1 hari yang lalu
May 8, 2025, 9:30am
According to nan powers that beryllium (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of nan Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for nan third twelvemonth successful a row, nan Literary Hub unit will beryllium recommending a azygous short story, free* to publication online, each (work) time of nan month. Why not publication on pinch us? Today, we recommend:
Marie-Helene Bertino, “Viola successful Midwinter”
I’m an tremendous instrumentality of Marie-Helene Bertino’s full collected works—Beautyland was acold and distant my favourite caller of 2024, 2 A.M. astatine nan Cat’s Pajamas is my go-to vacation publication and hand-sell—and her brand-new collection Exit Zero is everything she does distilled into 12 superb stories. How champion to picture her work? It’s funny, it’s often a small (or a lot) strange, it’s profoundly heartfelt and funny astir quality existence—and truthful of course she has a superb return connected vampires. I loved this communicative from nan infinitesimal it appeared successful nan Bennington Review, and I’ve kept reasoning astir it since. Viola grapples, arsenic truthful galore of our awesome vampire main characters do, pinch her (im)mortality: what does it mean to support living? To outrun death? Can you outrun death? Or is decease nan eventual inevitability, for moreover nan longest-living immortal?
Also, it’s group successful my backyard and I’m a sucker (pun verrrrry overmuch intended) for a communicative of supernatural goings-on successful nan Catskills. I hope—and I don’t opportunity this often—that Marie writes much astir Viola. After all, a vampire has a batch of life to spell into…
The communicative begins:
The Margaretville Shop & Save stays unfastened twenty-four hours arsenic a work to hunters, infirmary employees, activity workers, and different creatures who activity astatine night. Viola successful pre-dawn debates poppers and Pharaoh snakes successful nan fireworks aisle. In nan checkout line, hunters talk a bobcat 1 saw connected his thrust into town. A mama, probably, looking for nutrient earlier nan existent snowfall arrives and locks nan region successful place. Seeing her, their talk zips closed. Viola knows they telephone her Dark Lady, which she sometimes enjoys. The cashier rings up her purchases (poppers, a mini axe, mint beverage for sleep), still talking to nan men collected nether nan announcement committee though they’ve gone silent. They watch her salary and leave, her puffed achromatic overgarment trailing for illustration a acold remark. Viola feels a numbness successful her forehead framed successful pain, a cricketing successful nan temple. She is ever connected nan verge of a headache: nan Shop & Save is ever open: she is ever forty-nine.
Read it here.
*If you deed a paywall, we urge trying pinch a different/private/incognito browser (but listen, you didn’t perceive it from us).
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