What’s in the Hole?

Hello again wyrms, and I get to say again because this is our second issue! We’ve been blown away by the enthusiasm for WYRMHOLE and would like to thank you for being here. It’s been a wormstravaganza. I’m Sara, the second Editor-in-Chief in our 2024 lineup, which means I’ll be bringing you both issues for August: the free beginning-of-month issue and the premium mid-month issue. Next month I’ll be passing off the editorial baton to H.H. Pak!

As soon as I strapped in for this month’s issue, I knew I wanted to reprint a story by one of my favorite speculative short fiction authors—an author that continually dilates my mind with the possibility of what words can do. Today we’re bringing you “Contact Light,” a short story from Sofia Samatar that originally appeared in Mooncalves, a Shirley Jackson-nominated anthology of unabashedly weird and surreal stories, edited by John WM Thompson. This will be the story’s first appearance online. 

When I first read “Contact Light,” I became actually breathless. Apt, for a story about a man laboring in a penal colony on the moon. Luminous and rending, the story asks you to reconsider how you think about spatial orientations, carcerality, our planet. Up and down. It’s restless, gleaming with terror, and snags at you with its refusal of chronology or easy interpretation. The sentences swept me along like a deluge. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.

Back to the launch, softly. What’s next for WYRMHOLE? Well, we’ve got our Patreon up and running, and our Patron Discord, and we’re in the thick of planning our Kickstarter. If all goes well we’ll be opening for submissions in the fall/winter.

Time is rushing on. “We were on the great clock,” says the narrator of “Contact Light.” I look down. I see our shadows, cast long across the face of it. We move our bodies like minute hands. We are all counting down.

(Also, if you like this issue— share the HOLE!)

Sara S. Messenger / AUGUST 2024 Editor in Chief / New England, USA

Story of the Month

Contact Light

By: Sofia Samatar; Reprinted from Mooncalves, 2023.

1.

After the fight my leg was raw, torn open from knee to ankle, slick with antibiotic membrane from the infirmary. The moonscape lay bald as an eye. We would drive out past the sea, that great dust basin, and at the mouth of the mine we’d load the truck with rocks. Moon rocks—that was a children’s toy or candy, it seemed to me, from the 1970s. Down in the canteen they would show us particular shows. People on Earth, naked and shining, laughing. They looked like food to me, like something I could suck in through a straw. Everyone hushed when the news came, always too short, the bits of life like wisps of confetti. A cabinet minister had poisoned himself in a shed. A woman was caught in a bathroom with liquid explosives. Her shirt said SAVE and her face looked sorry that she would not, as she put it, go to be with the animals. At downtime one of us dreamed of flies, another of swarming crows. I was scared every time I thought about the sky. Scared my leg would never get better at all, that this was the end. At wakeup my bunkmate was dead and I lay for a while like a kid with my eyes shut tight.

2.

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall. We were on the great clock, marooned on time’s surface. In the flat lighting I would try not to look at a face. Hours, years, it seemed, of not looking at faces. A survival strategy, I called it, though someone once told me it was cowardice. Voices complained of the cold and the shitty food. Some bodies clacked together in bunks. My new bunkmate spoke to me of the first words on the moon. He wanted to know my position in this never-ending controversy. Did it all begin with Houston or Shutdown or Contact light? It’s cool, he said, to know the first words spoken on your planet. I lay quiet, though I longed to curse him. He was a dangerous man. It was reckless to say or even to think of possession, of a planet, of a life that could attach itself in space. We are in a vast suction cup, I told myself, that is all. On the canteen screen a man was describing the state of the nation. He spoke of needs but his face, the only one I had seen in so long, lacked nothing, lambent and full as a window seen from a black December street. Read more.

Recs & Reviews

Sara recs… 

• I Attack the Queen!

  Sarah Ramdawar, Strange Horizons. 2023. 550 words.

  Have you ever suspected that some royalty are not... quite of this earth? A bite-sized story written in a Trinidadian dialect, the narrator recounts, almost boastfully, the incident long ago when she was a schoolgirl, and told to throw flowers at Queen Elizabeth II. A fantastic entry into the canon of stories written as if told orally, over the family dinner table.

Pak recs…

• You Are Born Exploding

  Rich Larson, Clarkesworld. 2021. 14.1k words.

  What if the world's burdens were too heavy for your mortal form? What if you could give in to a primordial life-- and return to the sea from which life spawned? This story contemplates these questions through Elisabeth, a woman caring for her ailing child as the world succumbs to a mysterious virus. When her brother comes to visit, she begins to question the worth of her humanity and just how far she's willing to go to hold onto it.

Tia recs…

• Chupa Sangre

  Tre Harris Salas, Apex Magazine. 2023. 5.2k words.

  Pets are going missing in Carlos’ neighborhood, but no one believes his abuela when she says a monster is the culprit. Come for the unraveling of the mystery, stay for the sharp writing and abuela’s long-buried secrets. I vibe with how this story deftly ties itself together.

Tina recs…

• The Palace of the Silver Dragon

  Y.M. Pang, Strange Horizons. 2018. 7.8k words.

  A girl with nothing left to live for goes searching for the silver dragon. This story is one of my favorite works of short speculative fiction—equal parts magic and tragedy, all wrapped in prose that makes you feel like you’re underwater with the characters. If you enjoy unlikeable female protagonists and all the feels, this is the story for you.

Carolyn recs…

• The Summer People

  Kelly Link, Get In Trouble. 2015. 10.5k words.

  This one's got a magical house in the county, monkey eggs, an unseen queen, SUMMER PEOPLE (caps required,) NyQuil, and moonshine. But really, I'm trying to pitch a story that's impossible to capture. Read this for the incredible, down-to-earth, fantastic-as-real atmosphere that suffuses every single one of Kelly Link's stories. The Summer People is one of her best.

