Science Fiction & Fantasy
by Tovah Strong
The Unhappy Impetus
If the book had begun differently, perhaps it would have ended. Syd was overconfident. Reckless enough to edge into paranoia. She practiced verbal deflection and kept her notebook on a table rigged with gunpowder. It was not enough. Of course. Every thief knows doors are near useless on good days and secrets are hard to keep when one is simultaneously power drunk and paranoid. The magistrate’s arrival at the Academy’s west tower was unsurprising. His knocking began at ten after three and continued for almost two minutes, gathering intensity when he hollered, “Open the door, bedeviled woman!”
Sitting here on the eve of the eve of New Yearâs Eve, reminiscing on the collective shit show this year has been for everyone in the country, state, and Triad is definitely a bummer. But things certainly could have been a lot worse for both Ian and me. That is the thing about our white, cisgender privilege, just the acknowledgment of this truth is something that a lot of those who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, differently-abled, and of a different gender identity donât have the luxury of doing.
With the senseless murders of Black people by police this year, especially that of Breonna Taylor, many white folks like Ian and myself have (finally) started to wake up and realize that Black women in this country have been consistently dealt a bad hand and deserve better. As Megan Thee Stallion artfully put it in her recent