and his girlfriend having sex (including intuiting a faked orgasm).

“Teicher vs. Nietzsche”

Some football-crazed dude tries to kick his cat and somehow ends up injuring his spine when he misses and wipes out, landing flat on his back. There’s more to the story: the cat was an acquisition of his ex-wife’s; there is a football game on that Teicher is absolutely concerned with; he REALLY hates the cat. I am sensing some symbolism, here. The cat is Nietzsche, btw.

“The Wolf’s Breath”

Flash fiction, I guess in the Olden Dayse they might call this a prose poem. It likens the sexuality of men to wolves, turning the idea of what the average “man” may think makes them a good lover to demonstrate the shallowness, that this good lover who can perfectly sexually gratify is merely a good predator.

“Perfect Symmetry”

A man who is marked for death in a prison cooks his last meal. It’s grim but the bitterest of bittersweet as the man’s true joy is not in eating his food but savoring the creation of the dish. His assassin has misread his intent, allowing the MC his own, private victory, even in his death. In a very vague way, Bazterrica suggests that no life is complete without death—opposite life.

“Earth”

😬😬😬

A horrifying story where a daughter has been sexually abused by her father and is blamed by her mother who catches “them” (significantly not “him”) and when the daughter takes the opportunity to murder her abuser her mother blames her for that, too, and once the father has been buried the daughter is abandoned by her mother in the grave of her abuser.

“Dishwasher”

A depressed woman in New York who attempts to describe her malady to herself without naming it. She feels like she has holes in her brain, that she can feel light crystallize, and that shadows impact her body. It’s implied that she lacks enriching companionship as she quickly spins a fantasy where she imagines a beautiful life with the doctor she is pressured into visiting.

“Anita and Happiness”

This is a delightfully ambiguous story. Is Anita just a weird savant who runs off with the mailman, and Clarita is just her trying to blow Pablo off? Or is she really the alien that Pablo believes her to be, and Clarita is one of her fellows? Could Clarita even be their hybrid daughter?????

“Candy Pink”

This is the anatomy of a post-breakup depression spiral that details the woman’s grief and various associations, recalling her relationship with her ex, that keep driving her deeper into her turmoil until she reaches her nadir.

“Unamuno’s Boxes”

A woman riding in a taxi analyzes the elements of the cab and the driver only to fixate on his immaculate nails and then develop a pet profile of Unamuno as a serial killer with a paraphilia associated with nails. The woman deciding to find a sense of self in allowing her murder reminds me of the Shirley Jackson story with the woman who married a killer, hoping to be killed.

“Roberto”

UMMMMMMMM

A girl has a bunny growing between her legs and she names it Roberto. She doesn’t know whether this is normal and through a couple of mishaps is poised to be molested by her schoolteacher, who then freaks out when he sees the rabbit. Idk where I thought this story was headed; at first I thought that Roberto was a pet. Then it got super dark.

“A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound”

A young dentist has her comfortable existence turned upside-down when her elderly neighbor commits suicide by leaping to his death and landing on her patio… naked. And almost certainly attempting to land on HER. There is a rhythmic quality to the prose that mimics how the trauma is relentlessly bearing down on the main character.

HOLY SMOKES this is Gothic AF

Reuel unknowingly married his half-sister and his evil best friend is his half-brother and his half-brother murdered his own finance so that he could abscond with their mutual half-sister once Reuel was out of the country!! Like I guess this settles the question of whether Reuel will still marry Queen Candace but what about the month he was married to his half-sister ???? 🤢

Sooooo

A lot of stuff happens in these past 50 pages. I think that Aubrey, Molly, and Dianthe all died?? Okay!! Um, I kind of already knew that Reuel was the awaited descendant of Ethiopian sovereigns to bring the kingdom to a new age of supremacy. I didn’t know about the subplot with Aubrey’s servile Jim. I half expect to hear that Dianthe was an ego extension of Queen Candace.

This story has lots of familiar story beats with Hopkins’s first two novels, but Reuel as a sort of Dr. Frankenstein or, really, Herbert West is an interesting twist. I was NOT prepared for mysterious forces to apparently engineer the death of the son of a bitch Aubrey who had just pulled a Langley with Reuel’s wife once our protag left to do archaeology in Ethiopia.

This is set during the period of John Brown’s guerilla war against pro-slavery forces. Reading up independently on John Brown was learning something my high school history courses had sort of glazed over in a vastly different light. This crazy story has an interracial love triangle, two of whom are basically foster siblings, and for a hot second I thought that the Englishman had a gay nurse crushing on him.

So, the fairy tale aspect of these stories is strong. I’m 99% sure that White Eagle is the disgraced heir that Maxwell had been looking for, which makes Winona the inheritor of the estate, which is the real reason that White Eagle was murdered and the kids were abducted into slavery. I could be wrong, but obscured identities and crazy inheritances were major plot points in the three Hopkins stories I’ve read.

OMFG HOW DID I NOT SEE THAT COMING AHHHHHHHH

melodramas are freakin awesome!!!!!!!!!!

I’m really caught up in this. Hopkins is a good hand at pacing these romances. In Contending Forces, she didn’t milk the drama but had Sappho tell Will everything straightaway once Langley tried to blackmail her. Now that the snare is around Cuthbert, Jewel is firmly on his side while the drama of the murder trial (and private investigation) bear out.

Also, I’m guessing that Senator Bowen was poisoned, too!!!

OH GOD I JUST REALIZED THAT HAGAR PROBABLY RECOGNIZED ENSON BUT SHE CANT SAY ANYTHING AGAINST HIM WITHOUT HAVING TO EXPLAIN WHY SHE KNOWS HIM AS A HORRIBLE SON OF A BITCH WHICH WOULD INVOLVE EXPLAINING HER HERITAGE AND IT ALREADY BURNED HER ONCE. HER INTERNALIZED SOUTHERN CASTE PREJUDICE IS ROBBING HER OF HER AGENCY. THIS IS GONNA GET SO FREAKIN MESSY

As a romance, this works, because I’m pissed at the 50 yr old barely disguised St. Clair’s Enson busting up Jewel’s engagement to Cuthbert so that he can marry her, by way of using Aurelia, Cuthbert’s one-time fiancée.

Given the format, I’m 99% sure that Mrs. Bowen is Hagar, and Aurelia is her daughter, the two having been separated from when she jumped into the river during her escape.