Arula recs…

• As Big as a Whale

  Avra Margariti, Underland Arcana. 2022. 1k words.

  A surreal story of an astronomer, the fates of his wives, and the ancient celestial whale that swims in the sky above them. This tale makes you feel like you’ve been transported into a Leonora Carrington painting. Read it if you’re in the mood for dreamlike imagery and an escape into a fantastical jewel of a world.

Iz recs…

• Rail Meat

  Marie Vibbert, Clarkesworld. 2024. 4k words.

  Heist! Love story! Critique Of Rich People Sports And How They Harm (Literally) Their Employee-Participants!

The Best of July Cover Art

Good Moomin of the Month

WILDCARD

Hole-y Eyes on a Hostile Planet

by Sara S. Messenger

In the spirit of this issue’s reprint, “Contact Light,” by Sofia Samatar, I will be rating how good of a survival partner each hole-eyed stuffed animal I got in Japan would be, in the event that you crash-landed on a hostile planet. This is not quite what “Contact Light” is about—this is actually a completely different scenario, but it fits in with the terrifying space theme, and my runner-up idea was to write at impassioned, theory-informed length about the thematic implications of yellow pillows, so really this idea is much better.

THIS GUY

Look at those eyes. Extremely hole. I got him from a claw machine at an arcade in Tokyo, near the end of my study abroad. I have been informed he is from a game series called Little Nightmares, which I know nothing about, but I dig his design. He seems like a prepared guy, with his flashlight and constant supply of fashionable and well-fitting brown paper bags, so you feel pretty confident in him on the way to the planet. 

Then when your ship crashes in the snow and you see him climb into his spacesuit fully barefoot, you realize you lied to your friends in space camp when you said you have no icks. His paper bag limits his peripheral vision and when you both step foot outside the ship, he immediately gets eaten by the Giant Horror Worm. 4/10.

KOALA TRIPLETS

Their eyes are not merely hole, but Bulging Hole. Hole in 4D. I got them in the Higashiyama Zoo gift shop during spring break. Being triplets they are quite bonded to each other, to the point you feel excluded. The inside of your ship constantly smells like eucalyptus which is actually not that bad. 

After the unfortunate crash, you lob one of them at the Giant Worm to distract it with an hors d'oeuvre, at which point the remaining two siblings immediately enact Koala Revenge and kill you. They will go on to become immortal gods on this new planet because the force of their Broken Triplet Grief will form a new baby sun. 1/10.

BLUSHY RABBIT

My God His Eyes… they are so perfect that your ship doesn’t crash. Over you guys’ first dinner in the alien forest, you become hypnotized by them and fall into a bear trap. 1000000/10.

BLUSHY RABBIT’S MOM, REGULAR RABBIT

I got her on a lark in a giant thrift store in Osaka. I am 80% sure she is a Sylvanian toy. She has joined your ship on a mission to go bring her son back from the alien forest, where he is totally fine, she just misses him.

You crash next to her son’s ship, which, when you both stumble out in your space suits, you re-confirm is totally fine, not crashed or anything… : / When you encounter her rogue son while fighting the Worm, she’s so happy she begins trying to make small talk with the Worm, and it slithers back from whence it came. Her son readily agrees to come home, and confesses he didn’t come back earlier because 1) you can’t set bear traps back home like you can over here and 2) he forgot how to steer the ship.

The son is fine. You are fine. Regular Rabbit is fine. That’s everyone accounted for.

Nothing bad happened! Huzzah! 5/10.

SIKA DEER 

I got her in a gift shop on Miyajima Island, where tourists like to visit because of its iconic torii gate built in the sea, and the deer roaming freely in the streets. She is an excellent botanist because she loves food, hence why she is assigned as your partner on the journey to the new planet. The ship controls have been modified to be steerable by a Determined Deer Using Her Nose. 

Post-crash, you both run, and narrowly escape the Worm. The ship is a smoking wreck. All your food is gone. She’s sniffed out some berries for you guys to snack on. She’s a 10/10 survival partner, you realize… when you EAT HER!! 

And then immediately die because the Koala Triplets have sensed your transgression, using their God Senses from a galaxy away. They were just waiting for (the reincarnation of) you to mess up again.

BLACK CAT 

I got him from a merch shop in Osaka. This guy is the son of a black hole, your command center warns you. His dad is a big attention-seeker. Center of the universe type. It’s why he’s so sad and traumatized-looking.

It’s also how he got into the planetary exploration program. NEPO BABY ALERT!!

You both barely survive the Worm. You’re bleeding out of your arm and refusing to let him lick it better. You hate that he keeps trying to endear himself to you. Or maybe he’s just being a cat.

In an effort to wound him, you lash out. You say, Your eyes aren’t holes. Not like mine. You never qualified for the program. 

He looks at you with the wisdom and pity of a thousand years. Then he says, What do you think pupils are, dude?

8/10!

A parting song from the Editors…

sparrow waltz - Enzo Corne

That’s it! That’s all we got! If you liked our stuff a HOLE lot, share us with a friend! As we build up the referral program, sharing will get you exclusive recs, cool merch, more Weird Content, and above all, access to the WYRMHOLE Discord server— with 10x fresh Holesome vibes.

Coming up on the Premium, Patron-only issue: Sara’s personal story recommendations (x6,) an (even more) open talk about the workings of the magazine, extra memes, and a personal meditation/essay on the ways writers can conceive of themselves, their craft, and their careers.

All the warm wishes, wyrms. We’ll see you next month :)