Samantha Henderson

Bored mermaids causing shipwrecks lead to two people meeting up that wouldn't usually cross paths. They work out a way to get themselves out of their situation more or less.

There were some interesting bits and some nice writing but the story is a bit all over the place with a slave trader being a main character, the daughter of a plantation owner being another, the casual discussion of the fate of the slaves and the raping and the sex post-mortem was all a bit much.

Don't recommend.… (more)

A woman is plagued by disturbing dreams, after which she wakes, draws a picture, and mails that picture to an address in Arizona. It slowly emerges what the pictures are of, and what happens when she doesn’t send them, and the answers are brutal and creepy and horrifying. The ending is slightly ambiguous, which in this case I didn’t entirely like. It’s hard to say whether or not I liked the story as a whole, given the subject matter, but I can absolutely say that it was effective as hell; even weeks later, thinking about it is still creeping me out.… (more)

A girl survives a shipwreck, only to discover that mermaids are real. The mermaids take her to an island, where a fellow castaway has been living for years, and scheming how to escape from "those fishy bitches". I think there are a lot of elements in this story that are designed to make readers uncomfortable, particularly the grown man who's been alone for a long time suddenly being thrown into contact with a pre-pubsecent girl. And boy howdy, they did their job - there's nothing explicit, but this story still made me kind of squeamish. Really interesting plot, though.… (more)