Is it possible you have enrolled in Short Story 101 by mistake? There is still time to withdraw from the class without penalty. You might consider switching your major from creative writing to math, which may be more suited to your literary skills.
I’m addicted to the Hallmark Channel Christmas movies. I’m not kidding. One weekend, I watched six of them in a row. That’s 12 hours, including commercials, if you’re doing the math. I’ve viewed sixteen overall, and their cheesy, predictable plotline is outstanding.
It’s hard to believe we’ve already arrived at the last issue of the year, but here we are, folks. It’s December, 2022 is coming to a close, and the latest issue of Defenestration has arrived!
Once August’s issue came out, a bunch of weird stuff started happening. Bigfoot bought a hat, but that’s hardly noteworthy. Was IS noteworthy was that, someone, well, noteworthy, gave a shoutout to Defenestration, which caused a deluge of submissions for a month and a half. This isn’t an exaggeration, either. Normally we get a steady stream of submissions, but it got to a point where it was a struggle just to keep the inbox at 50 submissions or less. We’re a small operation with meager crew, most of whom are fictional, so that was a lot of stories and poems to read. I want you to keep that in mind as you read this month’s issue, because the stories and poems below were chosen from among the hundreds Eileen and I read over the past few months. It’s quite the badge of honor to be among the few chosen from the multitude.
“I don’t care if you have to lie down in a fucking coffin like Edith Sitwell,” Beelzebub says. “Get me some pages!”
This is my agent speaking. His name is not really Beelzebub—that’s just how I have him listed in my phone contacts. He’s very professional and he’s never spoken to me like this before. It’s just that I’ve pushed him to the end of whatever tether good agents are connected to their writers by. OK seriously—that sentence I just wrote? That is nothing like my usual high-quality prose. But just now, something really bad is happening to me.
Out of all the 18,652 cosmic shapeshifters that had infiltrated the planet, Kymbyrlee was sure she was the only one who had yet to master walking. The thought came with predictable speed the moment she tripped on the sun-cracked pavement, her left heel hitting the pavement a little too hard. The connection sent a shock through her leg, compressing the rough skin of her foot painfully against bone. She caught herself with the other leg and avoided yet another scraped face, but she could feel her posture overcorrecting, becoming stiff and unnatural. She could feel the looks of passersby graze her, and couldn’t help imagining what they thought. She just wanted to get home.