Silencer

Interzone 259

"Silencer, Head Like a Hole Remix" appears in Issue #259 of Interzone (July 2015). It's a story I didn't think would sell to any market.

Originally, this idea was a flash piece for a writing group -- I wanted to be snarky and swift. Fran Wilde encouraged me to expand it, and the story shook off its snarky coating when I did.

When it received a form rejection from Lightspeed's Woman Destroy Science Fiction issue, though, I doubted what was I was trying to accomplish on the page. Or what I had accomplished? Had I done anything at all -- had I said what I meant to, that we're in an awful loop from which there is no escape even as people tell us it will get better...

I sent the story back out.

And back out.

And back out.

"Silencer" explores a near-distant future, two people thrown into an inexplicable series of repeating events -- each more horrifying than the last only because it's one more in a long, seemingly endless chain. This story takes a somewhat (wholly) jaded look at gun violence. It stems from living in a state that has seen its share of such horrors -- Columbine and the "theater shooting," to name only two. It stems from living in a country where, after Columbine, gun violence became just another thing we do here. Every day, I am surprised that Columbine didn't have more of an impact on this country than it did -- and maybe I mean "positive impact," because it certainly had an impact.

When Will it stop?

My thanks to Fran Wilde for her thoughtful comments on the draft, and to Ben Baldwin, whose art absolutely captures the bleak heart of this story.

Now go get your copy: Interzone #259, TTA Press Store
(Amazon links as soon as I got 'em -- you can nab the Kindle version there)

Interzone #259, art by Ben Baldwin

Glasser is the hole in my head, Glasser is the hole in my heart, and Glasser is the strange stillness that settles on my shoulders and overcomes my hands. My hands should shake, they should sweat; they should not be able to bear the weight of this weapon, but they do. Without complaint.

The reflected whole of my fragmented self hunches like a beetle in the round of Glasser's eye, tiny in the black expanse of his pupil and I--

And we--

He wants me to tell him this is the last time; he's so young and wants reassurance, and I, I say nothing. His fear steadies my hands.