Nightmare #158“Make of Your Chest a Place for Birds” by James L. Sutter
“Primordium” by Erica Ruppert
“Bleed for Me, Bro” by Sharang Biswas
Reviewed by David Wesley Hill
I really enjoyed reviewing the last issue of Nightmare, but I had a hard time slogging through the November issue. The first tale, “Make of Your Chest a Place for Birds” by James L. Sutter, creates a world in which the protagonist’s partner, Sam, has died, leaving them with a hollow in their heart now inhabited by a Western Bluebird. OK. If this metaphor interests you, go ahead and read further. I, personally, wasn’t, and didn’t …
Based upon a couple years of reviewing contemporary speculative fiction, I’m going to propose a new Hugo Awards category … Mycelium Fiction … in which mushrooms rule! The newest entry in this category is “Primordium” by Erica Ruppert, where the buried bodies of a serial killer’s victims, succumbing to decay, unite in a moody flash fiction to exact their vengeance on their murderer …
I must be getting old, but the last offering of the issue, “Bleed for Me, Bro” by Sharang Biswas, was totally inscrutable to me, and I only reached word 700 before saying, “Enough!” Narrative references to “twinks” and “muscle-daddies” do not an edgy story make … they just prove the author is a grad student or similar wannabe. Sorry, folks. Hard pass on this issue.