I wrote this story in 2017. Submitted it to one place. Rejection. For some reason, I gave up on it. I don't know why. I kept believing in other stories that kept getting rejections, but not this one.
Maybe because it was weird, even for me. It's not really a story with characters and dialogue, it's more like… flashbacks and summaries and really short scenes that don't really explain a lot about the world or the main character.
Maybe because it was dark. Good things do not happen to this character, at least not until the end, and even then… it's not all happiness and glitter. It's just… peaceful?
Maybe because the whole story feels like it's a metaphor for something and I'm afraid someone will ask me about it because I don't know what it means.
In any event, I gave up on Ice. And then I found it in an old document and I still didn't know what it meant or if it meant anything, but I liked it. So I submitted it.
And it was accepted.
And now I have to talk about it and pretend I have anything resembling a clue what the story is about.
It's about a girl who explodes. It's about being different. It's about that episode of The Magic School Bus where they teach you about the rain cycle. It's about disability? Or maybe autism. No, no, it's about gender dysphoria…?
I don't know, man. I don't remember why I wrote it, to be honest. I'm sure it's about something different now than it was in 2017.
Read it for yourself, it's very short, and you can decide what it's about. Ice is available to read for free at Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine.
