On "Gasoline Caroline" by Zana Previti (2657 words) ****

I'm not sure if Gasoline Caroline is real--by that I mean the character, not the story. And that's what makes this piece of fantasy work so well. This is "not a story about grief," the narrator tells us. Don't believe her. It's about trying to live again--by performing self-destructive acts. Our character doesn't so much recover as descend further into the madness that has assaulted her, but it's a love song nevertheless. Read the story here at Tinge.

On "I Looked for You, I Called Your Name" by Laura van den Berg (6450 words) *****

This is the second story of van den Berg's I've read, the first being a tale in One Story. I can see why she's something of a sensation. She's a master of virtually every aspect of a a well-written piece: interesting plot, full characters and setting, and wonderfully surprising sentences.

You know you're in for strangeness when the author opens with "The first thing that went wrong was the emergency landing." We don't tend to think of emergency landings as the beginning of troubles but rather than end. But then, this is a narrator whose view of the world is decidedly negative and whose experiences certainly compel negativity. She may survive, but how well?

There's a moment in the tale when the narrator talks of how only her husband and she can see the twist in her nose, and it's enough to show how this relationship is one built on a certain degree of pretense and uncertainty. Is the narrator predisposed to viewing her husband as less than desired and lets that color the rest of her life, or is she simply one who is predisposed to seeing everything as less than desired? Decide for yourself here at Tinge.

On "Miss Orange Blossom County" by Emily Koon (810 words) *****

Emily Koon's tale is a reminiscence of something that sadly is a memory of many children in the United States, including me--the summer of a serial killer. For us, it was the Night Stalker, and it meant that in our unconditioned house the windows had to remain shut at night, and there was no sleeping on the floor next to them. That had been our boon in the summer, that breeze coming in to keep us cool. Koon's killer stalks only teen-aged girls, and the girls in this story aren't quite old enough to get all of the details right, but that's what make the tale all the more heartrending and scary . . . and sad. Read the story here at Tinge.