A Sense of Doubt blog post #4272 - My Fave Horror Story - Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong
Alyssa Wong is one of my favorite authors.
Her story "Hungry Daughters for Starving Mothers" may be my favorite horror story.
Here's deets and links.
https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/hungry-daughters-of-starving-mothers/
My PDF copy of Hungry Daughters
https://medium.com/@great_jones_street/hungry-daughters-of-starving-mothers-by-alyssa-wong-cdfd62d949d8
Jen dates guys she meets on Tindr, but she is after only one thing: their depraved thoughts. She gorges on the men when she needs to eat, taking their bodily forms before saving the thoughts in jam jars marked as health drinks. But once she’s tasted the thoughts of a real killer, nothing else will satisfy her hunger.
About the Author
Alyssa Wong studies fiction in Raleigh, NC, and really, really likes crows. Her story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” won the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. She is a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her work has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Tor.com, among others. She can be found on Twitter as @crashwong.
Synopsis
Jen is on a date with an entitled boring guy called Harvey. She’s nodding, half-listening while scanning Tindr under the tablecloth. She reads his thoughts, ‘she’s got perfect tits’, which they get more depraved, thinking he’s going to cut her up. She suggests leaving. He’s excited. They leave in his car, and she asks him to pull over and pukes in the alley. He comes over and she bites his mouth and finds his ugly thoughts just behind his teeth. His body shudders and she begins to elongate, taking his form. She puts on his clothes and leaves him, still alive, by the dumpster. She takes his car and leaves it in a parking lot, changing back into herself. She vomits a black liquid, thick and viscous into a glass jar. It hisses and snarls Harvey’s words.
Back at her apartment, she finds her friend Aiko, a caterer, waiting for her. She senses only good thoughts from Aiko and needs to keep her distance. Aiko points out how unlucky Jen is on dates. Jen stashes the jar of black liquid in the fridge along with almost a dozen others, labelled ‘health drinks’. Jen reflects how Harvey was the worst yet, a murderer, and looks on Tindr for more dates. Aiko offers to take her to her church to meet nice men. She tells her her mother called and is old and lonely. Jen thinks of her baba who disappeared into thin air when she was 5, into her mother’s stomach. She hears the jars in the fridge hissing.
Over the next few weeks, she gorges on more pick-up artists and grad students, but nothing tastes good after Harvey. Aiko tries to cook for her. Her presence both grounds her and drives her mad, so she starts locking Aiko out of the apartment, for her own safety. She licks the inside of the jar that contained Harvey’s thoughts every night, which is under her bed. She visits her mom, who wants her to stay. There are jars lining the shelves on the wall full of what’s left of her mom’s lovers. She tells her she doesn’t know what to do, she messed up. Her mom says nothing will be enough now she’s tasted a killer.
She leaves and scrolls through Tindr on the train. She sees the face of a woman who looks a bit like Aiko. They meet and she smells delectable to Jen. She can read her mind, which is very twisted. She feels she’s too much for her but has to have her. She leans in to kiss her, when the woman, Seo-yun, says ‘Who’s Aiko?’ She questions why Jen hasn’t tasted her yet. She tells Seo-yun to get out of her head. Seo-yun tells her her thoughts are spilling out everywhere. She says she believes in eating for pleasure, not just survival. She invites her to an eating club at her apartment.
Two months later, Jen is moving in with Seo-yun. She sees Aiko but shakes her off, afraid of her scent. At Seo-yun’s apartment, she discovers that Aiko is part of the catering team. She doesn’t understand. She catches Seo-yun with Aiko. Aiko attacks Seo-yun and Jen takes her thoughts, filling herself up, turning into her form. Aiko is unconscious. She searches Sun-yeo’s jars for a trace of Aiko.
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- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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