Swenson and the children’s presence in the school, on that land, is a legacy of that disintegration by way of invasion. Swenson is drawing a wigwam on the board as she laments the colonization and brutal conquest of North American indigenous people – cultures that colonization attempted to disintegrate and abolish completely. It’s no coincidence that “the day the disintegration began, we were learning about Native American civilization.” Ms. And what, to adults and children alike, could be more mysterious than a woman who begins to fall apart piece by piece, but carries on as though nothing is happening? It’s amazing how quickly a person can go from a creature of contempt to a creature of fascination, the moment something about them becomes a mystery. Each summer that I lived in Austin I moved apartments, moving farther and farther out from the city’s center as the rent rose faster than the searing temperatures.
Raimy’s house is in a gentrifying neighborhood, one of many I’m familiar with after living in Austin for three years before moving to Denver, another city grappling with rampant gentrification. Raimy is an old friend, and Maya has seen her through both the trials of childhood and three marriages. It starts innocently: Maya is a Brooklynite who travels south to housesit for her friend, Raimy, in Austin. Beyond its meditation on madness, “Quietly Gigantic” is a story about invasions.
This story is, in many ways, a modern retelling of Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in that it chronicles the descent of our narrator into madness within the enclosure of an inescapable house. McGinty knows who the murderer is, but when lies speak louder than truth and real faces are the ones presumed to be masks, there is no place safe for those mistaken as monsters to hide. "In the End it Always Turns Out the Same" by A.C. Maybe my satisfaction at having the remainder of summer to myself makes me some sort of monster? At least through these stories, I have good company. I’ll drink coffee in my slippers as the 6 AM bus pulls out of the stop just beyond my kitchen window, relaxed in the knowledge I can go an afternoon without having to chase away boys on bicycles digging up my mulch in search of roly-polies. I’ll just be over here enjoying the beginnings of garden tomato season and good books while the kids go back to bells and report cards. Some of these pieces are recent and some are not, but what good are long summer nights if not for dipping into both new releases and back catalogues? Be sure to share your favorite summer stories in the comments below.
There’s a theme in these stories I noticed only after compiling my notes, and that’s the presence of monsters and madness, of coming undone at the same time a character becomes someone or something else entirely. To mark the occasion of summer’s midpoint, I’ve compiled a list of a few of the best speculative short stories I’ve read since summer’s inauguration back in June. If I’d known this as a child, I wouldn’t have complained so frequently about September – this so-called-fall’s – unrelenting heat. Luckily, the collegiate calendar is garbage, and August is not the end of summer, but dead center. As a kid, August signaled the end of summer as school filtered back into session, ending the days of long evenings, early morning swim practice, and (when in Arkansas), fireflies and cicadas filling the forests with light and sound as the sun sank and the moon rose.
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