Apex Magazine Issue 125 Read online

  Apex Magazine

  Issue 125

  Rachel Swirksy

  Joelle Wellington

  Maggie Slater

  D. Thomas Minton

  Rose Keating

  Jared Millet

  Yohanca Delgado

  Tenea D. Johnson

  Jason Sanford

  Maria Dong

  Ken MacGregor

  Edited by

  Jason Sizemore

  Apex Publications

  Contents

  FROM THE EDITOR

  Editorial

  Jason Sizemore

  Words from the Honorary Special Editor

  Jeffery Reynolds

  ORIGINAL FICTION

  COTTONMOUTH

  Joelle Wellington

  Next to Cleanliness

  Rose Keating

  Discontinuity

  Jared Millet

  Candyland

  Maggie Slater

  Gift for the Cutter Man

  D. Thomas Minton

  Wake Up, I Miss You

  Rachel Swirsky

  CLASSIC FICTION

  Deep Night

  Tenea D. Johnson

  The Ever-Dreaming Verdict of Plagues

  Jason Sanford

  The Rat

  Yohanca Delgado

  NONFICTION

  Alone? or, How A Survivalist Reality TV Show Defangs Publishing’s Narrow Definition of Agency

  Maria Dong

  Flesh Eggs

  Ken MacGregor

  REVIEWS

  Words for Thought: Short Fiction Review

  AC Wise

  Apex Book Review: Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

  Reviewed by Lesley Conner

  Apex Book Review: Malefactor by Robert Repino

  Reviewed by Keturah Barchers

  INTERVIEWS

  Interview with Author Joelle Wellington

  Andrea Johnson

  Interview with Author Rose Keating

  Andrea Johnson

  Interview with Artist Marcela Bolívar

  Russell Dickerson

  MISCELLANEOUS

  About Our Cover Artist

  Subscriptions

  Patreon

  The Apex Magazine Team

  Copyright

  Stay Connected

  FROM THE EDITOR

  Editorial

  1,100 Words

  Jason Sizemore

  Welcome to issue 125! This month we bring you a varied group of dark and disturbing fiction. We have everything from questionable beauty health regimens to a chilling Southern Gothic witch’s tale.

  The Apex team finished its 2022 Kickstarter campaign. It was an exhausting, but productive 30 days. We made our initial funding goal in eight days, but then things slowed and we were worried about securing funds for all six issues and other stretch goals. In an exciting down-to-the-wire finish, we received a large, generous pledge from a backer in the literal final minute of the project to reach our stretch goal of publishing a special Asian and Pacific Islander issue of the zine. In the end, our backers contributed $26,000 to the Kickstarter. Apex Magazine thanks you for your support and promises to make 2022 as awesome as 2021!

  Having said that, we truly do hope this will be our last Kickstarter for the zine. You’ll see us putting additional emphasis on our Patreon and subscription options. Not doing a Kickstarter in 2022 is our number one goal right now.

  Looking ahead, we have a busy last quarter of the year. In October, we will release issue 126, our Indigenous Futurists issue guest-edited by Allison Mills. Then November sees issue 127. Finally, December will be issue 128, our special International Futurists issue guest-edited by Francesco Verso. The table of contents has been announced for both special issues. You can find them here1 (Indigenous) and here2 (International).

  We kick off issue 125 with Joelle Wellington’s Southern Gothic story “COTTONMOUTH.” While I love Southern Gothic, I’m also very picky when it comes to the genre. Joelle’s use of language, history, and the paranormal are exquisite and memorable.

  There are plenty of takedowns out in the world of the self-help business. In “Next to Cleanliness” the focus moves from the less-than-honest aspects of beauty and health gurus and instead examines the suffering the recommended regiments can create.

  “Discontinuity” by Jared Millet is an excursion into space-based science fiction. While the trope is well-worn (time and space have gone wibbly-wobbly), there are some excellent considerations about substance abuse interwoven in a tightly written plot.

  Maggie Slater’s “Candyland” is another strange tale that covers tangential narrative ground to “Next to Cleanliness.” Maggie’s protagonist awakens to a saccharine, candy-coated world that is much more than a mallet-sized metaphor for the shallowness of online personalities. It’s a sly and sharp satire of personal image and what it truly means.

  “Gift for the Cutter Man” currently holds the record for the most content warning labels. Certainly, this body-horror short isn’t for the faint of heart, but it is not filled with gratuitous violence and imagery. The true pain is the helplessness and desperation the protagonist feels that leads to a devastating climax.

  Finally, we welcome back one of our most popular authors—Rachel Swirsky—with her “Wake Up, I Miss You.” It’s an unusual story that rewards multiple readings. The way Rachel relates memories with storytelling and the nature of loss is brilliant and poetic.

