"Leicester Writes Short Story Prize anthology 2024" (Dahlia Publishing, 2024)

20 stories from nearly 300 entries.

• 1st: All eyes on me - Rara (1st person PoV) sees herself reflected in shop windows (superimposed on mannequins), in mirrors. She and Shayla used to like clubbing, running down this road. She'd settled down with Pete. She watches a mother with 3 kids battling along the road, trying to catch a bus. One of her sons, Manny, is being awkward, dawdling. Manny stares at Rara. Will Pete come back? Actually Rara's the mother.
• 2nd: The maw - The 1st person PoV narrator has cleared her flat and left a suicide note. She goes to a smart hotel in Austria, and befriends a woman (who drinks alone) who invites her to Italy with her husband. She says no and throws herself off a mountain rather than take the pills she'd brought along. The narrative is interrupted by paragraphs that give us her backstory (childless, a cleaner for 25 years, abandoned by her husband, felt that there'd always been a black chasm/maw beneath her) and give us details from the life of Empress Elisabeth (who lived in a nearby palace, who felt trapped by her husband, who became fat and secretive as she aged).
• 3rd: Molly - At 16, the tall, gawky 1st person PoV narrator admired tall, pretty, rebellious Molly and slept with her boyfriend (because Molly didn't). Later she spends 4 years with Julian who grew up in a rich family but wouldn't inherit much money. He's not a nice person, embarrassing and shaming her. One of the rare times he listened to her was when he was going to intervene to stop a kid getting bullied. One day she and Julian pass Molly. She's surprised that Julian and Molly know each other (they probably slept together as students). She didn't tell him she knew Molly too. That night (at the end of the story) "I thought then about the kind of person that takes joy in breaking things. I thought about the kind of person who lets other people break things and does nothing. I thought that perhaps I had been both types. But I had never been a broken thing. ... I do not think I am whole."
• The Nook - The child (1st person PoV) doesn't understand what a "nook" is, or why Americans might have put one in the city. The father grabs him and his brother and they rush from their home, first to the masjid, then they barge onto a bus as buildings topple. Someone in the bus says it's not a nook but a chemical weapon. They reach a car park of dead people. The father dies.
• Pepper soup - Set in America. The woman (1st person PoV) no longer lives with her family. She lived for a while with Fajimi. Her family came for an Xmas meal which he made. It was awkward. Years later, Fajimi took her to a restaurant and said he was going to leave her. She thinks he's in a relationship with her sister. Later she invites him over for a poisoned meal and cuts him up with a cleaver. She invites her sister over, who says the food tastes bad.
• An unrecoverable youth - It's 1918. Joe (3rd person) is returning to his island village after 4 years of war. His mother had died giving birth to him. His father died while he was away. He'd sort-of been engaged to Sarah. She'd sent him a letter saying she'd married. She has a baby now. The story switches between 2nd and 3rd person. We learn that Sarah's under-age brother arrived at the front with Joe weeks after the fateful letter. Joe was on the firing squad that killed him for desertion. Joe was only doing his duty. He feels guilty that he didn't tell the army that Robert was under-age. He reaches the cottage, untouched since his father died. A relative offers to buy it off him, telling him that he has to change. Outside the church, Joe unburdens himself, telling Sarah about Robert. He asks why her family didn't stop Robert joining up. He sells the cottage and leaves the island. He's only 22. He can start again.
• Gigi and me - Tasmin (1st person) has a ghost, Gigi, in her flat. Her lover, Colin, initially puts up with it. It's her 4th ghost. Gigi can press buttons to say words. Colin wants to make money out of her. Gigi encourages Tasmin to block Colin's number (she does) and change the locks (I don't think I get this).
• The observational bias of love - It begins with "You will tell me how you found me and you will lie". The plot is simple enough. It's 1998. An Irish woman (1st person) newly in Italy is kept away from others by her new lover, who doesn't want her to learn Italian. He locks her in their flat when he goes out. She makes him fall from the balcony to his death. The story ends "I will tell them how I found you, and I will lie".
  The telling of the tale is more complex. I don't understand it all. She thinks "You [drip me data] about a character that is not you but is the you I want to imagine you being". She feels he's keeping him like a pet, or a lab animal. She thinks she's happy because he tells her she is. She says "I'll believe in the storia and the romanza". Are these the terms that are used in italian for the narratology terms "plot" and "story"? Another "researcher" watches her from his balcony opposite. Because of this second observer she realises she's not happy. He teaches her Italian. She sneaks out to a bookshop - there's "a photo that looks like me, with the word Perso over it, I will think it should have an 'n' added to make the Perso into 'Person' and then I will see the English underneath saying 'Missing' and I will finally realise that I am lost. And I'll wonder what hypothesis will be proven when the experiment ends. And worry that I could ruin it with a result that may be skewed, now I, the subject, am no longer blind."
