The Blue Door

By Pumpernickel House Publishing

Welcome to Pumpernickel House, a bi-annual journal of contemporary fairy tale, fabulism, magical realism, the strangely beautiful and the beautifully strange. Behind this door you'll find women who are birds, girls who love golems, beastly babies washed ashore by the tide, and a batch of Baba Yaga's special cookies. Get lost in the woods and stu

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pumpernickel House Publishing
• Release date: May 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578392486

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Pumpernickel House #1: The Blue Door

©Pumpernickel House Publishing 2022

ISBN: 9780578392479

Pumpernickel House #1: The Blue Door is a publication of Pumpernickel House Publishing. All rights reserved by the publisher and the individual authors and artists herein.

Pumpernickel House Publishing is a family of independent journals and presses based out of Lafayette, LA. Pumpernickel House, the parent-press, publishes fairy tales, magical realism, and fabulism. Black Annis Books is an imprint focused on socially-concious and feminist horror. Half-Light Press is an imprint focused on hybrid works, speculative fiction, and works that explore the margins between genres. The mission of Pumpernickel House publishing is to expand the literary conversation to include marginalized genres and authors, and to take academia out of the academy. We offer affordable virtual workshops, indie-author events, as well as host the Half-Light Lit Fest and Conference in New Orleans. For more info, to submit your own work, to to become a patron, visit www.pumpernickelhouse.com

Special Thanks To

Our Contributors

Our Patrons

Chris Tesorio

David Drogowski

And You! The Reader!

Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.

- Hans Christian Andersen

Contents

A Farce by Christi Nogle

Spells by Margaret Stetz

When the Girls Came Driving by Elizabeth Turner

Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues by GJ Gillespie

something hoofed by jerome Berglund

Review: Kym Cunningham’s NEW MYTHOLOGIES

King Tide by Adele Hally

Phaeton Falling by GJ Gillespie

Baba Yaga’s Flower Scheme by Susen James

Vlata Honey by Liz Kellebrew

Go Rest High on that Mountain by GJ Gillespie

Forgotten God of the Forest by Chelsea Locke

Orpheus and Eurydice by GJ Gillespie

Review: SHAPESHIFTING by Michelle Ross

A Child Who is All Answers by Jennifer Lynn Krohn

The Crone and the Maiden by Jennifer Lynn Krohn

Snow White and the Seven Clients by Bryn Kennell

Remembering by Annette Gagliardi

The God’s Themselves by GJ Gillespie

Transient Nature by Andrea Eldridge

Wrath of Zeus by GJ Gillespie

Rewrites by Couri Johnson

She Wasn’t There by Lenny DellaRocca

A Branch in Her Hands by Lenny DellaRocca

The Woman with a City on her Hay by K.A. Nielsen

Longing for the Moon, Haikus by Yuu Ikeda

Review: ONCE READ AS RUIN by Katherine Gaffney

The Golden Feather by Bethy Wernert

from her i run by Ia vanOpstall

The Tale of Starling by Meg Murray

Untitled by Rachel Coyne

Birdland by Maya Beck

Contributors

Editoral Staff

A Farce by Christi Nogle

Once a girl was so sure the world had gone farcical that she started taking a little something to help her see things true.

It wasn’t anything much, just a trending topical all the girls at school applied from time to time. It came in a golden compact and went on with a puff. I applied mine mostly to the philtrum because scent was the sense that most often failed me—or was it the sense most often honest? I wasn’t sure.

The lilacs around the gate smelled of fabric softening sheets, and fabric softening sheets smelled of stone. I wasn’t entirely sure whether the topical had changed the smells or fixed them.

Sometimes I rubbed a little onto my eyelids and stared at the walls, the floor, saw through them to something more authentic. When studying got to be too much, I’d do that.

I’d look down on the lawn from my window and see what was about to come.

The girl was having a hard time, being neglected, being scapegoated for things around the house—all because of her sister’s impending wedding.

Our whole family and all the people we know are well off—really quite well off, prominent even—but the fiancé is something else. He is shaped like a bear and soft like a bear but his face is chiseled and airbrushed. He makes me think of the portrait of Henry the Eighth or a politician painted on the side of a building in someplace even worse than this.

Once when I sneaked down to Father’s study late in the night, I found his computer unlocked and a shaky video taken inside a forbidden place, a speakeasy. Onto the stage stumbled a powdered actor, red circles of blush. He was playing the fiancé; I knew it instantly. Saying the very things the fiancé had said in a recent speech, screeching them high and all the crowd laughing, roaring.

I think of it sometimes now, replay it in my mind.

I’m trying to piece together what brought me here, but it is hard to set things straight. I was a careless girl and then I was thrown away.

The girl was locked in the tower.

The girl was locked in a cellar.

The girl was disappeared.

It was lucky my friend Chelsea visited the day before. We sat in the gazebo while Mother pruned roses. She was watching us closely, but Chelsea had just enough time to press a new compact into my hand. Chelsea was tight and formal. I tried to read her eyes but could not.

What is it? I whispered when mother’s back was to us again, but she shook her head slowly. Her face was red.

When she’d gone, I was there with Mother for a half hour more. She stopped pruning, took off her gloves. A maid brought cold water and little pink cakes.

Mother gave no hint what was coming. We talked about nothing of importance. Weather, a disagreement I’d had with a girlfriend. I was smug and happy to have her attention on me so long with no criticism and no mention of the wedding.

Mother went inside just before the long car pulled into the driveway.

Two young men in shirtsleeves came out of the back. I was curious at first, and then I fought them. Scratched. If Father had not been watching from the window, if he had not nodded and turned away, I’d have thought I was being kidnapped for ransom.

I am not entirely sure where I am now. The walls are brick and the floor a damp slate. It is dark and terrible at night, but I am cared for. I have my meals, a bed and toilet. Sometimes they bring in magazines or a stack of romantic novels. They would take the compact from me if they could, so I keep it hidden.

If I touch the puff to my eyelids, I can still look down to the view of the lawn as it was from