Flash Fiction Online #135, December 2024
“The Caged Budgerigars” by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar (nongenre, not reviewed)
“Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday [2][3]” by Emma Burnett (reprint, not reviewed)
“Why I Quit Teaching at the Villain Academy” by Tina S. Zhu
“Bone Birds Fly” by Malda Marlys
“A Soft and Silent Glow” by Liz J. Bradley
“A Year in the Life of the Drowned Wastewater Plant East of Bellmarsh Village” by D. A. Straith
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
This special EcoFutures issue features tales of environmental change, from the present day to the future to worlds of fantasy.
“Why I Quit Teaching at the Villain Academy” by Tina S. Zhu consists of thirty brief, numbered sections of text. It takes place in a future devastated by environmental damage. Certain people have superpowers, and are trained in schools for heroes and villains. Their competitions are entertainment, much like wrestling matches, rather than serious battles. The narrator reveals what happened to these schools and the reasons she abandoned them, from the trivial to the apocalyptic.
As may be evident from this lengthy synopsis for a very short story, the author manages to create a complex background in a few words. The use of the currently popular list structure makes the text seem more like an outline for a longer work than a fully developed story. The notion of superheroes and supervillains as a form of entertainment is an intriguing one, which may make readers wish more had been done with it.
“Bone Birds Fly” by Malda Marlys takes place in a dying world where skeletal birds fly. The narrator places messages inside their bones, hoping they will reach other survivors. She eventually undergoes a strange transformation.
This surreal horror story creates an effectively eerie mood, even if it is not always clear what is happening. References to the moon not being whole and the ocean breaking up into many smaller pieces suggest something about the nature of the apocalypse, but it remains a mystery.
The main character in “A Soft and Silent Glow” by Liz J. Bradley makes and sells candles in a world poisoned by radiation. She encounters various customers and recalls her tragic loss.
There is not much plot, and the story works best as a character study and mood piece. This is the author’s first published work, and it certainly shows promise.
The narrator of “A Year in the Life of the Drowned Wastewater Plant East of Bellmarsh Village” by D. A. Straith is some kind of supernatural being or spirit, observing a human being diving to the facility mentioned in the title. The narrator watches the person’s activities as the seasons change, sharing magic with the human.
This synopsis may seem vague, because the story is murky and enigmatic. The reader never learns who or what the narrator might be, nor the nature of the magic. (Perhaps this is all a metaphor for nature.) The descriptions of the lifeforms inhabiting the water as time goes by are vivid and evocative, and the work as a whole is similar to a prose poem celebrating the natural world and humanity’s place in it.
Victoria Silverwolf ate some banana peel stew recently.