The week’s best online fiction, with recommendations from FictionDaily’s editors.
“Sometimes Instead of Love” by Meera Lee Sethi at Escarp
Remember that Simpsons episode where Lisa asks Bart what the sound of one hand clapping is and he taps his fingers on his palm and says “this.” She’s telling him a Zen koan, which is supposed to shock it’s listener into enlightenment. It’s a twist of reality. The words spin the world so nothing gets to seem like everything and the brain is snapped into awareness and playfulness. So it goes with good Twitter fiction too, and this is a good Twitter story. Reality ripped apart twice for me in the space of its 140 characters. I read it four times and I can safely say I’ll never look at cookies the same way again. –Reviewed by David Backer
“Rub” by Laurie Stone, Memorious.
“Rub” is about a horse who feels things very deeply, smells mint everywhere and is infected by human sadness. She is missing her rider, who sold her. In his vast universe he moves “on a series of forking paths,” whereas her world comprises little more than him, the immediate ground beneath her hooves, a bit of wind maybe. But her emotional world is far richer, insofar as it includes compassion, empathy, tenderness. This story is about the curious “seesaw” relationship between consciousness and blind unsoiled feeling; or, if you prefer, a view into “the nature of the one who rides and the fate of the one who is ridden.”–Reviewed by Ryan Nelson
“Carpaccio” by Lily Child, Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers
Crisp and eerie, this award-nominated story by Lily Childs achieves what so many stories that promise entry into a killer’s mind attempt: It is disturbing yet smooth, alien but intimate. It is also seasoned with images that will be savored by the brain for long after the conclusion and trimmed with reference, subtext and allusions of format rich enough to nourish a voracious intellect. All that, delivered in the neat, brief slices of prose. Have a taste.–Reviewed by Matt Funk
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