Detroit Stories Quarterly Fall/Winter Issue 2024 Is Here!
BUT FIRST A NOTE: The Black Experience Salesman will continue next week with Part 3. Stay tuned!
That’s right friends, the latest edition of Detroit Stories Quarterly, the DSQ Fall/Winter 2024 edition ,is out there in the world and available for purchase! In this issue we are pleased to announce the addition of a new author who has never published with us before, the renowned Zig Zag Claybourne, 2021 Kresge Artist Fellow. His wonderful story, Sally Mary Henry, is a welcome addition to our magazine and we are honored to have him aboard.
And naturally we are also thrilled to have some of our regular contributors coming back to share more great tales that I know you’re gonna love. Because providing great scifi/horror/fantasy stories for you guys to love is what we do!
Here are some samplings of what’s inside to whet your appetite…
Sally Mary Henry
By Zig Zag Claybourne
Sick and tired of saving people, especially folks who got nothing better to do than kill each other. From here to Canada, and from Canada to here, I’d saved so many folks who looked like me, saved them from being beaten or killed by white folks who couldn’t give you a real reason for hating us if God Himself asked directly. I only had to kill once, but I will not tell Mama and Daddy about that. It will go to my grave. Three Rebs had thought to cut off a boy’s foot for stepping on a white man’s boot. They were powerfully sick. I could smell it off them in waves. Spirit sickness. I screamed and was immediately everywhere around them. Became a storm. But it wasn’t rain. I had their knife, a long, mean blade. When it was done, I fell to my knees, the layers of my clothing tangled around me, red all over. I dropped the knife into the groove of a deep wagon rut. The boy was dark as coal and was looking at me, breathing that hard breath that made people fall out. I got up, knelt to him, put my hand on his bare chest, and kept pressure against his breath till it calmed down. I tried to merge us. When he calmed down, I removed my hand. Left a red handprint.
The Fur Council
By F.R. Wilson
Magda blurted out. “I do not need all these words. They are just that, words. None of them will bring back my Barto. The only reason I am here is to dispel this foolish notion that we can work with the humans. They don’t care about us. They will do what they will and we either look out for ourselves or we will end up like my poor Barto.”
“Surely it was an accident, Magda. No one would do that on purpose,” Naomi offered.
“Wouldn’t they?” Chiana chimed in. “To them we are either food, or a slave, or a pest. Either way they feel they can do as they please. They don’t care about each other, so they definitely do not care about us. We are less than nothing to them.”
“Yes, you have seen it. Our dead bodies litter their streets. They have no regard for life no matter whose life it is. It is either them or us,” Magda said. Her emotions were so intense they caused the joey in her pouch to thrash about.
Naomi sent pleading glances for help to Valcan. Reading the signal, he stepped in. “I am sorry about Barto. We all are. But this meeting is not just about us and our personal troubles. It is about all of us no matter what race or species. You can’t deny things have been improving throughout the city, slowly but steadily. We have waited a long time to see this break in the clouds. We cannot allow personal grudges, misunderstandings or unfortunate accidents to stand in the way of us moving forward. If we want that promising future to continue, we have to let go of these old fears and hatreds.”
Magda growled a rebuke at him.
Naomi moved closer to Valcan and gave him an approving nuzzle. “Good speech,” she whispered. “If that is what new antlers give you then you should grow a new pair more often.”
Blood On The Moon
By Marsalis
It was not uncommon to be sent off to some desolate, dismal would-be colony, forced for weeks on end to turn it into something hospitable, only to call back with the admittance that there was not one thing worth saving.
Ledipis, however, lay differently. Too much was worth saving.
And for those brief first hours of roaming and gazing, we truly believed that it was ours alone. We had, in our happiest of thoughts, believed that it was to be a new territory, a new place to start, a new home for our families and our friends. We had not, in our happiest of thoughts, believed that it was already somebody else’s home.
But soon we were confronted with that ghoulish, gargantuan white castle, jutting up to the sky as if some gnarled cathedral. We had no idea what it was at first—so terrifying and gruesome to the eye, so out of place it seemed amidst such natural gorgeousness. Dozens questioned if we had better turn back. But that was not what they taught us and that was not what I believed.
“We shall go forth,” I announced, and so we did within that house.
Blues-Volution
By Luther Keith
“As long as we are playing the Blues, it’s never over!” he declared.
True, the six executed Blues loyalists were all key players in the Blues-Volution, plotting, planning and playing the Blues with abandon, whenever and wherever they could.
The Blues-Volution was like a weed that cannot be stamped out despite the best efforts of the Authorcrats, who tied most of society’s problems to a licentious freedom of expression that contributed to crime, civil rights, social justice mania, wokeness and borders overrun with immigrants from foreign nations.
The Authorcrats took over subtly—like a frog dropped in a pot of water that is slowly brought to a boil and doesn’t realize it is being cooked before it’s too late.
They played on the fears of those threatened by change and loss of their dominant status in society.
Bats
By Abel Ramirez
The flesh of the bats and students began to swell, soften and melt like wax. As they attacked, bat DNA fused with human DNA. The bats’ bodies merged and were absorbed into the college students’ bodies.
The drug triggered strobe light hallucinations to be seen by everyone in the group. Like a nightclub in the woods, blinking lights and the beat of electronic dance music filled the area.
Sarah, Mike, Bree, Terence and Joel screamed and fell to the ground as the bats’ bodies became engulfed into their flesh. They cried in agony as their limbs, hands and feet lengthened. Music blared and the visions of lights flickered causing everything to appear in slow motion. Bats and humans melted into each other. The music pumped. The lights blinked. Short black fur grew out of their now tough, thick skin. Their noses and mouths grew outward and developed into fox-like snouts containing sharp teeth.
The Invasion of the MAGA Ants
By R.E. McTyre
Brian, nodding to Brandi that it was time to get to the point, took over, saying, “Mr. Holden, we’re here because it’s been communicated that you have some imperative information that the campaign needs. Something that’s of a national security nature...?”
“—yes, yes—” said Holden. As he did, his left hand gestured to them to come closer. Both had been keeping their distance.
“What is it?” Brandi asked pointedly, her curiosity piqued.
The siblings stepped closer to Holden.
“—yes, yes—closer’’
They stepped closer yet.
Then, when they were as close as Holden needed them to be, he said one word: “Ants.”
“Ants?” Brian and Brandi asked in unison, their faces twisted into simultaneous expressions of inquisitiveness and revulsion.
“—yes, yes—it’s not the Russians or the Chinese we need to be worried about interfering with the election. It’s the Ants!”
“Ants?” the siblings again asked, a bit softly and laden with an incredulous tone.
Suddenly, Holden lost it. Comically so.
“YES, YOU IDIOTS, ANTS! MAGA Ants!
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