Apex Magazine Issue 135: Apex Magazine, #135

By Jason Sizemore and Lesley Conner

Strange. Surreal. Shocking. Beautiful.

APEX MAGAZINE is a digital dark science fiction and fantasy genre zine that features award-winning short fiction, essays, and interviews. Established in 2009, our fiction has won several Hugo and Nebula Awards.

We publish every other month.

Issue 135 contains the following short stories, essays, reviews, and interviews.

EDITORIAL
Musings from Maryland by Lesley Conner

ORIGINAL SHORT FICTION
The Big Glass Box and the Boys Inside by Isabel J. Kim
Carnival Ever After by Mari Ness
The Immortal Game by Lindz McLeod
River Bargain Baby by K.S. Walker
Daughter, Mother, Charcoal by Akis Linardos
The Wreck of the Medusa by Jordan Kurella

FLASH FICTION
Experimental Protocol for the Coronal Sectioning of a Human Soul by Sagan Yee
Walking the Deep Down by Michelle Denham

CLASSIC FICTION
Message in a Vessel by V.G.Harrison
Your Rover is Here by LP Kindred

NONFICTION
The Radical Nature of Slipstream Fiction by Eugen Bacon
What Underlies Our Conversations about Witches by Monica Valentinelli
Words for Thought: Short Fiction Review by AC Wise

INTERVIEWS
Interview with Author Isabel J. Kim by Marissa van Uden
Interview with Author Akis Linardos by Marissa van Uden
Interview with Cover Artist Asya Yordanova by Bradley Powers

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Release date: Jan 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215036211

Jason Sizemore

Jason Sizemore is a writer and editor who lives in Lexington, KY. He owns Apex Publications, an SF, fantasy, and horror small press, and has twice been nominated for the Hugo Award for his editing work on Apex Magazine. Stay current with his latest news and ramblings via his Twitter feed handle @apexjason.

Book preview

ApexMagazine_135.jpg

APEX MAGAZINE

ISSUE

135

ISABEL J. KIM     MARI NESS     LINDZ MCLEOD

K.S. WALKER     AKIS LINARDOS     JORDAN KURELLA

SAGAN YEE     MICHELLE DENHAM

V.G. HARRISON     LP KINDRED     EUGEN BACON

MONICA VALENTINELLI

Edited by

JASON SIZEMORE

Edited by

LESLEY CONNER

APEX MAGAZINE

CONTENTS

FROM THE EDITOR

Musings from Maryland

ORIGINAL FICTION

The Big Glass Box and the Boys Inside

Isabel J. Kim

Carnival Ever After

Mari Ness

The Immortal Game

Lindz McLeod

River Bargain Baby

K.S. Walker

Daughter, Mother, Charcoal

Akis Linardos

The Wreck of the Medusa

Jordan Kurella

FLASH FICTION

Experimental Protocol for the Coronal Sectioning and Assessment of a Human Soul

Sagan Yee

Walking the Deep Down

Michelle Denham

CLASSIC FICTION

Message in a Vessel

V.G. Harrison

Your Rover is Here

LP Kindred

NONFICTION

The Radical Nature of Slipstream Fiction

Eugen Bacon

What Underlies Our Conversations About Witches

Monica Valentinelli

REVIEWS

Words for Thought: Short Fiction Review

A.C. Wise

INTERVIEWS

Interview with Author Isabel J. Kim

Marissa van Uden

Interview with Author Akis Linardos

Marissa van Uden

Interview with Artist Asya Yordanova

Bradley Powers

MISCELLANEOUS

Subscriptions

Patreon

The Apex Magazine Team

Copyright

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FROM THE EDITOR

Musings from

Maryland

700 WORDS

Happy New Year and welcome to Apex Magazine Issue 135!

We’re kicking off 2023 with an issue jam packed with mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. I love tales that twist fate and shine a light on societal issues, entertaining the reader while possibly teaching them a lesson.

Isabel J. Kim opens the issue with a story that takes the fae court tales of old and pushes it squarely into the modern day. What if higher beings ran law firms? What if you could intern there and have your greatest wish granted? Would you be able to resist the unlimited power of becoming a partner? Would you be able to hang on to your humanity? Isabel takes a story that is, at its heart, a tale about two imperfect people and blows it up to a cosmic scale full of board rooms, elevators through the cosmos, and ironclad deals that are always a trap. This story is beautiful, heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful.

