They Published Me in "Weird Lit Magazine" and You Should Go Read It!
My short story, "It's Not His Place to Scream," made the cut for their second issue.
Check out this short piece I wrote for Weird Lit Magazine, a literary magazine specializing in odd tales.
The story is called “It’s Not His Place to Scream.”
What’s the endgame of modern therapy culture? The class divide? The future of tuna steak? I’m not claiming to have answers, but I AM claiming it will be kind of funny.
I’ve posted the first few paragraphs below. Please check it out, and stick around for some of the other weird stories as well.
It’s Not His Place to Scream
Before we start, it should be noted that Carlo Acevedo isn’t the kind of guy who goes around blaming yellowfin tuna for his problems. He’s pretty much like the rest of us, in that tuna rarely has anything to do with the happenings in his life, good or bad. Tonight, however, tuna will make him want to rend his shirt and maybe a pant leg or two. He’ll want to scream. But he must not scream. It’s not his place to scream.
Gertrude Price, on the other hand, is the kind of screamer you can’t train. It’s just raw, natural talent. That’s what her NeuroShrink 3200 therapeutic cerebral implant tells her.
“You just have to let it out, girl,” the implant says in a soothing voice that adjusts to match whatever pop star, influencer, or self-help guru is most popular at any given moment. “Good screams, good dreams.”
Right now, it’s more accurate to say Gertrude is sobbing with great force and volume but rest assured the true screaming will come later. Tears pour off the angles of her perfect, sculpted face, and her cheeks flush red beneath streaks of running mascara.
“I can’t even with this fucking fish right now,” she says between gulps of air, slamming her open palms onto the table, rattling the silverware. “I don’t even want to look at it.”
Beneath Gertrude’s loathsome stare lies the culprit, a thick cut of Fijian yellowfin tuna steak, wrapped in a black sesame crust next to a neat pile of whipped purple potatoes. It’s the pride of Salted Sea, the restaurant where Carlo works as a server, and it’s not nearly pink enough in the center. This is Carlo’s fault. He meant to place the order with a “medium rare” label but accidentally selected “medium” in the restaurant’s finicky order ticketing system. To the untrained eye, the tuna steak would seem perfectly edible—delectable even. Back in the 2020s people ate overcooked tuna like this all the time, such was the abundance of seafood, but these days you’re lucky if your tuna is made from a substance that’s even seen a body of water, much less the real thing. You’d think this scarcity would lower standards but then you haven’t met the Price family. Carlo certainly wishes he hadn’t.