Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.
Portal fantasy stories – where a child passes through a door/window/wardrobe/tornado/etc. and emerges in a fantasy land – are all the rage again these days, especially in short story and novella form. In April, I read two short stories almost back-to-back that approached portal fantasies from a very dark angle.
Seanan McGuire (author of the “Wayward Children” novellas that explore what happens when those portal kids come back to the mundane world) posts a new short story every month on her Patreon for folks who subscribe at a certain level. April’s story was “In the Land of Rainbows and Ash.” You can tell from the title, perhaps, but definitely from the second paragraph (“They are the skeleton keys which, when turned, can open wide the world, because they do not know any better.”) that this is not going to be a happy, light frolic into a fantasy world. The narrator (a gryphon, although her family prefers to be called “griffin”) manipulates the young arrival from the get-go, pushing her towards her destiny in this land. The griffin’s twin natures (nurturing bird and predatory cat) war within herself as she works at the behest of a higher power. The internal conflict is palpable throughout, as is the growing sense of dread that this is not going to end well, all juxtaposed with a fantasy world that is sunny and beautiful, as are the creatures within it. As is my usual wont, I won’t spoil the ending. I will say that, as with the unconnected-to-this “Wayward Children” books, McGuire’s incredible ability to subvert tropes, her intricate wordplay, her ability to get to you love a character you should be hating with a few small turns of phrase, are all used to full effect here. To read the story, though, you’ll need to subscribe to Seanan’s Patreon at the “short story per month” level.
C. Robert Cargill’s “We Are Where the Nightmares Go” appears as a reprint in the May issue of Lightspeed Magazine (Issue #120. The story will be free on the Lightspeed website on May 21, or you can buy the ebook edition of the issue and read it right away.) Again, we know we’re in for something dark not just from the title but also from the very first paragraph when the author tells us “But those are the children who came back. No one talks about the other children, the ones who walk through basement doors and rabbit holes never to return…” We can be pretty sure that whatever happens, our unnamed protagonist child will not be journeying home again (and shouldn’t the fact that the heroine of the story stays nameless also be a hint we’re not meant to get too attached?). Where the portal world of the McGuire story is a sunny fantasy world with dark secrets, Cargill shows us a nightmare world of killer clowns and a Thing on the Other Side of the Doorway who speaks in obtuse language meant to confuse as much as lead. There’s a gauntlet to be run, mazes and carnivals of dark intent and a series of lost, maimed children to be encountered. The plucky heroine never loses her motivation. Maybe she’ll be the one to break the cycle and make it home after all? Again, I don’t want to spoil the wonderfully dark turn at the end. But I will say Cargill lays the clues out very well along the way. I read the story twice, just because I had to see where the seeds were dropped after reading the ending.