Mari Ness returns to Apex Magazine with a twist on the fairy tale Diamonds and Toads by Charles Perrault. In Carnival Ever After, Mari takes us beyond the end of the fairy tale and reveals the lasting consequences. She does so in a story that is very careful about word choice. When every word you speak results in snakes and toads, you become very cautious indeed. This is a wonderful tale about consequences, found family, and acceptance.

The Immortal Game by Lindz McLeod is one of those stories that got the entire Apex team buzzing. It’s told through chess moves, the story slowly revealing itself as the game plays out, and it instantly caught the attention of the slush team. This story unfolds in an unusual way and has a twist at the end that hits just right.

River Bargain Baby. OMG! K.S. Walker, where have you been all my life?!? This story hits all of the right folklore horror notes for me. It has a strong, clear voice that sets the tone of the story right from the start, and is told through an unusual perspective. I don’t want to say too much because I want you to discover this fantastic story as you read it, but know that author K.S. Walker has won over a new fan in me. I can’t wait to read more from them.

Akis Linardos brings us a modern fairy tale with Daughter, Mother, Charcoal. Exploring patriarchal systems used to keep women small and at home, this story does a wonderful job of showing how a girl can be trapped in the same way her mother was. In some ways this story is very bleak, but there is a tiny glimmer of hope, if not for the narrator, then maybe for the future.

The final piece of original fiction in this issue is The Wreck of the Medusa by Jordan Kurella. This is a story about leaving home so you can become the person you are supposed to be. It’s also a pirate story with lots of high seas adventure, mutiny, and danger!

Our classic fiction in this issue are by V.G. Harrison and LP Kindred. Our nonfiction is by Eugen Bacon and Monica Valentinelli. We have interviews with authors Isabel J. Kim and Akis Linardos and cover artist Asya Yordanova.

Finally, this is the first issue with flash fiction! Flash fiction was unlocked during our latest Kickstarter and flash fiction editor Rebecca E. Treasure has been hard at work finding a flash slush team and organizing each month’s theme. The themes on display here are Dissected with Experimental Protocol for the Coronal Sectioning and Assessment of a Human Soul by Sagan Yee, and Footsteps in the Forest with Walking the Deep Down by Michelle Denham. We hope you all enjoy this bonus content as much as we do.

Thank you for starting your new year with Apex Magazine. We are so excited to see what amazing things we can bring you this year.

Lesley Conner

ORIGINAL FICTION

The Big Glass Box

and the Boys Inside

6,200 WORDS

ISABEL J. KIM

Content warnings¹

Their power is how they can turn you into one of them. That’s the trick of it, see. You can go in with your swords and sacrifice, you can go in with your red heart and good intentions, and they will grin with their white teeth and say, Welcome to Grey & Tender, LLP. We’re so glad you’ve agreed to join our summer class. We’ll be sending you the paperwork shortly.

You smile back at them, sweating in your polyester-blend suit. And then you go home to your shoebox apartment to peel off your jacket and open the email with your offer inside.

It takes three minutes to load. Reams of black text on a white LED screen. Terms and conditions, representations and warranties, work for hire, and everything you invent under our employ is ours, and you are an employee, my dear and you can accept no other employment. For fair and adequate consideration, of course. The salary. My god, the salary. And the benefits, and the health insurance, and the miracle in escrow, and the hinted promise of the eventual genuine connection to the extradimensional pool of power that exists adjacent to our current plane of reality.

That is to say, partnership.

There are only so many paths to power in this rotten, sweet, cracked world of ours, one of your professors had told you. This one seems easy. That does not mean simple.

She had a poetic edge to her words and used them in full cascade to warn you. She had been in your place years ago, down to receiving the summer offer from Grey & Tender, LLP. But she got out before the transformation took. She still has the slightest point to her ears. A crystalline cast to her fingers where the nails are sharper than they should be. No longer keratin. Some sort of polished chitin.

Just remember that their goal is to tie you to them, she’d advised. Every gift they offer will have a string.

The old firms offered power in escrow in return for the promise of transformation. Not all the inhabitants of the big glass skyscrapers were part of the old firms. Most were pedestrian, mortal corporatica—systems of people arranged in a capitalist vehicle that was allowed legal personhood. They stood alongside the old firms, and the old firms borrowed their nomenclature and guise.

