SQ Mag #21, July/August 2015Reviewed by Nicky Magas
Eve has nothing left in M. B. Vujačić’s “Florist.” Her unborn baby is dead, and her lover Joe has left her. The only things that give her any comfort these days are cocaine and her garden. After an unhealthy mixture of these two passions Eve makes the fateful decision to graft a strange new weed to her arm. What follows is a nightmare to those around her, but a strangely comforting sanctuary to Eve. What she couldn’t have as a woman is perhaps within her reach as a plant.
As a horror piece, “Florist” is more visceral than frightening. Vujačić wants his readers’ skin to crawl more than their hearts to race. The beginning of this story is quite nice. The character and her past are revealed very smoothly, and I was pleased to see a troubled female anti-hero—a rarer breed in fantasy fiction. As the story progresses, however, it loses some of its pace and becomes a little too predictable. When I wanted to be taken through a winding tunnel, the story instead took the straight road to the finish, one which—offspring talking immediately out of womb aside—didn’t leave me feeling as much of the subversion as the beginning made me anticipate.
Ron Riekki’s “Stairwell” tells the story of an expatriate living in Shanghai who has grown so bored with his existence in the city that anything out of the ordinary is a welcome relief from his humdrum life. So when a rail thin woman catches and leads him to a dark room above a non-descript garage he thinks little of it aside from a desperate curiosity to see something new. What he finds is certainly that: the physical embodiment of a decades, perhaps centuries old conflict that he can’t help but be drawn into himself.
Riekki’s jerky, clipped and at times awkwardly passive prose deliberately keeps the reader off balance for the entirety of the story. At no point is the reader supposed to feel comfortable in the setting. Even before the protagonist witnesses anything out of the ordinary, his uncouth, foreign presence in China and his inability to quite fit in with either the city or the locals puts an unsettled feeling into the mind of the reader. I had trouble with the protagonist’s carefree attitude to his own possible demise, but I was nonetheless pleased by the surprisingly innocuous reveal of the staring contest. While the exact reasons for the staring contest are left to speculation, given earlier bits of context it’s hard not to interpret it as a symbolic representation of the years of conflict and bitterness between China and Japan. The gradual inclusion of others into the contest only adds a chilling footnote to this already disquieting tale.
The world is full of sinners of all colors in Michelle Jager’s “Home Delivery,” but telling the sinners from the saints at first glance has always been difficult—until recently, that is. When the angels first arrived and latched themselves onto sinners it didn’t seem like that bad of an arrangement. Who wouldn’t want to know which of their neighbors was up to no good? But what seemed like a good way to keep track of who was doing wrong quickly turned into a nightmare when it became clear that no one is without sin, and the angels don’t discriminate between tax evader and mass murderer. And as one man knows all to well, if the disgusting antics of the angel aren’t enough to ruin your life, letting anyone find out that you’ve got an angel hanging around surely will.
The premise of having one’s sin and guilt physically manifested in a dirty, attention-seeking angel is quite refreshing. The angels, who are portrayed as both innocent and malicious, act as a sort of supernatural punishment custom made to fit the crime. The witch-hunts that follow the discovery of a new angel also have societal undertones, specifically, the difficulty that individuals convicted of crimes have in creating or returning to a normal life. Whether the unrepentant protagonist of the story deserves a second chance or even a moment’s peace from his torment is quite obviously not the case in this instance, however the reader can’t help but feel a sting of pity for anyone guilty of less serious offenses, who must then bear this angelic cross. I did feel that this story was over-written in places. The beginning in particular drags in repetitive imagery and unnecessarily long woe-is-me scene setting. While it’s true that the reader isn’t encouraged to feel sorry for the protagonist, I often found I wanted the story to go forward, rather than remain stuck on a particular emotion or image.
In James Aquilone’s “Inner Dragon,” Peter dreams of being a writer. A successful writer. A best selling writer. The only problem is that there’s a whole lot of hard work standing between him and his dreams. Fortunately for Peter, Dr. De Graat offers a path to success through a single treatment with his special machine. Peter jumps at the chance. Soon, doorway after doorway opens to Peter. Sure, he might have to lie, cheat and steal to get what he wants, but now he can do so with confidence. People of varying degrees of usefulness come and go from Peter’s life, but who needs them when he’s a rising star with multiple book deals and a bright career on the horizon? Dr. De Graat’s treatment has been a stunning success. (Side effects include sleepless nights, uncontrollable weeping, a dearth of creative thought, and an utter loss of happiness.)
As a tongue-in-cheek commentary on contemporary writers, “Inner Dragon” has a necessarily preachy tone. The premise itself is nothing new (recent movies such as Limitless and Lucy employ similar tactics), nor really is the plot following an individual’s dirty rise to fame; however, readers can’t help but go along for the ride, waiting for the inevitable train wreck that never comes. This is perhaps the most disappointing part of the story. Even after Peter comes to realize that, despite his success, he is more miserable now than when he started, he never truly corrects himself. In fact, he cheats his way into an even more favorable position. An unlikable character given undue rewards for doing unlikable things is perhaps true to life, but it does leave the reader a bit sour at the end when we want to see Peter get the whap on the knuckles he so truly deserves.
When Strauss is involved in an unfortunate hover-bike accident involving multiple other vehicles, he’s not exactly worried. After all, he’s a Platinum Member of Bots R’ Us, which guarantees that his nanobot implants will quickly target abnormalities in his system and begin to heal him from any sort of medical hiccup he might incur. However, in Iulian Ionescu’s “Bot Malfunction,” Strauss makes the embarrassing discovery that even though the bots are programed to fix him up whenever he might need it, they are not immune from injury themselves. When the bots can’t access his remote medical files properly, all sorts of unwelcomed changes can be made to his body. Short and to the point, “Bot Malfunction” looks at the future of medical malpractice in this amusing piece of flash fiction.