Favorite Web Stories: April

Before the Flood by Sam Schieren

This one makes a lot of things work that usually turn me off. Lots of smoking, writing about a writer, aimlessness. It’s got a dusty plainness and nice change ups in rhythm. It seems like a world where everything dire gets preemptively eaten by expectation and routine. A flood. I miss smoking. I got 3 teeth removed this week and can’t inhale anything like that because I don’t want dry sockets. (I got dry sockets last time I had 2 teeth out, because of smoking.) What’s a secret? What’s private? Why? I think probably everything and then nothing.

Fishbone Crown, Bleeding Eyes by Laila Amado

I like the structure. Paragraph units with multiple-choice subunits. Another flood. April floods. The multiple choice elements stack and layer a mind’s parallel potentialities. In the worst case, what are you? What have you been? In moments of panic, whether anxious ruminating or being presented with real danger, it’s easy to feel dissolved in choice. This story packs a lot of pivots on childhood, motherhood, fear spirals, despair, longing, and reaching for a way of being okay, in a very short space.

Lemonade Stand by David Luntz

Guy accosts children at a lemonade stand, rants about markets and labor, and tries forcing them to flee. Funny and tense. The sentences start jittery and extend. The only time I had a lemonade stand as a kid was also the first time I noticed rap outside my home. Two guys in a tinted Cadillac bought two cups ($2 total) and tipped me $20. I couldn’t really hear what they said over the music. Instead of tipping, Luntz’s narrator does what most of us do: uses elaborate framing to justify his actions and even makes himself feel good that he’s teaching them a lesson about the truth of that framing.