Murky Depths #2

It should be noted before reviewing an issue of Murky Depths that the presentation is different from most other print magazines. Even the short fiction is heavily infused with moody, graphic novel stylings. From the author and illustrator biography boxes to spikes of graphic strips between some of the stories, Murky Depths is much more visual even than magazines that traditionally illustrate each story.

“Duchess Street” by Kurt Kirchmeier is the first fiction piece in the second issue of Murky Depths. A dark ghost tale told from the point of view of Jennifer, a streetwalker who was killed by her pimp and now seems set to witness another streetwalker’s death. But this time, she’s more empowered to help the victim—in a way that breaks from the ghostly tradition and yet also comments upon it. “Duchess Street” is a human story at its core and a dark one that sets the mood for the rest of the issue.

Oversimplifying world politics by creating a history that divides the Earth into the United States-run Americas versus the China-ruled East, “With a Whimper, With a Bang” by D.M. Moehrle plays on the bitter, leftover feelings of the passive-aggressive Cold War. The prefect of the last American colony on Mars gives unmistakable orders to detain the occupants of the last Chinese ship to leave Earth before it was destroyed. Despite the nonexistence of their feuding root countries, the political game lives on, played by a mind that cares nothing for either side, and spawning events that will truly lead humanity to its ruin. This creepy and purposefully unbalanced tale is perfect for conspiracy theorists and those who watch the news every day with thoughts of final conflicts floating through their minds.

“Super-Size Security” by A.R. Yngve is a fast and dirty tale of a future where jail time is passive, greasy, and deadly. Morton only has to do a year, but his first few moments inside are a leaden realization of a worse fate than jail time—a forced pattern of behavior that makes the jailer’s jobs easy and reveals criminals as the pigs they are. A rather one-sided and extreme take, nonetheless sinister and amusing.

Jason Sizemore’s “Yellow Warbler” slips back into more recognizable science fiction, though the opening is deceptively peaceful. After a prayer and a moment of reflection, Preacher Jeremiah of a hidden Appalachian town encounters John, a “gray” alien who has come to one of the last human towns to study them and to worship with them. But the true leaders of the town claim the grays are cruel captors of the humans outside their secret haven, and in a brutal display of closed mindedness, they resolve to repay John for the crimes of his species. Sizemore goes for the throat in the end, taking an already horrific tale and giving it one last shove into the bitter darkness.

Postapocalyptic and baring the darker side of humanity, “Bernadette and the Sirens” by Hannah Davey is about girls who dance in the pain-filled storm hovering on the edge of town as a tribute to the dying sun and the soon-to-be dead race called humanity. Among them is a girl named Bernadette, who dances with a red ribbon and with a passion and knowledge beyond that of the others, who brings the truth of the sirens, those who warn the town of the storm’s approach, to light. Ethereal, horrific, and fantastic at the same time, Davey’s tale is a peak of this issue.

Katherine Patterson’s “The Litter” is about an old woman out in the country raising something very wrong in her shed. While Patterson changes the formula a bit by exchanging what exactly her “litter” is, readers can easily guess from the beginning that all is not as it seems and that the innocent family coming to pick a pet is doomed.

“Venus and the Birth of Zephyrus” by Sarah Wagner is a short, strange, almost love story between a human and a machine who exists as a monitor, an “eye in the sky,” of its sector of the city. Told from the point of view of the machine, it brings up interesting questions of how human use or misuse of technology would make a more sentient machine feel.

“Hair of the Dog” by Edward Morris examines the desolation of street life, spiced with a bit of werewolf. Mari is one of many folk living on the street and smoking herself into oblivion—a better alternative, in her mind, to the life of abuse she left behind. Something waits to prey on those who have been on the streets too long, those who don’t find shelter. In this world, the foul stench of burning crack and body odor and the chemical change of perpetual drinking might hide you for a while, but not forever. Dark and hopeless, definitely, this story, however, lacks a spark as the characters are already past hope and walk tamely to their fate, rather than trying to escape. It makes its point—that the world is apathetic at best toward the homeless—but fails to make their plight one to sympathize with.

Formatted outside of the normal short template, “Phantom Payment” by Willie Meikle is one of the best offerings of this issue. A tale of a strange haunting, the Northern Allied Bank System starts to malfunction, in small ways at first, until finally it starts making massive errors in favor of one handpicked customer. The aspect that sets this story apart from the masses of ghost-flavored tales is that the haunted computer network is the most solidly fleshed out character.

The last story of this issue is “Poppets” by Mike Driver. Meshing well with “Hair of the Dog,” “Poppets” tells of a man, Hubert, living in a horrendous neighborhood filled with child drug dealers, creepy kids, and leeches of the human psyche. Readers are introduced to the scum of the neighborhood as Hubert walks home and witness him questioning God: How could He abandon the people of the neighborhood? Vowing to turn away from a god who has turned away from them, Hubert takes measures to clean the filth from his area streets himself. “Poppets” goes back and forth between blaming God and trying to hold onto a desperate faith and suffers from some head hopping in its final throes. But it comes together for an effective end, leaving readers with the hope that even small victories can still count as effective wins.