Stories about rebirth and reinvention, in very different senses.
All fiction, including a prescient piece of science fiction by Tim Maughan that Brian Merchant published on his Substack.
Plus six other stories about people who reinvent themselves in different ways, by Mackenzie Hurlbert, Rose Hollander, Rachel Offord, J.W. Goll, David Summerfield, and Natalie Warther.
This wasn’t at all a theme I was expecting or planning, but it’s a great coincidence.
Want to submit a story? Please do!
Fiction
Flyover Country by Tim Maughan
This story was originally published in 2016. It’s set in a dystopian future where Foxconn factories for making iPhones have moved to the US. Clearly far-flung sci-fi. It’s great:
Given half a chance Foxconn would replace us all, but then they’d lose all those special benefits the President promised them for coming here in the first place. The ten year exemption on income and sales tax. The exemption on import tariffs for components. The exemptions from minimum wages. The exemption on labor rights. The protection against any form of legal action from employees or inmates. The exemption from environmental protection legislation. And Apple? Well, without me standing here, clipping one Chinese-made component into another Chinese-made component, Apple loses the right for a robot in Shenzhen to laser engrave ‘Made in the USA by the Great American Worker’ into every iPhone casing before they’re shipped over here.
This is the first (of hopefully many) stories published by Brian Merchant on his site. The story behind it is a good one, and so is the story itself.
Chameleon by Mackenzie Hurlbert
The narrator of this story is an awkward and shy college student who dreams of reinventing herself as her confident and cool new friend.
Lydia had the loveliest blue-black hair, and the fluorescent lights of the Halloween Factory danced among her waves. Today, she wore it down, casually tossing it as she perused the racks of costumes. I followed behind her, playing my part of loyal friend: the quiet girl she’d adopted at the college coffee shop two weeks ago.
I read this story without knowing that it was a horror story thanks to my old monochrome Kobo, so the horror elements really crept up on me.
The Coin by Rose Hollander
The narrator of The Coin is religious and her boyfriend Don isn’t, until he spends 10 minutes talking to the pastor. Hollander’s story contemplates the nature of logic and faith in a way that lingers long after reading.
To Don, faith was a failing grade in a physics class. “If God wanted me to believe in Him, He wouldn’t have given me the capacity for rational thought,” he would say. Sometimes Don’s lack of faith upset me. I didn’t want to fight, so I just tried to ignore this divide, this one thing we did not, could not share. I knew that trying to convert him would only end badly.
Tight Knit by Rachel Offord
Tight Knit is a brilliant triple-entendre title for this story of a mother and daughter’s relationship. It’s full of subtle metaphor that reveals itself on a reread (and you’re sure to reread it).
The jersey was so tightly knitted that it could stand up on its own. It had a crew neck and five thick horizontal stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. I forced my head through the unforgiving neck and shimmied my arms up the inside of it, pushing them through the armholes and down the sleeves. I felt like I was wearing a hot, itchy, straitjacket. My neck burned against the wool and throbbed angrily against the sensation of being choked.
‘It suits you, Nat,’ Mum said, walking around me, smiling. I smiled back and thanked her.
Three Hundred and One by J.W. Goll
A Reverend struggles with faith, humanity and legacy. This is a heavy, heavy story, but it’s beautiful.
As every day, he walks the mile and a half from his chapel and navigates around the treeless graveyard three times, naming names. They were his congregants, now they are his jury. He’s buried most and is no longer as confident that he did them right.
Leaving Kit Lacy by David Summerfield
The narrator of Summerfield’s story has been hopelessly in love with Kit Lacy for years, and finally decides to do something about it. The story is peppered with run-on-sentences that bring the narrator’s voice to life:
It never occurred to me there was another way to act toward a woman, especially one so beautiful, ellipsoid features under a blonde mane over square shoulders ass perfectly shelved over long straight legs in heels in jeans blouse open lips embossed eyes dark like a whore, intelligent, delightful, she’d mastered all the looks women give all the sayings women say.
Outside Husband by Natalie Warther
Does what it says on the tin. This is an unsettling story about living with someone who is losing the plot:
One day he was coming into the house, sweaty from a long bike ride, kissing my neck so the kids would scream, the next he was fashioning my black thong into a slingshot and hoarding the apple seeds and peach pits that came back in the kids’ lunch boxes.
Now he lives completely outside. His new rule: no coming inside the house, no interacting with electricity, no modern appliances or food products.
