Neither of these stories claims it's about a vampire

October 31, 2024 6:00 AM

Two short fantasy stories, both published 2024, about taking care of family as & after they transform. Content notes on both, at top of the page. "The Wilding Year" by Jamie M. Boyd: "Erin resists the urge to ask the doctor what he changed into during his Wilding Year." Boyd says it "explores the messiness of parenthood and growing up, the loneliness and friendships we experience during those years, as well as the fear and anxiety that comes with change". "What Good Daughters Do" by Tia Tashiro: "I’m not expecting it when my mother eats the bus driver. My surprise comes mostly because I thought I’d gotten her under control." Tashiro asks: "What happens when the deterioration of your loved one is magnified by a disease as dangerous to others as it to themselves?"
posted by brainwane (5 comments total)

I titled this post as I did because

"The Wilding Year": "She catalogs things she’s grateful for: Her son’s rabies-free. He’s a modest-sized herbivore, so she can keep him home, instead of having to transfer him to one of those Wilding facilities. He’s not a vampire bat, requiring bags of blood."

"What Good Daughters Do": the mom's exhibiting some vampire-y behavior, but the narrator seems to think it's more zombie-like: "It’s only recently that I’ve begun to wonder if, all those times I didn’t go hungry as a kid, my mother did.... Was it me? Subsuming her needs under my own? A little parasite, a zombie in my own right? Am I the reason this is happening to her now?"
posted by brainwane at 6:17 AM on October 31 [2 favorites]

brainwane, I almost always read and enjoy the stories you post, although I don't often comment!

I really loved "The Wildling Year", it was almost too short for me -- could have kept reading more explorations of different families experiences with the change.

"What Good Daughters Do" -- that one was tough. I mean, intellectually I knew it probably would be from your description, but it definitely hit me emotionally. Still digesting it.
posted by cnidaria at 2:18 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]

If you told me that "What Good Daughters Do" was a Butler short story, I'd probably believe you. (Reminiscent in particular of The Evening and the Morning and the Night.)
posted by smammy at 2:29 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]

I just about chickened out halfway through What Good Daughters Do, but I'm glad I made it to the end.

And the Wilding thing is such an intriguing concept!
posted by demi-octopus at 2:46 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]

Both were emotionally hard to read. Not sure how the bat boy's going to go.... but glad the mom is ah, being taken care of under those circumstances.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:36 PM on October 31 [1 favorite]