Nightmare “Asking for It” by Kristi DeMeester
“The Hearth” by Benjamin Percy
“Hungry Ghosting” by Anne Mai Yee Jansen
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
The narrator of “Asking for It” by Kristi DeMeester is a woman on a date. It is clear from the start that she is deranged, and that she has bad intentions for the man she is with.
To say anything else would give away too much about this fairly brief story, which has a straightforward plot without surprises. The author writes vividly and effectively from the point of view of a psychotic character. (The story can be read as either the delusions of a mentally ill narrator or as genuinely supernatural.)
The title and the narrator’s use of Rohypnol, the infamous date rape drug, suggest a reversal of a man’s violence against a woman, but this does not appear to be a major theme. The victim is obviously a decent fellow, and this is not a tale of revenge. Instead, it is an intense, violent chiller, best suited for fans of dark horror.
Less than one thousand words long, “The Hearth” by Benjamin Percy features a married pair of Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota in the late nineteenth century. The woman dies of tuberculosis, but that is not the end of the couple’s relationship.
This story is almost entirely historical fiction, with a tiny touch of the supernatural at the very end. The final sentence can be interpreted as either frightening or hopeful. Readers may appreciate this touch of ambiguity, or may be confused by it. Overall, this bittersweet little love story makes for pleasant reading, but could be further developed.
The narrator of “Hungry Ghosting” by Anne Mai Yee Jansen is a young Asian-American woman who is dead. Once a year she is able to emerge from the afterlife in physical form and devour a victim to assuage her overwhelming hunger. This takes the form of a series of encounters with men who perceive her in stereotypical ways.
The story features an interesting mixture of traditions regarding the afterlife and modern technology. For example, instead of burning gifts meant to ease the discomfort of the dead, people can do so virtually on the computer. The narrator finds her victims from messages left on her dating profile.
To a great extent, the story deals with white men who fetishize or otherwise make unwarranted assumptions about Asian-American women. They see the narrator as sexually desirable just because of her ethnicity, or as submissive to white men. This aspect of the plot gives the story an enjoyably satiric edge.
Victoria Silverwolf saw fourteen turkeys and two deer one morning near her house.