The week’s best online fiction, with recommendations from FictionDaily’s editors.
“Un Pollo Malo” by Kate La Dew, THIS Magazine
Imaginative consistency thrills me in writing. Donald Barthelme is a canonical example, but frankly I see imaginative consistency done well all over the Internet’s sea of fiction. I like a story about a man who loves an intelligent chicken with teeth. Loves this chicken so much that he doubts his love for his human best friend. And I like it when this chicken with teeth and the best friend fight an epic battle of wits. This is extremely imaginative. And I like it when these three characters always refer to the dirt beneath their feet as “the soil of our nation.” I like that the pitch of their voices is confident, gallant, and noble despite the apparent desolation of their small Mexican town. I like that they’re named for famous South American revolutionaries. This is all extremely consistent. But what sense does this term make, ‘imaginative consistency’? Certainly imagination seems, by definition, inconsistent; and consistency–the lack of contradiction in a system, or reliability–could never achieve anything like catharsis or irony or tragedy or even comedy. But yet I think of fiction in these terms. Take this story. It’s consistent that these noble, silly men named for South American revolutionaries fight over a chicken with teeth, referring to the dirt beneath their feet as the “soil of our nation.” It’s consistent to me I think because I think that the reality I find myself occupying is a broken, confusing, ululating mass of aspects and only images–crafted from a point of view in the ululation–can adequately (comfortingly, cathartically) express it. And when a story contains such an image, one that walks off like a Daedulus statue in the night, whistling the tune of the confusion, then it’s consistent, true, and reliable. Like this story. —David Backer
“You Are Some Things” by Thomas Patrick Levy, Mud Luscious
This story is about love (yes, that black potato) and how much it costs just to see a motion picture these days. But that’s subtext. Consider Levy’s take on the flag: “THE AMERICAN FLAG IS MADE OF BLACK AND WHITE STRINGS.” It more reminds me, our flag, consisting as it does of red and white bars and so many stars, of early-morning television when I was a tot, the picture on our TV before regular programming began, when TV was just a lot of nervous screaming stripes because it didn’t know what to do. That’s where Levy and I differ. But I’m coming around to his side. Regarding walls of birds, we’re on the one and same page. He said something about a “knotted neck,” back there. That tickled me. I am going to miss him.–Ryan Nelson
“12 Gauge Rage” by Ryan Jackson, The Flash Fiction Offensive
Many in the crime genre try to take a swing from the hip with every line, but it takes a talent like Ryan Jackson to land each punch. “12 Gauge Rage” puts its knuckles to your eye with the first sentence and continues to rock your throughout its welter-weight narrative. He has more drive in less than a thousand words than many have in 3,000 because he concentrates his meanness in a lean plot. It’s not pretty, but it is neat: Jackson proves himself to be both economic with his prose and powerful, a sweet science that’s not just worth a read – it demands it.–Matt Funk
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