My short story titled "Nether" has recently been published in the digital magazine ParSec, and as usual I'm blogging a few words about how the piece came to be written. There may be spoilers within.
"Nether" is one of ten stories which I've written on the subject of grief. These will appear in a short collection titled "Tokens Of Grief" which has been accepted by a publisher that I am not yet at liberty to name (more information on this once contracts are signed). The inspiration for the collection as a whole unfortunately came about due to the death of my father in February 2025. Whilst I appeared to accept this eventuality at the time, it really hit me in October that year and subsequently the devastation relentlessly ploughed through me. What else is a writer to do but assimilate that grief through fiction, to find a creative cathartic path to the other side? However I didn't want to limit myself with stories about grief of the loss of a loved one. There are other forms of grief that we eventually inhabit, after all.
"Nether" is the story of a relationship break-up, where the male of the couple is struggling to understand his partner's motivations. The grief of that kind of separation is very real indeed, but - as you'll have guessed from the cover of ParSec #16 above - this is also an SF story, and within my story couples are physically attached upon marriage, one side of each bonded to their partner's, in the manner of some Siamese twins. Therefore a decision to subsequently separate not only invokes the usual emotional responses, but also a physical detachment. Couples often refer to their partner as 'my other half'. I decided to explore what would happen if this were literally the case.
Here's an extract:
Nether was a word that had been appropriated for divorced couples. Not in the most common definition of lower, but the previously lesser used inferior. The number of inferiors were on the increase, Beth explained, the word no longer held the stigma that it used to. Thomas couldn’t shuck from his head the image of being torn apart by wild horses. They had eaten separate meals that evening, watched different movies wearing headphones. He could already predict the insidious ways in which Beth might incrementally shift them apart. This wasn’t paranoia, it was happening. He had read reports where couples had separated unofficially, usually by violent means, but even in acquiescence there was no solace. Waves of grief began to wash through him in otherwise tender moments. Beth’s fingers inadvertently touching his, positioning their leg on the pouffe, the warmth that flowed between their joint blood vessels. Previously – the day before, even – such interstices had filled his heart with an inordinate amount of exquisite joy. Now they were bittersweet, tarnished, yet remained unavoidable. He could hardly go into the next room.
Regular readers of this blog will know I usually listen to music through headphones whilst writing. In this case, I didn't listen to music, but Deep Layered Brown Noise on YouTube.
