Nightmare “Waiting for Jonah” by Sharang Biswas
“The Curse of the Boto Boy” by Woody Dismukes
“Whatever Takes Us” by Aigner Loren Wilson
Reviewed by David Wesley Hill
Authors should think twice before employing the second-person voice. When it is used well, to directly address the audience, as in Frederik Pohl’s “Day Million”, the technique can effectively create an atmosphere of intimacy. In “Waiting for Jonah” by Sharang Biswas, the first offering in the November issue of Nightmare, however, the unnamed narrator for some reason addresses himself as “you” throughout the piece, essentially talking to himself, which distanced this reviewer from the characters and the story as a whole. This was unfortunate, since otherwise “Waiting for Jonah” is a well told tale about a budding sociopath and the boy who loves him… Great fairies, too!
Next up, “The Curse of the Boto Boy” by Woody Dismukes, is actually the second story I’ve read this year about encantados—mythic Amazonian shape-shifters. In this one, the narrator lives in a palafita in a small town deep in the jungle with her young son, fathered by a stranger who was “suave, and charismatic, and a good dancer.” Then, when the boy turns six, his human teeth fall out and are replaced by dentures that are “steepled” and “sharper than thorns.” Soon, as is usual in such stories, the lad’s dad comes to collect him…. An interesting fantasy with some good details marred by clunky writing, viz. “veritable vine” and “venomous vipers.” When it comes to alliteration, less is more.
Last in line this month is a piece of short but not quite flash fiction, “Whatever Takes Us” by Aigner Loren Wilson, in which the narrator and their friend Sam are being tormented by a group of older girls. They’ve figured out a way to end the bullying, however, and lure their enemies out of town into the Jersey pines after curfew, where the titular whatever delivers a karmic reckoning… Inexplicably, the story itself contains no explanation for the bullying Sam and the narrator endure—they’re just “freaks”—so the author relies on an introductory preamble to provide context, which in this reviewer’s opinion is an admission the tale cannot stand on its own. I wasn’t taken.