Grey & Tender. Hamathes. Winter, Stone, & Corvus. A handful of others. All derived from the things that had existed before the big glass boxes. The winter court, the summer court, the imperial heavens, the othersiders. Something arranged in the shape of personhood which needed a body to inhabit. Bodies.

When you needed a miracle in the old days, you would walk into the woods, or the sea, or the flat and windswept plains where reality was thin. If you had luck, charm, or raw and spiteful determination, something in the shape of a person would answer you. A bargain would be made. Eventually the thing in the shape of a person would come to collect. But the miracles remained—so long as the bargain was honored.

Grey & Tender, LLP offered the classic condition: your heart’s desire in escrow, to be returned if you leave the firm. And of course, you would be given the continual opportunity to make partner, at which point the single miracle would become a drop in the bucket of all the miracles you could create for yourself. It was one of the fairer bargains. It was still a trap: to be transformed would be to become a thing that no longer needed a miracle.

Here is the difference between you and everyone else in the associate class. You don’t have a sword or a red heart. You don’t have a sacrifice or good intentions. You’ve got no dreams. You can go in and get out unscathed. Grey & Tender, LLP will look fantastic on your resume.

You’re one of our more interesting recruits, a Partner had said at your on-site interview. The Partner had an exoskeleton of dark chitin and eyes that gleamed pearlescent pink. The Partner’s office had windows that looked out onto a galaxy three megaparsecs away. The Partner had told you this when you mentioned that the nebulae were beautiful. By beautiful, you meant terrifying, just like the buttonless elevator with the clear glass floor that looked down on the starlight void.

I wonder what we’ll offer you? the Partner said. It’s rare we can’t get an immediate read. Rarer that you don’t have a request.

I don’t really want anything, you said. It wasn’t a lie. It was impossible to lie within the boundaries of the firm. I hope this doesn’t disqualify me?

The Partner laughed. "We don’t pick our associate class based on desire—although we know that’s why most of you are here. There’s a shiny brass ring we offer you, if you have the stomach for it. But if you don’t want the brass ring, and you just want to ride the carousel, well, as long as you’ve got the aptitude, every class needs a few wild cards. And you definitely have the aptitude. We’ll talk about this later. We have a whole summer to offer."

You’re taking me on? you said.

The Partner winked and offered their hand to shake. You took it. The texture was smooth and waxy and strangely delicate.

Late at night, sitting in front of your glowing LED screen, you scrawl your pixelated signature across the page. You feel an invisible band tighten around your forehead. Offer and acceptance. Welcome to the summer class.

You wonder if you’ve made a mistake. But you don’t want anything from Grey & Tender, LLP. You’ll get out unchanged and leave only your memories and the shiny line on your resume.

You walk into the big glass building near Central Park and get in the elevator. Only one person gets in next to you. The door closes, and the starlight elevator begins rocketing up to floor number seven thousand and eighty-four.

I’m going to hurl, the boy in the elevator says faintly. He’s wearing a dark green suit, which matches the faintly green tinge to his face.

Don’t look down, you say. Close your eyes.

I can still feel it moving, he hisses, but he closes his eyes and tilts his head up. You notice that the curve of his jaw is very beautiful. The old firms enjoy a certain aesthetic.

Distract me, he says, and then after a half-beat, Please.

You snort, because the boy is gripping the railing like it is the only thing keeping him anchored. Sure. I’m Adair, I’m one of the summers. I’m guessing you are as well, from how used to the elevator you seem to be?

Charmed, the boy says. I’m Finn. I’m terrified of heights. Please get all your laughs out now before we get to the office.

How on earth are you expecting to deal with the elevator every day? How did you go in for your interview?

You can bear anything if you need it enough, Finn says. And I need this job. And I figured, transformation, right? I wouldn’t be scared forever.

You’re crazy.

You’re not all that distracting. Come on. Tell me about yourself. We’re supposed to be making friends, aren’t we? Networking.

But then the elevator comes to a smooth halt, and he’s out like a shot. You meander vaguely after him. You see the full-time associates in their little office boxes working at their stations as you walk down the hallway. They slide fleeting glances across at you,