Show threadgenXcrone (she/her)Jan 24, 2023

To Cheer as They Leave You Behind by James L. Sutter
Nightmare Magazine, January 2023
https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/to-cheer-as-they-leave-you-behind/

Genre: Science Fiction/Horror
Content Notes: Mother issues, parental issues, control, dissociation

If you could save your child from death, wouldn't you? What if you could spare them from all harm? What if you could help them, always, to lead the life you want for them?

This story is creepy. It lives in the place where parenting turns from raising children to living through them, and it is terrifying.

The ending is perfect.

#tldShortSpecFicRecs #NightmareMagazine

To Cheer as They Leave You Behind - Nightmare Magazine

She comes early, forcing you to reschedule meetings from the car as Alan drives, white-knuckled. You don’t mind---sending contract notes while in labor is the sort of story the partners will tell for years. Delivery is an athletic event, but you understand those. You ran cross-country in college, before law school took over. You understand pain, how to bear down and force your body into submission. And then it’s over. They put her in your arms, swaddled and squalling, and she is exactly as you imagined.

Nightmare Magazine
genXcrone (she/her)Jan 12, 2023

Horsewoman by A.M. Dellamonica
Uncanny Magazine Issue 50
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/horsewoman/

Holy shit this story. This is what it feels like to exist as a member of a marginalized community in the U.S. right now. Every now and then there was a sentence that made my heart beat hard and then those moments came faster and clearer and then, kathump, understanding.

My disabled friends, we know this story. We know all these stories. This will remind you of some we've lost so please take care reading.

It's about survival in a world of lies when you're among the few who understand. It's about corporations and profit and deep loss. And it's a little bit about wheelchairs.

My chest hurts and I don't know if it's this story or long-covid. That's going to be bitterly hilarious after you've read it.

@disability , I think many of you might enjoy this story.

#UncannyMagazine #tldShortSpecFicRecs

Horsewoman - Uncanny Magazine

“It was like this behind the Iron Curtain.” The woman in the grocery line was wearing a cowboy hat and had the leathery skin of someone who’d spent their entire life in the sun. Smoker skin, Payne’s mother had called it. She always loved finding ways to blame people for their misfortunes. Payne thought about […]

Uncanny Magazine