What’s in the Hole?

Welcome back to school, class! I hope you’ve all had a fun and restful summer break full of childhood whimsy. I also hope you got a head start on those book reports (due on my desk next Wednesday, two pages, Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced. Gold star sticker goes to the most maddeningly existential). I’d love for everyone to go around the room and introduce yourselves to your new classmates! Please share your name, what you did this summer, your most vulnerable fear, the thoughts that keep you up at night, and your favorite ice cream if you can think of one. Sorbet counts.

I’m H.H. Pak and I’ll be your homeroom teacher this lovely September. All you lucky little wyrms get to meet with me today, and you all-star wyrms on our premium list will get to see me again on the 15th! Make sure to talk to your parents if you’d like to get signed up before then. Next month you will get a brand new shiny homeroom teacher in Tia Tashiro, also known as your intrepid riddle master. Good luck to the brainiacs who can solve the doozy she’s written for this month! 

To kick off our first day together, why don’t we all gather on the carpet for storytime. That’s right, criss cross applesauce everyone. We will be diving into “Sharp Undoing” by Natasha King. Before we begin, who here can define “body snatching,” for us? Very good Timmy, it is a science fiction horror trope that’s been culturally present since the 1950s and popularized by the psychological miasma of the Western societal response to McCarthyism. And yes Suzie, it is also the centuries-old practice of stealing corpses, particularly maintained by medical students in need of cadavers for anatomy dissections. Gold stars to you both! 

Body snatching is very much a driving element of “Sharp Undoing,” but what makes it such a poignant tale? Is it commentary on fear of the other? Is it a criticism of the moral desecrations made in the name of satisfying scientific curiosity? Is it perhaps both, melded into an emotionally resonant tale of empowerment, of the blur between self and other, of familial trauma, of selfishness and survival and the human desperation to be known, seen and loved? 

Well get comfortable little wyrms, and we’ll find out together.

One more interruption before we begin. As you’ll see on our bulletin board, we have a few new announcements for this month! Our Wyrmhole Kickstarter is off to the races so to speak, with all new perks and goodies for our intrepid backers! Consider checking over the poll below to vote for what rewards you’d like as we build preparations for opening our original fiction submissions. On that note, all merch bundles have been mailed out. If you’d like a curated packet of exclusive Wyrmhole merchandise with intermittent monthly surprises mailed to your door, then make sure to ask your parents to sign you up to our Superior Wyrm tier. And of course, if homeroom isn’t enough for you and you’d like to get to know how the sausage gets made in our teacher’s lounge— then head over to our Patreon and join our Discord! We’d love to have a discussion about your academic futures. I will also be collecting permission slips for the Trip to the Void today. Be sure to go over the disclaimers carefully— little wyrms with a medical history of vertigo, asthma, seasonal depression, a propensity for dilly dallying, overactive nostalgia, a crippling fear of the unknown, or apple allergies need a signed doctor’s note to attend. 

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

H.H. Pak / September 2024 Editor in Chief / Los Angeles, USA

Story of the Month

Sharp Undoing

By: Natasha King; Reprinted from Clarkesworld, 2023.

Sure enough we could not outrun the hoverbikes. Understandable—yes? Yes. We were a new thing, a sharp thing; not a fast thing. So we stood and panted, and the bikes idled a few handsbreadths above the rain-slick tarmac.

The Nero’s men fanned out before us. We said, “Boys!” and also, “Let’s not do anything hasty,” and also, “Always be closing!” No reaction from these little vessels of intent, their faces obscured in the shadow thrown by the weed-choked overpass where they had cut us off.

We’d made it, oh, perhaps two miles. Sprinting south, pursued. A body wants to go north; sometimes circumstances intervene.

If one of them tried to slot us, we could take the upper hand—but they carried weapons, not slot apparatus. Read the room, the network executive used to say.

We could try to fight. Frail as this body was, we had previously been several murderers—yes? Yes. All their learned violences still there, in the root-reflex and the synapse-array of us. The kid, even well into his teens, used to cry when someone stepped on a beetle—but we were so much more now.

