Kater Cheek, a talented new writer, has posted two short science fiction stories online for free. I've just read them both and they're the real deal — scary, thought-provoking, and they get you right in the soft spots. "Emily's Fifth Birthday" is a story about parental guilt and the drive to make childhood perfect at any cost; "Alternative Medicine" is a very quick story about health as a zero-sum game. A highly recommended start to the week. Kater was one of my students at Clarion some years ago, and was a very promising writer then — now she's got a lot more than promise.
"My niece is turning five," Rebecca said, expressing, she hoped, none of the horror she felt about that fact. She would have stopped it if she could, and was planning a strategy to keep her niece from turning six for a long time, but she couldn't expose that to Colette. Colette wasn't that sort of friend. "I'm taking the afternoon off to buy her a present."
Rebecca met Colette at their favorite bistro where they ordered salads and made a sly contest of under-eating one another. Today the birthday party dampened her appetite completely, so that Rebecca just picked at her parsnip and carrot salad. She didn't like it anyway. The raw vegetables tasted like nothing but vinaigrette.
Rebecca was thin, and petite, with a heart shaped face and light brown hair which she'd kept pale blonde for the past forty years of her life. She had arrested her age at twenty four, and planned to stay that young until she died.
"Emily's Fifth Birthday" and "Alternative Medicine"
