The Deadlands : Short Fiction Reviews by A.C. Wise

The Deadlands Spring ’24

“The Slave Boy” by Denzel Xavier Scott in the Spring 2024 issue of The Deadlands looks at dif­ferent forms of captivity and freedom. A young boy contemplates his own imprisonment and the imprisonment of the talking animals he’s forced to care for, pitying them, but also resenting them and the way they mock and torment him. He meets a strange man who offers him a chance to leave, but is he only trading one enslaver for another? Jennifer R. Donohue’s “doorbell dot mov” captures a nicely tense and claustrophobic feel as the main character is haunted by two friends who died on the way back from a con­cert that they were also supposed to attend. The ghosts come to the door every night at 3:00 a.m., caught on camera, demanding to be let in. Dono­hue does a wonderful job of using this scenario to explore the loneliness of being haunted, and of feeling trapped and having nowhere to turn. As if often the case with the best ghost stories, the idea of a haunting is used to great effect here to explore real-world horrors – in this case, be­ing relentlessly pursued by grief, loss, and guilt.

“I Love Him Artichoke” by Anna-Claire McGrath is an Orpheus and Eurydice retell­ing full of lovely writing, in which Eurydice initially believes she wants to die, but has second thoughts and must decide what it is she does want. It’s always nice to see a version of Eurydice with agency, making an active choice when it comes to her death and her return. “The City Unsleeping” by Anya Leigh Josephs is a brief piece about a resurrected New York City, literally brought back from the pandemic by necromancy. The story effectively explores the cost of magic, as well as people’s tendency to want solutions without any consequences and without having to put in any effort, along with people’s tendency to backslide into bad habits the moment they perceive a danger has passed.

“The Weather Man” by Stephen M.A. is full of evocative imagery. Vik lives in a world where ghosts return in smoke as part of the weather and haunt the living. Despite the dan­gers involved, Vik seeks out his mother’s ghost, looking for closure, in a nice examination of complex and conflicted family relationships. “The Clockmaker” by Marc Joan evokes Welsh tales and traditions and is similarly full of strik­ing imagery. The Pilgrim walks the hills above the Clockmaker’s town. Once upon a time, the town sent the Pilgrim on past them, killing several fishermen in a storm off the Irish coast, and now the bargain the town made to save themselves has come due.

Recommended Stories

“doorbell dot mov”, Jennifer R. Donohue (The Deadlands Spring ’24)

This review and more like it in the September 2024 issue of Locus.

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