Fletcher Fox

“parasitoid paranoia” by Fletcher Fox

Every story starts with a birth. Or maybe every birth begins a story, the writing of a life, and sometimes the writing of a death at the same time. Parasitoids do just that - they rewrite the story of a beetle's life to instead birth a fly from said beetle's pupae. They rewrite the story of a spider's molt to instead birth a parasitic wasp in Costa Rica. Parasitoids eat their host from the inside out, and until recently, the only reason they haven't inspired more horror stories was that human beings were never victims of their destruction.&n...

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“the middle mermaid” by Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #277

Look, when your father's King Triton, you have little say in your life. You performed for the fishes, pretended you don't eat half of them whenever you're not on display, dealt with the brunt of Dad's rage towards Ariel until the disfavored daughter finally deigned to appear, then swim off with your sisters to gossip about Pisces' new fin-building routine and whether eating snails truly did make your skin clearer. You've always been a side character, fourth-born of seven, and at first, Ariel's drama remains just that, drama. You were angry w...

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“write like you're running out of time” by Fletcher Fox

He needed to invent a plot, a story, a character, somehow words continued to spill onto the page but none of them succeeded in creating what the author actually needed to write - a short story of one thousand to three thousand words addressing one of five prompts. One prompt stuck out as one he could use to create a sort of metafiction: Write a story about someone who’s running out of time. After all, the actual prompts he had wanted to address, someone being haunted or the perspective of a corpse, took time he didn't feel he had to wr...

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“love is dangerous” by Fletcher Fox

“I don’t fall in love. I don’t want to be loved or love someone else.” “Why?”  “Love is dangerous. When someone loves you, they can hurt you in far worse ways than if nobody loves you. If nobody loves you, you have a safety net of solitude.” “Poetic wording, bud. We both know you love me, I’ve seen how you look at me!” Cal had thought saying that might result in Margalit initiating a kiss, or at the very least snap her out of her denial. He hadn’t expected her breath to hitch as she began pleading. “No, no, please, no, I don’t.” “Margal...

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“Diary of a vampire” by Fletcher Fox

Dear Diary, Dr Williams suggested that I keep a journal of sorts… not sure how much it will actually help this feeling of physical emptiness. I guess here it goes though. I throw up every night after eating my favorite garlic cheesy bread… it’s not on purpose so it’s not bulimia. The doctor seems to think I should cut out dairy but I could never do that to my cheesy bread. Maybe I’ll try to make my own. Dear Diary, I tried making my own garlic cheesy bread. I threw that up too. However, whenever I make a grilled cheese, I don’t have a proble...

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“ghost haunts self” by Fletcher Fox

When I was younger I used to daydream about my funeral. I thought most angsty teenagers did that at some point, and I have no way of knowing if I'm right. After all, I didn't believe I'd actually be around to witness it, so anything I imagined would just be that: imaginary. Death was supposed to be the finish line, when my body finally got to release the energy stored within it as gas, when the symbiotic bacteria would finally be able to feast unfettered by the musculoskeletal constraints of the living organism. That happened, but my spirit ...

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“Unforeseen connection” by Fletcher Fox

TW DISCUSSED TRANSPHOBIC HATE CRIME "Have we met before?" "I don't... think so?" Uncertainty permeated the way the sentence was said, a lack of knowledge that seemed to differ from the way the original question was asked. "I'm recovering from a traumatic brain injury, so my memory isn't - if we met in the past three months, I wouldn't remember." "Oh. Shit. Sorry, you just looked like someone I knew in high school, and I've just moved home after graduating university, and was really hoping someone my age had come back, but... I'm sorry you're...

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“The extinction of a kitchen colony” by Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #270

A trail of pheromones was left by the scouts to lead fellow colony members down the trail to the nourishment the one scout had discovered. The ant colony lived in the kitchen, specifically in the damp wooden cabinet below the sink. The false sun was still not yet overhead when the scout left the trail. Other workers soon followed it, the corpses of cockroaches (unknowingly poisoned by the giant beings that lit the false sun) being surrounded and consumed by worker ants, who had gathered after having followed the scout-created trail.  Th...

