It’s so exciting that a third story from This Fresh Hell has been nominated for an award!
Joining Eugen Bacon and Clare Rhoden’s story “Paperweight” being longlisted for the 2023 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards under Best Short Fiction, and Chuck McKenzie’s “The Dark Man, By Referral”, shortlisted in the 2023 Aurealis Awards!, we have Claire Low’s “After I Found Her”, about a woman and the doll she finds at the rubbish tip, nominated for an Australasian Shadows Award for best Long Fiction.
Congratulations Claire!
For readers, here’s a taster!
Sleep is elusive these days. Tonight, I feel bone-tiredness but no wave of relief as my brain powers down. One reason might be dinner. The quail had a creamy sauce. Then, after the cream, a dessert with fresh lemon in it. Feeling my insides bloating and curdling, I feel balloon-tight, the way I imagine pregnancy might feel. My mouthguard in, my anti-frown patches glued on, my white noise machine whirring. All of these things to help me drift away. I am not drifting.
A clock stares with its red numeral display: 1:08.
The white noise is meant to cover sound, to hide it in a whirl of other sounds blended together. Still, I hear the whispers of the night. A dog barking in the distance. Trucks rumbling. A motorcycle revving. Crickets rubbing their legs to their bodies like they’re playing the violin.
Then: click click.
I shudder and pull the sheets and blankets right up to my chin, the way I have since I was first shifted out of a cot and into what was then hailed as a big-girl bed. Noah is snoring beside me. No signs of turmoil, gastrointestinal or otherwise.
I hear it again: click click. Please let it be literally anything. A cockroach scuttling. A rat tap-dancing. Please, anything but the recently re-headed doll’s eyes opening in the dark. Those eyes that had appeared in Berenice’s face. Why had they? Had I been that hot? That sick? Am I sick?
Then something worse: a grizzling. A faint cry. Then a louder one.
It’s baby cries, unmistakably, coming from within the second bedroom. ‘No,’ I whisper, pinching myself. ‘This isn’t real.’
Noah has not heard anything. He sleeps sweetly, gently, with a faint smile about his lips.
The cries eventually stop and I shiver in the dark, though it isn’t cold. I shiver for hours. I am still trembling when sleep finally comes.
~ excerpt, “After I Found Her” by Claire Low
If you haven’t read it (or seen it), the This Fresh Hell anthology, co-edited by me and Katya de Becerra, explore stories that subverted classis horror tropes.
“Cursed dolls, siren calls, malignant houses, highway hauntings, isolated communities and attempts to summon the devil are among the many classic horror tropes subverted and reimagined in This Fresh Hell, in settings from the Australian outback and a New Orleans bayou to a beach in West Java and the Valley of the Queens.“
If you’d like to read these nominated stories, and see what else the anthology has to offer, you can get it from:
or from other online retailers.