• Ugly boys score the goals - The narrator (1st person, male) is investigating a medical trial where the subjects were from old people's homes. The anti-aging drug had a positive initial physical effect, but led to emotional turmoil: a trajectory that matched what his teenage daughter was going through - unrequited love. The drug development is going to be halted. He thinks that everybody has the right to be young again, even if it's only to experience the agony of first love again - it might spur them to success in other fields. He thinks hard about trying the drug.
• You choose - 2nd person PoV, set in the States. You rent out a hunting lodge. You're widowed and childless. Mary (divorced with kids), after 10 years away returns, working at a women's health clinic. A politician who's anti-abortion and pro-guns hires the lodge. For a page the story continues with you shooting him. For half a page he forages for mushrooms (at your suggestion) and dies because he picked poisonous ones. For another page he's killed by a wild boar protecting her young. "After whichever choice you make" you see his death announced on TV from the lodge.
• Back streets - Salman (3rd person PoV) and his wife live with his single mother in Mumbai. He busks for extra money. He's noticed, and records an album. He's told that it flops. Actually it's a hit in the UK - he's been ripped off. Another agent finds him, gets him uk concerts. He becomes rich. His wife is expecting twins. He returns home, unchanged, happy to be back. (I don't think I get this)
• Hiraeth - a son (1st person) is with his dying father in a hospital/hospice. His father had immigrated from (maybe) Hong Kong, running a shop. The son had been pushed to be English - to play cricket, go to Scouts and become a doctor. He ended up writing comics and children's books. He's moved when told that while he was out of the room his father boasted about him. (I think I've seen the plot before)
• The universe inside my skin - A man (1st person PoV) wakes to see a man in his bedroom. He's seen this man before, at scenes of impending death. He recalls the scenes, and other scenes where he's had prescient hallucinations - he'd had doubts about whether he'd chosen the right woman to marry (his life has many branching alternatives ahead), then he saved her life and married her. He dies, and becomes the man who was watching him. (I like this)
• The little shop of proverbs - A man (1st person PoV) in a troubled relationship goes to a shop to get a bespoke proverb for his wife. After a discussion, the shopkeeper suggests he buys flowers instead. He buys flowers, heads back to the little shop. But it's gone. He finds a note in the flowers - "The foolish man grumbles that roses have thorns, but the wise man gives thanks that thorns have roses". (The story uses its 3 pages well.)
• Just the two of us - A newly-divorced father (3rd person) collects his 8 y.o. daughter for the weekend - his first time. He suddenly decides on a treat, driving to a funfair that his father took him to. He's not sure of the way, or if it still exists. He tells his daughter that it was the last time he saw his father. She's scared that it'll be the last time she sees him. He turns back towards his flat hoping she'll enjoy a weekend of TV and pizza.
• Time travel - A mother (1st person) is with her old mother, who was a single mother once diagnosed with suicidal tendencies. The narrator (and her brother Gavin, she learns, and her mother) has flashbacks so vivid it's like time travel. "There's one missing piece. It is 1989, 1995, 2000, 2009. Once. we kept searching for it. Thinking we needed it ... Believing it would make us whole". I think she means a father. She admits that they've kept one thing from her mother (not wanting her to feel guilty?) - that they distrust authority: i.e. men. She needs to get back to 2011 to tell herself "to give love a chance. To trust that it does not always fail. ... There are still roads ahead for me, for Gavin, for mother."
• The walking man - A wanderer (1st person) returns to the home he left when 13. His battered mother had left earlier. His sister is still in the house. Their father is dead. He feels guilty that he left his sister with their father.
• Postcards from the boathouse - "I" recalls reading out Woolf and Plath with "you". When apart, they send each other Polaroids. When "you" moves away and doesn't reply for months, "I" self-harms. "I" receives a photo of a smashed polaroid camera. 1.5 pages.
• Magic numbers - The meaning of numbers from fairy tales - 2 (divided self), 3 (choice), 4 (stabililty), 7 (society), 9 (gestation) - are used by a woman (1st person) to recount her life from a childhood with a mentally unstable mother, through boyfriends and a steady relation to miscarriage and a final (not quite convincing) "we all lied ever after".
• Ephemeral little things - The narrator (female(?) 1st person) is waiting at a train station for her (male?) partner. She's going blind and can't work out all that's going on. She's trying to write things down so that in the years to come he can read the notes back to her. He texts her to say he'll be away another night. She's beginning to have doubts about him.

Several murders, deathbed scenes, single/divorced mothers, and lots of love. The most common theme is how the Self is changed by love (or its loss). An interesting mix.