  We have a trio of classic reprints this month. The first is “Deep Night” by Tenea D. Johnson from 2003. “The Rat” by Yohanca Delgado is a Year’s Best selection from John Joseph Adams and Veronica Roth. “The Ever-Dreaming Verdict of Plagues” by Jason Sanford is a novelette-length story featuring the protagonist from his debut novel, Plague Birds, that arrives September 21st from Apex Books.

  Our nonfiction comes from Maria Dong and Ken MacGregor. Maria examines the ways character agency is addressed in publishing via her favorite reality television show. Ken shares a hilarious example of when a writer’s mind can be a little too creative.

  Our featured author interviews this month are with Joelle Wellington and Rose Keating. We also have our third conversation with amazing artist Marcela Bolívar.

  Rounding out issue 125 are a trio of reviews. A.C. Wise gives us the latest installment of her short fiction review series Word for Thoughts. We also present reviews of Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest and Malefactor by Robert Repino.

  I’d like to give a special shoutout to honorary editor, Jeff Reynolds. Jeff picked up the Become an Apex Magazine Editor reward in last year’s Kickstarter, so he helped us with the construction of issue 125 from start to finish. Judging by his editorial that appears right after this one, he might be addicted to zines now!

  Enjoy the issue, and we’ll see you next month!

  1 https://apex-magazine.com/indigenous-futurists-original-fiction-toc/

  2 https://apex-magazine.com/international-futurists-full-toc/

  Words from the Honorary Special Editor

  700 Words

  Jeffery Reynolds

  As a youth, I considered and subsequently discarded a variety of potential occupations, as well as a heck of a lot of different jobs in adulthood. I’ve been a burger flipper, a rock core sample prepper, an administrative assistant, and an IT manager. I ever spent a summer drying seaweed in a processing facility.

  Though
I’m in my fifties, I’ve yet to decide what I want to be. Why settle? I like the thought of continually remaking myself, being renewed.

  Beyond the bad jobs and good jobs, a degree in game design, and the countless training courses, there remained a buried desire to be a writer, something I’d dreamed of since childhood. To work in the publishing industry. I’ve been pretty lucky to have a handful of stories published in the past few years and hope to have more of those soon. There’s no better time to reach for your dreams than now.

  But I’ve thought about other roads into publishing, too. Ways of becoming more connected with the work of writing. To, perhaps, shift my career in a new direction. One path I’ve considered is to become the editor of my own webzine. Before doing so, I wanted to understand what the work entails. When the opportunity came to learn what being an editor meant with prestigious a publication such as Apex Magazine, I leapt.

  The past few months have given me insight into the roles that staff play in producing a great magazine. Whether it’s first readers wading through the slush pile to find those nuggets that readers will love, or selecting cover art for the issue (which was super fun), putting out a webzine takes a great deal of effort from a lot of folks. It takes many supporters, too. I’m honored to have had the opportunity to work with them on the current issue. I can only hope I’ve been helpful to them in return for what they taught me.

  But by far the hardest job for me was the selection of final stories. While Lesley and Jason made the ultimate choices, they gave me a chance to read the stories that had reached the final level of consideration and weigh in on which ones I thought were best. There are limited numbers that can be purchased for each issue. I’ve been on the other side of this process. I know what it’s like to go through the submission process, to get past first readers, perhaps second and third, to get all the way to the final round, only to receive a rejection. Those are hard rejections, maybe the hardest. But I know your stories are going to turn up elsewhere. Keep writing and submitting.

  Here are the results of all that work. There are amazing stories in here. I love the cover art by Marcela Bolívar. I’m proud to be listed as an honorary Apex Editorial Minion and am thankful to Lesley and Jason for the opportunity.

  ORIGINAL FICTION

  COTTONMOUTH

  5,000 Words

  Joelle Wellington

  Joelle Wellington grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where her childhood was spent wandering the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Her love of the written word led her to a B.A. in Creative Writing and International Studies. When she isn’t writing, she’s reading and when she’s not doing that, she’s attempting to bake bread with varying degrees of success. She is represented by Quressa Robinson of Nelson Literary Agency.

  Content Warnings1

  He finds her in his grandpa’s attic, in the Big House.

  The hatch has been locked up tight since the day Grant Dixon was born—twenty-two years of locked up tight—and long before.

  He used to ask about it, between the stories his Grandpa Dixon liked to tell.

  Grandpa Dixon used to read to Grant’s daddy when he was young, and they’d all been from the Good Book. Warnings against greed and lust. Warnings about things not of God.

  By the time Grant came around, Grandpa Dixon relaxed, the starch of his white preacher’s collar leaking from his spine. But Grant remembers what his grandpa said about the attic.

