"Bedtime Story" by Rhonda Parrish :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

My Story Recommendation of the Week is for "Bedtime Story" by Rhonda Parrish, from the anthology Tesseracts Seventeen.

"Bedtime Story" is a simple tale of a young girl huddling in a closet, as an old doll of her mother's named Laura tells a chilling story of evil vultures and goblins. As much fun as the story itself are the audience reactions:

A brown slipper, dog-chewed and ratty, hopped out of the shadows and pressed itself against my side. I felt it trembling, and stroked its nappy surface. "It's all right." My voice sounded loud compared to Laura's creepy whisper. "Sometimes the stories have a happy ending, don't they, Laura?"

She was silent for a long while, and turned to stare at a spider scuttling its way up the wall. In profile her shadow was strangely flat and misshapen. "Sometimes. Sometimes."

Tesseracts Seventeen was published in Canada last Fall, but is just hitting American bookshops this month. The Tesseracts anthology series from Edge Publishing highlights Canadian SF/F authors like Rhonda Parrish. Parrish has been publishing since 2006, with emphasis on poetry and flash fiction.

"Bedtime Story" is a wonderfully written story, which challenges adults to remember how magical and frightening the world can appear to a child. Is a child's view of the world around her truly any less real than an adult's? Does it matter?

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Old Soul by Adria Laycraft

The Story Recommendation of the Week is for "Old Soul" by Adria Laycraft, from the anthology Tesseracts Sixteen.

Angelica is a young girl with an "Old Soul," despondent from the insistence of all the adults in her life that the shimmery figures she can see in the air around her are not real. The story nicely shows how a gift can be turned into a curse, by the unfair expectations of others:

"She's an old soul, Maria" a friend said as they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee. Angelica sat with a book in the very next room and wondered why adults thought children could not hear their conversations.

"She's a little girl with an active mind," her mother replied. "One day this will all be past and she probably won't even remember it."

This made Angelica close the book and lay her head back. She didn't want to forget the place of light, or Gloria. Trying to ignore these things hadn't made them go away like her mother said they would.

How Angelica learns to embrace her rare ability makes for heart-warming reading.

Tesseracts is an annual anthology series, showcasing Canadian science fiction and fantasy writers. The authors in Volume Sixteen range from established pros like Robert J. Sawyer to rising stars like Ryan Oakley to new voices such as Laycraft (as well as some of my fellow Writers of the Future alumni, including Stephen Kotowych and Melissa Yuan-Innes).

An Odyssey Workshop graduate, Adria Laycraft has sold stories to Neo-Opsis, James Gunn's Ad Astra, and other publications. She is also currently co-editing the Urban Green Man anthology.