There are seven stories and four poems in issue #9 of Farrago’s Wainscot. This issue is untitled, but a closer reading of the stories and poems reveals loss as a common thread.

I like how the image accompanying this issue serves to project a mood of bleakness, the almost oppressing darkness that overshadows the white, or the fading away into the white of darkness which is the same feeling I got as I was reading.

“Skipping Stones” by Neil Ayres and E. Sedia opens the issue. It’s the longest story at a little over 10,000 words. In a sequence of mini-chapters, we are introduced to Gris, a nanotech engineer; Tiffany, a gene therapist; Victory, Tiffany’s daughter who is really her creation; and Stazel, a Malarian who works for the Spanish mob.

From the moment Gris arrives at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, a strong sense of foreboding dogs the reader. This foreboding persists through the somewhat mundane reunion with Tiffany, lifts slightly at the introduction of Tiffany’s daughter, and then squashes right down again as the story progresses in convoluted turns. While the back and forth is clearly labelled, there are places where the reader is left feeling like they’ve wandered into a maze. If Ayres’s and Sedia’s intention was to create a sense of disorientation, then they did their job very well indeed.

“Death’s Little Sister (A True Story)” by Mariev Finnegan is less weighted down by ponderous pacing and cryptic meanderings. Our narrator, the Matriarch of the Eerie Tribe, has to tell young Jacob that his mother has died. Jacob’s mother has killed herself, and while Jacob is aware that this is the case, he wants to know how she did it.

There’s a lot of tenderness in Finnegan’s telling, grief and loss coupled with a fierce protectiveness towards Jacob. All that emotion is mixed with frustrated love and anger towards the dead Lynn. There are no neat answers to a death like this, and Finnegan doesn’t give us any. Recommended.

There are times when a first line just snaps and crackles with so much energy, one can’t help but be captivated and lured into a story. The question is whether the author is able to deliver and live up to the promise of that first line. In “Lady Glory and the Knave of Spades,” Nicole Kornher-Stace proves to us that she is fully capable of delivering as she gives us a thoroughly engaging story.

Kornher-Stace writes: “The day the city died, Glory fell and broke her head and all her words leaked out.”

It is this first sentence that opens the door for us into a bizarre “world after the catastrophe” where a group of survivors are struggling to salvage what’s left of life as they remember it. Even as there is talk of repopulation, there are hints of darker things taking place: the dark pond at the back of a deserted house and the house that somehow attracts Glory’s attention and by extension, our narrator.

Kornher-Stace weaves her magic excellently. She creates a wonderful atmosphere of suspense, so even when we don’t see the unnamed presence from the house, we know it is something we don’t want to encounter in a dark, deserted attic. For all its entertainment quality, there is a subtle note under the surface, a message to the reader of life’s frailty, and of how loss can give birth to fear, and how fear in the end also leads to loss. Highly Recommended.

In “Hard Little Shadows in the Early Morning Sunlight” by James Owens, Alan is on his way to his father’s funeral. He is taking this road trip alone, refusing the company of the woman he loves. His thoughts and his grief seem perfectly mundane, but there’s nothing mundane about how he is gradually losing bits of himself as the road trip continues.

There’s some lovely writing here, and I found myself wondering whether Alan mourning his father’s death is equivalent to Alan’s loss of himself. Owens’s writing resonates and leaves the reader pondering on the meaning of what has been read.

In “Keep Calm and Carillon” by Genevieve Valentine, nine people in an elevator come out alive after it has free-fallen for eight stories. One of the nine is our narrator’s sister, Shelly. What’s remarkable is not that the “Elevator Nine” survived the fall but how they all came out smiling and talking as if nothing had happened. In fact, the nine have decided to form a handbell choir. How the elevator fall changes the lives of the nine survivors and how this influences the lives of their families is illustrated through the eyes of Shelly’s sister.

Valentine’s writing is fluid, and one of the most poignant scenes comes at the end. Like our narrator, we are left wondering about the significance of the handbell choir and the role it plays in the lives of the survivors.

In “Dirt Roads and Ka” by Berrien C. Henderson, a young boy helps an old woman cross the road. To say more than that would be to give the entire story away. There’s something almost minimalist about Henderson’s tale. Nothing much is given away, and the reader is left to draw his or her conclusions.

“Problems of the Solid State” by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is a lovely read. Again, our narrator is unnamed, and he finds himself all alone on the day after he has found the woman he loves. Not only is she gone, but as the story unfolds, we discover that she has left not only him, but Earth as well.

Zinos-Amaro taps into the stream of consciousness and rides it like a wave for the purpose of creating a narrative about loss that is so effortlessly written, it reads as light as air. A fitting end to an issue that started out on a somber note.

There are four poems in this issue, and like the stories, these poems echo the sentiments of loss.

I particularly enjoyed reading Marion Boyer’s “How Not To Be Here When The Universe Dies.” Boyer’s poem is agile, energetic, and filled with tongue-in-cheek humor.

The following lines had me laughing aloud:

How to survive the end of the universe? Theoretically, civilization
has billions of years to perfect intelligence, probe a black
hole, harness energy. No time like the present to start planning!

Even a non-poetry nut will enjoy this one.