  Don’t go up there, boy, Grandpa Dixon said. ‘He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear because you are not of God.’ Don’t be the second half of that verse, boy. Don’t.

  And so, Grant listened, because he was of the first. Of God. He was good, as all the town was, crooked in their obedience, as his Grandpa spat fire and brimstone from behind the pulpit.

  But, one day, the lock falls off. It lands at his feet with a heavy crack, splintering the rotten wood that makes up the third floor of the family home. Grant Dixon swears he feels the house breathe, and he looks out the picture window, across the acres of Mississippi green sea, and feels like something is alive.

  The ladder rolls down, swollen planks of wood as steps, connected by ragged rope that looks twined together by hand. He expects the first plank to snap under his weight. He’s even more shocked when it’s the second that snaps.

  Grant snatches onto the next and climbs. He climbs and climbs until his blunt fingernails catch on the soft edge of wood and he heaves himself upward, sliding along it like a serpent would, head then belly, and finally the tail of his feet, catching over the mouth of the entrance to the attic.

  The ladder rolls up and the hatch falls shut.

  There isn’t any dust to suggest that the attic hasn’t been touched in years, but the smell of stale air and the spores of an oak tree convince Grant otherwise.

  This is where he finds her.

  She finds him in Preacher Dixon’s attic.

  * * *

  He is a gorgeous boy, elegantly dressed, the smell of cotton and linens at his pulse point. His skin is so pale that she can see the blue of his veins.

  * * *

  She thinks he’d look better with a little blood on his collar.

  She is a girl. A black girl curled on a bed of black curls that match the hair upon her head. Her hair is cropped short, a harsh thicket that looks hard as the bristles on a wooden brush. She seems to be asleep, but the moment that Grant takes a step back—step forward—her eyes open and she’s on her feet.

  She slinks, too small to be called a crocodile, but too majestic to be a garden snake—docile and green as the grass it hides in.

  There is something inevitable in the air, Grant can taste it like dust. He hesitates for a moment—this girl is in his grandpa’s attic, and yet, it feels like she’s there for him. Grant knows the Bible, knows his grandpa’s stories well—parable and verse alike—can recite them by heart too. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” Matthew 25:21.

  And Grant has been good. Grant has been faithful. Grant didn’t open the attic.

  The attic opened for him.

  “And who are you that I see?” she asks, voice low and crooning, like the chirps along the swamp edge and a story’s breath.

  Grant moves because he’s never been able to resist swamp nor story.

  “I’m Grant.”

  “Grant no-last-name?”

  “Grant Dixon,” he says. And then, he asks, “What’s your name?”

  She is beautiful, nails long, lavender and sharp. He gorges on the sight of her, her dark skin, so different from his, the place where her cotton shift clings to the curve of her breasts, the dip of her waist, and he wants to trace the lines of her with his tongue.

  It’s her eyes, though, that demand his attention, hazel bright with hunger deep.

  “I have none,” she says. She takes another step forward, and her thin colt legs tremble. He stares at them, and something low in his belly, just above his pelvis, tugs tight towards his chest. She smiles like she knows. “But, come again, Grant Dixon, and I may tell you.”

  This is the first night.

  The next time he crawls up the hatch-hole, she is waiting.

  She stands by the tiny porthole at the apex of the Big House. He wonders what she’s looking at, the window so crusted with dust, the outside must be an eternal fog. When she sees him, the curve of her generous mouth twists into a smile that shows the fine points of her white teeth. He doesn’t see people like her often, so he pays special attention to the richness of her skin, a depth that’s missing in his flesh. When Grant inspects her, he notices for the first time, three chains wrapped around her ankle—pewter, copper, and iron. He waits for her to say something, but she just smiles.

  Grant swallows the silence, then his nerves, in that order.

  “I—”

  “You came back,” the girl-with-no-name says like she’s
only mildly surprised.

  “Will you—”

  “No,” she interrupts again like she can pluck his thoughts from the grey matter. And then, she turns away, like he isn’t worthy.

  Grant creeps forward, the near-silent sweep of the soles of his feet on the rotten wood cracking the air. He looks from her chained ankles up her back. White ropes of flesh crawl up into the nape of her neck and disappear beneath the neckline of her cotton nightshirt. He thinks the scars suit her; they’re perfect. She’s perfect.

  “What can I ask you?” Grant asks because he can tell—he can see the stories thrumming in her sinew, and he wants them. He wants them more than anything.

  “Ask a good question, and I might answer.”

  “Have you ever seen the ocean?” he asks her.

  And the girl-with-no-name says against the dust-fogged window, “I have seen the edges of everything twice. Yes, I have seen the ocean.”

  Grant sits at her feet and says, “Will you tell me a story about the ocean?”