Black Static #57 (Magazine)
Gareth Jones
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Edited by Andy Cox
Published by TTA Press
It’s a small collection of four (count ‘em) stories that make up the fiction portion of Black Static’s fifty-seventh issue… but does that mean there’s a lack of material to dig your teeth into this time around?
Thankfully, the answer is “no”, with this issue’s offerings kicking off in top form with Ralph Robert Moore’s Will You Accept These Flowers From Me?
Wannabe big-shot stage magician Michael, alongside his performance partner, a small monkey named Bella, spends most of his life within the walls of cheap, seedy motels in between scraping by on lacklustre performances in dive bars and low-rent clubs.
Disillusioned with his life of illusion, Michael is on the verge of giving up – until he comes into possession of a legendary magician’s hat that sports bona fide supernatural powers. As we know in horror, though, sometimes what appear to be blessings can actually be curses – and Michael’s attempts to get to grips with the workings of the hat lead him down a path of greater futility.
Bathed in bleakness, Moore’s tale is first and foremost an exercise in character and exploration of the human condition – the continual grasping for more, for dreams that remain firmly out of reach… and how steadfastly we remain blind to not just the answers before us, but to what really matters in our lives on a moment-to-moment basis.
Michael’s relationships are superbly drawn, including a burgeoning romance with bar staffer Erin and the more existential bond with his faithful stage (and life) companion, Bella. The latter, especially, is used to great effect by Moore to deepen the emotional darkness of his tale, and to tug more than once at the heart strings as Michael’s undoing begins and ends.
Next up is Simon Avery’s Sunflower Junction. Here, our narrator finds himself following a line of intrigue as to the whereabouts of underground musician Hugo Lawrence, whose sole album recording appears to have the power to pierce the psyche, manifesting dreams as broken, husk-like flower representations.
Hugo’s music was never perfected, however, and he withdrew from the public eye. Taking a detour from his own listless, meaningless daily existence, Avery’s narrator sets out to track down the elusive Lawrence – but what he finds is not entirely what he’d like… even if it is precisely what he needs.
As a writer, Avery is incredibly talented at creating lives – building surroundings, points of view and a general sense of the values that allow his characters to live as they do. His narrator, here, lives in an old townhouse shared between him, an alcoholic lady, and a smack-addicted man whose sole happiness in life he can only extract from memories of the past.
It’s dark, sure, but unmistakably human – an overarching theme that Avery uses to build fantastical (if grim) perspectives on the nature and function of creativity and escapism, thought and emotion. Sunflower Junction is an absorbing experience – helped along by the classical “missing person” mystery and creative MacGuffin (for which yours truly is most definitely a sucker) – and much more thought-provoking than one may expect, all told.
Mike O’Driscoll hits the pages next with Shadows on Parade, which follows the relationship between the apparently unhinged Gillian and her abusive partner, James. In Gillian’s case, she maintains a disturbing obsession with the previous men in her life – keeping photographs, videos and records of her past relationships, asserting that only by regularly referencing them can she continue to exist.
Somehow, they are her only link to material being – assurances that she is in fact real. As James and Gillian’s relationship grows, James becomes progressively more controlling and paranoid before his distaste toward Gillian’s activity grows to a head, revealing the uncanny truth of her history and her rituals.
Shadows on Parade is an interesting piece, playing quite freely with obscurity and questions of reliability. Is James really going through the abusive partner checklist by lying to Gillian and attempting to isolate her from external support structures? Or is the truth that he has been trying to get to the bottom of her neuroses through his own investigation?
Given that the story opens with a backhand to the face, it’s obvious that James is not a man worth sympathising with, but still, O’Driscoll knows how to unbalance the cart as he goes, making for a consistently compelling read as we wait for the disquieting truth of Gillian’s past to be revealed.
Aliya Whitely finishes off this issue’s fiction with The Chambermaid. In this short tale, we follow the daily tasks of young hotel maid Bonnie as she travels the rooms of the Avalon, dusting webs and occasionally flicking through discarded belongings of past and present guests. Soon, she has a meeting with her colleague, Xania, who fancies herself a psychic of sorts.
Offering up a series of pop psychology judgements based on photographs of guests, Xania also gives Bonnie a description of the young woman’s own future – one Bonnie disagrees with, and forces deep down inside her as she resolves to avoid such a cookie-cutter fate.
And that’s all I could take from this particular story, sadly. A self-glorifying palm reader tells a younger woman something she disagrees with, or would rather avoid. Yes, it’s a perfectly capable reflection of the logic-meets-emotion clash of human thought processes, but as a standalone tale it feels lacking in both substance and discomfort. Throughout multiple readings, any greater significance continued to escape, I’m afraid.
As usual, in the back end we have Black Static’s bevy of film and literature reviews, while up front there’s Lynda E. Rucker and Ralph Robert Moore’s regular columns. Also making it in this month is a high-quality Q&A with author Andrew Hook.
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Magazine
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