She said she wanted me to meet her parents up in Squamish the week after I came back and that if I wanted to die it would be okay, but only after I meet her parents. So we drove…
“The 2024 election will be all about Taiwan,” our boyfriend, Jeremy, says. We’ve turned off all the lights except the one over the stove in the attached kitchen, and now we’re getting high on the plaid sofa in the…
Content Warnings—ableism, audism We corner our resident assistant right outside her dorm room. Her back presses flat against the door. Her hands come up. She is ready to escape, but she is also ready to give a reason. I…
In The Witch Hare, a witch’s familiar—a curious young hare—goes on a globe-hopping journey to help her sad companion learn to live life to the fullest again. As the hare ventures out to seek adventure, she shows the witch…
In Hollows, Tommy Dean’s first full-length flash fiction collection, the narrative lens captures everyday humans at a pivotal moment, where one decision will change everything. Three boys enter the woods carrying a gun. A divorced teacher borrows money from…
We had gone to bed late, on usual terms: “Let’s just talk about this in the morning.” That night we did what we called “No Touch Sleep,” a nickname for exactly what it sounds like, lying next to each…
By Lee Upton • Probably like many writers I’m protective toward my characters—even though I put them in impossible situations or give them unfulfillable longings. I pretty much pickle them in vulnerability. Sometimes I let them avoid any action…
1997 James James steadied the table as Augie reached into the hazy air to disarm the smoke detector. The hem of Augie’s new sweatshirt lifted away from his stomach, and James glimpsed his hip bones, the bumps of his…
7. And They Lived Happily Ever After Every day, her father begins with the end. He draws out their meetings like he is Scheherazade, and Death the king. It’s so transparent, but June simply holds her iPhone out. Recording.…
At the time, she was Xandra. The decapitated torso of Alexandra. Her given name was Mary, but do you see Marys anywhere but behind the fluorescent Market Basket checkout, looking depressed and forty? September, seventh grade, the Latin teacher…
I set out to write a magical story about Slenderman, and then I turned Slenderman into a wolf, and somehow the story ended with no Slenderman, barely any wolves, and no magic. I begin most my failed stories with the earnest hope they will become absurdist and magical and good. Most of them are the former, but never the latter. I want to write magical stories the way my middle school self wanted to find a gilded pendent in the forest. Despite the generalized nomenclature, I think a lot of “wolf girls” and “horse girls” are all seeking a sort of supreme individualism that comes with being a main character. Certainly, middle school me is guilty of this. Like the characters, I spent a good amount of sixth grade recess weaving a “wolf brothers” story with the only friend I had. Most of these scribbles are lost to the wheel of time, so it remains in my memory an epic that could rival Christopher Paolini’s Eragon. But either way the die had been cast: I wanted to be a writer. And what better way to immortalize my wolf brothers past with a cool bit of magical wolf fiction?
So, in the first draft the girls run all the way to Alaska, summon Slender-wolfman and end up dueling or something—it got messy. In the next iteration, Maeve dies and comes back as Xandra’s dog when she’s a recent college graduate. In another draft they fend off a hermit. Eventually I toned it all down, but at the very end, their wild suffering is rewarded by the sight of a huge black wolf atop a vista… but somehow, even a somber yet wise wolf didn’t feel narratively satisfying. I knew something had to happen in those woods, something that would make them not come back the same. Eventually I realized that besides the very dramatic, the worst outcome for two girls looking for a storied adventure is nothing at all. And so, we were left with no magic and no wolves, but our characters confronting that the world is what you see.
I hear a lot that writing is an escape—it was in middle school and it’s certainly an escape now. And in middle school, my wolf epic was certainly an escape from the mundane. But especially after grad school, writing became less of an escape (I mean, ideally it’s a career at this point) and more of a confrontation. This confrontation really crystalized when I moved across the country during the pandemic to help sell my childhood home, to sort (and burn) relics of my wolf girl stage. Why was middle school so particularly awful? Why were all my female friendships, but especially this middle school friendship, so weirdly charged? Why did I stop talking to my friend from sixth grade? And now, looking back on this story, I have to add one more to the list—why do I want my fiction to be magical?
ALLIE DOKUS is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Before that, she was a Sandwich Artist at Subway. Now she lives in Massachusetts and is working on a novel inspired by Dance Moms.
