Flash Fiction Online #126, March 2024

“Leavings” by Shira Musicant (literary, not reviewed)

“The Lime Monster” by Shelly Jones (fantasy, reprint, not reviewed)

“On the Wing” by Lindz McLeod (literary, reprint, not reviewed)

“Sparsely Populated with Stars” by Jennifer Mace

“limerence” by Samir Sirk Morató

Reviewed by David Wesley Hill

I tried my best, but I really couldn’t figure out what “Sparsely Populated with Stars” by Jennifer Mace, the first of two original stories in the March Flash Fiction Online, is all about. Apparently, the narrator is an “immortal seer imprisoned above the sky” and kept in “cryosleep” where the “net around me drinks in the dream, harvesting it as all others.” Somehow, the narrator is connected to another dreamer “lightyears away” by “the same technology, the same hunger” and they fall in love. I think. I’m not sure about this. Honestly, I’m not sure about anything about the story, although it does contain some lovely turns of phrase, such as, “They can strip my memories from me, skim self from my soul like harvesting corona off a dying sun, but I still burn.” Does such precious language make up for an opaque plot? Read the story. I can’t decide for you.

The second original offering this month, “limerence” by Samir Sirk Morató, taught me a new word—limerence, of course—for which I am grateful, since I enjoy expanding my vocabulary. Like the first tale, “limerence” is a love story, albeit fantasy. In this case, the star-crossed lovers are an “offering” and a “criminal.” Both have been buried in a peat bog for thousands of years, able to communicate with each other but unable to ever touch as they slowly “unspool.” Morató does a good job of getting across their longing and unrequited love for each other, and this reviewer even felt a little sad when the offering’s mummy was dug up from the peat and taken away from her partner in decay… Recommended.