Story Details
Categories Fantasy Contemporary Fantasy
The burning under my skin shifts into prickling ambivalence. No longer painful because my nerves are deadening. Peach trees don’t have nerves. The counselor warned me that this transplantation would mean relinquishing my body. But I thought the annihilation of self would be mortifying. Instead—
Author Details
J.L. Akagi Eat and Be Eaten
J.L. Akagi is a queer Japanese American who writes about what scares her. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons and is forthcoming in The Dread Machine. She can be contacted at jlinakagi@gmail.com Story notes: I grew up in Colorado. When I was young, the death of Matthew Shepard dominated local news coverage. I realized I was queer concurrently with the aftermath. Details of his murder still bother me, even so many years later. I wrote this story as a way of reconciling that kind of cruelty for myself. I've always envisioned death as peaceful, and it soothes me to imagine a special locus of peace for those impacted by violent hate crimes.
Eat and Be Eaten, by J.L. Akagi
Author Details
J.L. Akagi Eat and Be Eaten
J.L. Akagi is a queer Japanese American who writes about what scares her. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons and is forthcoming in The Dread Machine. She can be contacted at jlinakagi@gmail.com Story notes: I grew up in Colorado. When I was young, the death of Matthew Shepard dominated local news coverage. I realized I was queer concurrently with the aftermath. Details of his murder still bother me, even so many years later. I wrote this story as a way of reconciling that kind of cruelty for myself. I've always envisioned death as peaceful, and it soothes me to imagine a special locus of peace for those impacted by violent hate crimes.
