Lately I have been really enjoying stories with unreliable narrators.  Movies, tv shows, books, all my media consumption has had me questioning the validity of the narrators’ truths.  I like the mystery and the back and forth questioning of if I have all the information, or if that information is completely factual.  And I like liars.  I also like the kind of stories that prompt me to have a second or even third look to see if I have missed a clue or insight the character planted.  Leave me questioning still?  Love it even more.

This edition’s selections have a variety of narrators who can be considered unreliable.  In “God is Sleeping in the Attic,” BC Brock spins a tale every parent understands. Don’t want your child to go into the attic?  Tell them God is napping up there.  I once convinced my own child that the cat slept in the sun because he needed a solar charge and we needed to leave him alone.  Is the mother telling the truth?  Brock evokes all the best of magic realism and Southern gothic into the voice of a child and the possibility that Mother might be telling the truth afterall.

Religious undertones continue to take center stage in Jo Saleska’s “Grounded.”  Here, the story of Adam and Eve takes on more life.  Eve seemingly wants a grand gesture and Adam is more than willing to prove himself to her, but might Eve have something entirely different in mind?  Saleska’s imagery is striking and the ease at which we find new insight in familiar characters is refreshing.

Second person point of view is hard to do well. Nora Wagner utilizes it masterfully in “How to Come Out to Your Mom” and makes it seem effortless.  As the title suggests, you are divulging important news to your mother at Thanksgiving as Wagner guides you with humor, sincerity, and vulnerability.  Wagner’s story flows so well that you do indeed believe this is exactly how you would come out.

Lastly, “In the Murmuring Dust” by Garrett Milligan is so delicious that you do not want it to end.  The kind of story you can return to again and again, “Murmuring” is musical and dreamlike.  It spans years in moments and invites you to read again and again. 

Elizabeth De Arcos 
Flash Fiction Editor