In honor of Jason Sanford's upcoming novella, We Who Hunt Alexanders, out on July 22nd, we at Apex hosted a microfiction contest inviting you to describe your own blood-maw pocket hell. We got some amazing submissions, and after much trial and tribulation, narrowed it down to a top three. In first place was "The Drowned" by Ian Li. You can read the piece and learn more about Ian below! Congratulations to Ian!
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"The Drowned"
She's kneeling in a cedarwood canoe, drenched and shivering. The boat's damp innards are rough and naked, no paddle to be found. But it moves on its own, sliding across the pale water like a scalpel across a cadaver's skin.
There's no land in sight. The silent sea is interrupted only by bodies, floating face-down. Her hands lap at the water like wintry branches scraping the sky, clawing against a force they can't hope to influence.
When the boat inevitably bumps into a body, she's reminded of her sister. She'd always thought drowning would be more frantic. Fighting an icy brute that's smothering you, every muscle demanding oxygen. But her sister's hands had simply grasped at the air, delicate piano-playing fingers trying to pluck clouds from the sky. Her own fingers had been idly fiddling with a life preserver. Waiting until her sister's hands turned peaceful.
Peaceful like these bodies. She can't look away from them, afraid of what they might do when she does.
But the cold drags on her body and mind, as if each passing corpse steals a little of her breath. After the hundredth one, she drifts in and out of lucidity.
The canoe lurches. She whips around to find a dripping body in the boat, and recognizes the face—a face like hers. Before she can react, she's pushed over the side and held underwater.
She flails at first. But it feels wrong. She wants to be elegant like her sister. She wants the peace her sister found.
Instead, her arms ache more than ever, elbows locked and pressing down.
Down? She realizes she's holding a body beneath the water, and jerks her arms back. The body floats away, free at last.
But she's kneeling in a cedarwood canoe, drenched and shivering.
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Ian Li (he/him) is a Chinese-Canadian economist, developer, writer, and poet, who started writing a year and a half ago after a lifetime of believing he could never be creative. He also enjoys spreadsheets, statistical curiosities, and brain teasers. Find his work published or forthcoming in Nightmare Magazine, Small Wonders, and Strange Horizons, among other venues. Learn more at https://ian-li.com or find him on Bluesky @ianli.bsky.social.