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“Magic magnifying glass” by Fletcher Fox

An ordinary object that becomes magical first has to be an ordinary object, one that is regularly used, that can be considered an ordinary part of someone’s day. The magnifying glass was, for Alexander, an ordinary object. After all, he was an unemployed aspiring entomologist - what else did he have to do besides take his magnifying glass and his sketchbook or his phone outside with him to observe insects? (Realistically, he had plenty he should have been doing, like applying for jobs to make him not unemployed, but Alexander didn’t make res...

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“Objects in mirror may be further back in time than they appear” by Fletcher Fox

When I was thirteen years old, I bought a typewriter. I thought, at the time, that even though computers existed (they actually were the object I had used to buy the typewriter), that since the historical authors I admired wrote on typewriters, writing on a typewriter would make me more like them.  I would return home from school every day, no matter how long my day had been, if I had stayed late for play rehearsal during my short stint as a theater kid or gotten off the bus with the rest of the afternoon free, and I would type up a poe...

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“You’re only a reflection of the author” by Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #266

Being a fictional character has some challenges. Not nearly as many challenges as being a living breathing human being who uses the bathroom (no, luckily most fiction fails to include that bodily function unless it’s relevant to the narrative), but some challenges. Sometimes your name will be changed, or even if you’re written as a ‘you’ or in the third person, or even your entire character can be rewritten, trading a motivation that once ruled your every action for a more general goal or simpler emotion, or, more often, the change occurs th...

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“baby bro doesn't get a say” by Fletcher Fox

Alex was wasting his time, but he had nothing better to do than spend the day hiking through the woods, observing spiders in leaf rolls and moths trying to appear like dead leaves. After all, the job he had last interviewed for wouldn’t be contacting him until September. In late August, the weather was perfect for swarming ants on nuptial flights, and indeed Alex had seen some landing on herbaceous plants in the woods he was walking through.As he crouched down to get a closer look at a cluster of ants, Alex felt a rare moment of peace. The a...

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“Friends don't learn family secrets unless you spill them” by Fletcher Fox

There’s a certain level of mystery that’s inherent to college friendships - unlike high school, you’re not returning home nightly to face whatever family drama you live with. Which means that whatever you left home to escape from, your new friends aren't aware of. They learn to like whoever you are, independent from your family of origin. People defined themselves by what they studied or what dorm they lived in. So when Phoenix noticed Eli had been behaving weirdly after break, Phoenix had no way of knowing what exactly his friend had dealt ...

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“Alone and unwashed” by Fletcher Fox

TW SEXUAL ASSAULT, TRANSPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIC SLURS, MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES INCLUDING NEGLECTING HYGIENE “Is nobody going to say it?” Indeed, nobody was. Michael was alone, which ought to have meant he was safe from questions like this, but his mind still formulated them, still thinking back to the time when he wasn’t. When he both wasn’t alone and wasn’t safe from questions, the time not that long ago when Michael was once all too aware of what was said.  All Michael could do was focus on the words instead of the tangible sensations, the ...

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“it's exhausting to be this angry all of the time” by Fletcher Fox

TW INCESTUOUS SEXUAL ABUSE, MENTIONED SEXUAL ABUSE OF A CHILD, ABLEISM, DISSOCIATION, AND IMPLIED SUICIDAL IDEATION “At least he cares about you.” Dad said, in response to hearing that your brother asked you if you wanted a boyfriend or a girlfriend, if you planned on having kids. “He wants a relationship with you. That's good.” You changed the subject. You always did, when he was the subject. Everything’s easier when you pretend you’re normal. Your parents find it easier to pretend your family's something resembling normal - after all, th...

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