Over the sound of the rain, though, we heard one of the men snap, “Bring her alive.” So that was alright. They would not kill us; they would bring us back north, to the heart of downtown, to the Nero. Perfect. A body sees an opportunity and says: yes.

The Nero’s men closed in on us as we raised our hands in surrender. After the chase they were too impatient for courtesies. Read the room, ha. Our body’s nose was broken by the time they dragged us back to their headquarters; we could taste the wet slide of blood in the back of the throat.

Our throat—yes? Check the trachea—the glossopharyngeal nerve—yes. Ours. A mind forgets to read its own room, ha.

 Read more.

Recs & Reviews

Pak recs…

• Cicadas, and Their Skins

  Avra Margariti, Strange Horizons. 2024. 5.3k words.

  In a style of prose evoking haunting poetry, this story explores a visceral craving for freedom as children from a sheltered Greek village learn what it is to redefine themselves… to steal wild form… to shed bodies like it is to shed fear or grief or rage in the stillness of a summer afternoon.

Sara recs…

• Lakeboys

  Sean Chua, Baffling Magazine. 2022. 450 words.

  Sweet sensual boys from water landscapes scurry to the interstice like RATS!

Tia recs…

• Guidelines for Using the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library

  Marie Brennan, Lightspeed. 2023. 900 words.

  For the girlies who like a good liminal space: check out this neat little tale for hauntings, the uncanny, and about a gazillion book references that had me smiling. Bonus fact: the library in question is in fact real, though the veracity of the story is still up for debate.

Tina recs…

• The Venus Effect

  Violet Allen, Lightspeed. 2016. 9.3k words.

  A rooftop party goes wrong, a basketball game against a team from beyond Pluto goes wrong, a party in 1995 goes wrong, many other things go wrong, and Apollo Robbins is at the center of it all. To say more is a spoiler, but this story blew my mind the first time I read it. Definitely read the Wikipedia article on the Venus Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_effect) before checking this one out!

Carolyn recs…

• Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters

  Alice Sola Kim, Lightspeed. 2010. 3.1k words.

  A punchy, non linear meta narrative on the eponymous billion, brilliant descendants of Hwang. Read this for a meditation on eternal life, “what is sleep for a single cell?” — my biology background says SENESCENCE but Alice Sola Kim says otherwise, and all the billion brilliant metaphors you could possibly want in one story.

Arula recs…

• Airbody

  Sameem Siddiqui, Clarkesworld. 2020. 5k words.

  What would it be like if you could temporarily rent your body to other people’s consciousness using a gig economy app? No need to fly long distances for meetings, just use AirBody instead! The story offers an unforgettable exploration of its premise (the mouthwatering descriptions of food will certainly stick with you!) and a reminder that we as humans all live interesting stories and there’s more to each of us than one might initially assume.

Iz recs…

• Crispin’s Model

  Max Gladstone, Reactor. 2017. 7.9k words.

  This is a story about an artist’s model. The thing that sells me on this story is the atmosphere and also the fact that I wish I had written it.

The Best of July Cover Art

Good Moomin of the Month

WILDCARD

To Step Into the Mind of a Child

by H.H. Pak

What is cringe but to be free? And what is freedom if not the ability to define oneself? To explore the essence of one’s humanity? To, perhaps, explore other people’s humanity by supernaturally stealing their identities, seeing the world through their ophthalmic organs, and walking in their literal shoes? In the spirit of “Sharp Undoing,” here is a rating of body-swap eligibility among the characters I created in my childhood, a time primarily spent doing normal kid things like washing the spice off my kimchi and smashing rocks on the sidewalk to look for precious ores (we all yearn for the mines). The characters I summoned in companionship during these sunshiny days lived rich, fulfilling lives until I got bored and never thought about them again. Today, I stir the bottom of the pot and dredge them up from the Void once more. 

