As you might have noticed, I’m migrating from Substack to Beehiiv. There’s one main reason for that, which is mostly tied to how Substack benefits from hosting N*zi newsletters in its platform. I'm aware about it for a while now and I don't condemn people who need to use it for the most varied reasons. I know some people literally need it to work and to make ends meet, as we do need several other problematic platforms like Amazon or Meta. But while we still have options (i.e, while Substack, or some other company, doesn't employ chokepoint tactics), I decided to migrate to Beehiiv and to hope they're more decent than Substack over time.
What does this mean to you?
My previous posts (including Into the Hyperspace interviews) are going to gradually be loaded here. Beehiiv's automatic tool didn't work for me, so I'm migrating them one by one. When they're all here, I’ll post them at once and they’ll be accessible. Meanwhile, my Substack will remain active.
You might find glitches and weird things on the screen, particularly in old posts that came from Substack.
Hopefully, nothing else. I want this transition to go as smooth as possible and you'll keep receiving these posts in your email as usual.
The Future Imagined in Albert Robida’s La vie électrique (1890) - A nice image of how people in the XIX century envisioned the future. Looks nicer than what we have now.
I intend to come back with new Hyperspace interviews soon! (Hopefully next Friday). While I don't, I decided to republish a flash piece of mine that was originally published in Daily Science Fiction (RIP) back in 2022 and it's currently unavailable anywhere else.
In other news, I have a new story out in Trollbreath Magazine #8, which is now free to read. Prayskin is about a woman with a terracotta body. She lends the surface of her body for the people’s prayers for years, but now it’s her time to ask something for the Goddess. It’s a tale about love, war, and the ways we give ourselves to others.
My piece Gravefisher is also out in Of Dread, Decay, and Doom, a horror anthology by Stars & Sabers. It’s a horror/dark fantasy piece about addiction and carving your way back to life. It’s a very important piece for me because it was one of the first I wrote in English, now more than 10 years ago, completely reworked and having passed through several versions throughout the years.
And if you’re up for a novelette, my piece about superheroes in an elderly care facility was published earlier in the year at Giganotosaurus!
The Small Shop of Me
Olaf sold his left eye. He unplugged it from its socket and laid it over the counter. It fizzled for a second, staring at the buyer with a dead gleam.
The buyer, a blind man in his eighties, scanned his thumb on the pay-reader and respectfully bowed his head. Olaf dropped the eye into his hand like a coin. The buyer plugged it and left the shop with a smile, stick under the arm.
The shopkeepers buzz receded and the stench of compacted trash filled the air. Time to close the shop and go to the drugstore.
“I want the usual stuff,” Olaf told Brenno, the pharmacist, pressing his thumb on the pay-reader.
“What happened with the eye, Olaf?” They’d been neighbors, shared beers and bed, but Olaf got distanced from him as he did from most of his friends since his brother got sick.
“Business diversification.”
“You should take care.” Brenno said, giving him the packed serum, breathing off cigar and unresolved issues. He didn’t tell Brenno his shop was empty with nothing else to sell but himself.
Olaf grabbed the pack and left for the hospital. Which is brighter than the shops alleyway but, instead of noodles and fries, it smells of antiseptic farewells.
He entered his brother’s bedroom, smiling and leaving the serum over the bedside table, where a nurse had left a lonely, withering sunflower.
“You sold your eye.” Alon accused him, eyes brimming with tears, arms, legs, and face paralyzed from severe bio-grafting refusal. “You shouldn’t do that.”
Olaf didn’t say anything, but, yes, he should.
#
Olaf sold his left arm. It was for a boy who wanted a third one.
“It’s for volleyball,” the kid told him, paying for it.
Olaf uncoupled the arm and gaped at his family’s tattoo, cartooned versions of him, Alon, and their dead fathers. He tattooed it to honor his fathers months before the world started grafting everyone to contain the Fleshly Plague.
“Any problem, sir?” the boy asked.
Olaf shook his memories away. It should’ve been his right arm but he was right-handed.
“Hope you like tattoos, boy.”
#
It was Buying Friday Fest. Olaf sold his right foot, his left kidney, and his ears. He sold four of his ribs. Even his heart, which he replaced for clockworks supposed to function as his cardiovascular system.
The last customer of the day was a short woman with golden-plated skin. Widow, dead children, dark fleshly circles around tiring mirroring eyes. She smelled of the poppies and peonies. He’d have preferred sunflower, but that was not the case. To her, he sold his shop. His family’s business, his fathers’ pride, his heritage, all he had left.
Olaf had never made so much money in a single day.
#
“I can pay for your medicine and the hospital room for one year,” Olaf told Alon, exhaling rust and relief, hobbling into his brother’s bedroom. “It should be enough.”
But it wasn’t. And Olaf didn’t have anything else to sell but the legs he used to visit Alon, the eye to see if he was buying the correct serum, and the arm to carry the medicine.
“What will you do, Olaf? You sold everything for me and now you’ll see me dying anyway.”
No, he wouldn’t.
#
Olaf met the golden-skinned lady at her shop, her eyes sulking with loneliness and longing. The place had been renovated with lamps, statuettes, and furniture on sale. They all glinted off colors he’d never achieved himself.
He placed the packed medicine on the counter and pushed it toward her, along with a luggage containing all his brother’s belongings. She pressed her gilded thumb on Olaf’s pay-drive.
He sold her a friend.