The Year's Best Horror Stories 19 by Karl Edward Wagner

Author:Karl Edward Wagner [Wagner, Karl Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-05T12:18:42+00:00

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

by Kim Antieau

We seem to be finding a lot of Southern writers this time out in The Year’s Best Horror Stories, including emigres such as Kim Antieau, who has now strayed as far as White Salmon, Washington. Hard to find good gumbo there.

Of her travels, Antieau explains: "I was born in March of 1955 in the bayous of Louisiana— my dad was in the service so I have no memory of Louisiana. I was raised in Michigan, attended Clarion in 1980, and now live in the Pacific Northwest with my husband, writer Mario Milosevic. My fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Twilight Zone Magazine, Cemetery Dance, Shadows 8 & 9, Time Travelers, The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories: 13, Pulphouse, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and other anthos & magazines. I have work coming out in Pulphouse, Final Shadows, Borderlands II, Weird Tales, and The Ultimate Werewolf. I’ve just completed an sf novel, Ruins, involving time travel, the Civil War, and the Anasazi cliff dwellers. I’ve just started work on the first book of a mystery series, Deere Crossing.” This is one busy lady.

I hate this apartment. It’s small and has rats, and I’m always hungry here. We live on the east side now, far from our old house in the northwest, the one we had before Mother was laid off and Father wasn’t given tenure at the university.

“Times are tough all over,” my father said when we moved, “but we’re strong. We’ll survive.”

They talk about survival a great deal.

Soon after we moved here, our culture hour began.

“We are poor monetarily, but we shall not be poor culturally,” my father told us by way of explanation. I know the real reason for these performances. My parents haven’t the money to feed us all, so they have to find out which of us is fit to survive. I’ve studied Darwin in school; I know what’s going on here.

Now, every night we sing for our supper. Well, Maggie sings. Trina reads poetry. I don’t have any particular talents, so I try everything and anything to show them that I am fit, I am worthy.

I haven’t succeeded. Every meal, my portions get smaller: I am never the one who gives the best performance and gets the most food. I pointed out the difference in food portions once to my mother.

“What nonsense, Dollie,” she said. “You all get equal portions. Really! You’re too old to whine about such things.”

I don’t mention it anymore.

This night I am more hungry than ever, but I have to wait until the performances are over. Maggie, my older sister, sings an aria. Father and Mother smile contentedly, pleased with their sixteen-year-old daughter. She sings her last note and we clap loudly.

Next Trina, my younger sister, stands up. She holds a piece of paper which she occasionally glances at as she recites her poem. I watch my father as Trina talks; her words are rhythmic, beautiful, creating images in a kind of verbal dance. My father’s eyes fill with tears.

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