Age 6: Noona the Magical Ballerina 

21/10

The protagonist of my debut work titled, “The Ballerina Who Wished to Be Something.” Please appreciate her ethereally beautiful face. She’s a magical ballerina who makes a deal with an evil fairy who is secretly Tinker Bell. What are the consequences of the deal? Evil. What does she get from it? Well her best friends are twin mermaid princesses and she loves them so much she gives up her ballerina dreams to turn into a mermaid for them. Their dad is a sucky tyrant king so she single handedly stages a coup. Her story ended when I added a gratuitous Male Love Interest and immediately lost interest. I never forgot her. She rose from a garden of raw six year old yearning I left long before I realized it was too late. She is the reason why I became a writer. She is the person I always wanted to be, and the person I still hope to become. 

Age 8: Mantis Frog

5/10

Mantis Frog belongs to Spring Girl who is the sister of Lava Boy, the Dark Overlord of the Volcanoes. Together Spring Girl and Lava Boy alternatively destroy and recreate the world but that doesn’t matter to Mantis Frog’s reality. Mantis Frog eats only the finest handpicked flies and spiders. Mantis Frog wears cool sneakers. Mantis Frog is very loved and lives in an underground tropical paradise warmed by the Earth’s magma rivers. Unfortunately, Mantis Frog is a mantis with the head of a frog which seems just inconvenient enough of an anatomical existence to knock off five points.

Age 10: Warea of the Planet Zatura

-12/10

Warea is a member of Team Star Wolf, a group of four (eight, including the wolves) depressed codependent aliens and I don’t want to be any of them. Their home planet suffers a mass genocide by an evil shadow organization that drains their solar system’s star for capitalist gain. The vibes are also rancid in their spaceship because of a complicated four-way emotionally-manipulative romantic B-plot. The only physical remainder of their original planet is some leaf detritus I taped in from my backyard. On the plus side, she has cool water powers and a kicking outfit. She’s a marine biologist. Bottom line for her story is that the universe is unkind to the fashionable and intellectually curious. Plus I never drew what she looks like without her mask and I’m only 10% sure she has a nose.

Age 12: Inkmaster

7/10

Love the paintbrush hair. Confident pose, daredevil attitude, but that waistline is a medical crime. I don’t think she has functioning organs, otherwise she’d be a 10. 

I created her on the floor of my childhood bedroom next to a friend who I lost contact with but never finished loving. I broke out my nice colored pencils and we spent all night challenging each other to create weird art. I made up a backstory in five minutes and made her laugh. I remember our arms— waving to mime the flow of action as we both saw exactly how this character would somersault through the air, skating on her magic paintbrush as she smothered her enemies in ink. We wanted to write a comic book together. Instead, we ate too many Oreos and fell asleep while watching cartoons.

Age 14: Pauline the Sentient Viola

9/10

This was a time of figuring out that I was no longer the person I thought I was. A Not-Child in the letting-popsicles-drip-on-my-shirt, it’s-okay-to-scrape-your-knees, it’s-okay-to-inhale-the-world-and-let-it-pass-through-your-lungs, it’s-okay-to-get-third-place-in-the-beep-test, what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up kind of way. I was becoming something else and I didn’t know what that something else was, so I created characters I wanted to be without knowing what I wanted to be. 

That’s why I gajinka-fied my viola. Meet Pauline. Her bow is her sword and she defends the Piano Castle with her bumbling sidekick Tom the Trumpet. They fight Silence Goblins. She seems cool, but her scroll bangs were too hard to draw so I’m knocking off a point. 

Age 16: Unnamed Hot Elf

2/10

Unnamed Hot Elf is from an Unnamed Fantasy Land under threat from Unnamed Evils attacking his/her/their kingdom. He/she/they have Tragic Backstory and perhaps Sexy Love Interest plus Magic Power. My sketchbooks were full of this guy. Who even is this? Occupying this unfortunate tabula rasa would just be Me in a Hot Elf in a Void. That’s just me with ears taller than my forehead. No thanks.

A parting song from the Editors…

Wires Crossed - Dom Fera

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: A delve into H.H. Pak’s spec fic recommendations (x6), behind the scenes on the design process behind the magazine, and an artsy fartsy reflection on writing as a visual medium.

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