Publications – Jennifer Hudak

2023

Where the Wind Blows

Flash Point SF

I’m working at the grocery when the wind blows you into town. I stock the shelves there, arranging the oldest merchandise in front, cleaning up after shoppers who think twice about that bar of chocolate and stuff it between pasta boxes two aisles down. It suits me, this job; I like the orderliness of the rows of boxes and cans, the way I can shuffle things around to fill any gaps. The way that everything has a place.

And then you land in the parking lot, bruised and disheveled.

Atticat

Spirits & Ghouls: Short Stories

The cat is the only one who can see us.

His name is Jekyll, and he’s half gray and half white. Sometimes he ignores us but sometimes
he stares at us, unblinking, until we give up and melt back into the walls. Jekyll isn’t afraid of
ghosts, but sometimes, when he stares at us like that, we are a little afraid of Jekyll.

The Day of the Sea

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2023

When the Sea came to our village, she was an old woman. She arrived when the water crested and draped over the earth, its salty fingers pushing out offerings of sea glass and bladder wrack. Her dress trailed behind her, hair tangled with kelp and tentacles. No one doubted that she was the Sea. Everyone was disappointed.

Beverly's Sonata

Not One of Us, Issue #75

When the record player first spoke to Beverly, it used the voice of her old piano. At first, just the whisper of air among strings, like a clearing of the throat. A single tap of the middle C. Then came the scales, forwards and backwards, and the muted thud of felted hammers against metal strings. Beverly took in a sharp breath. She'd learned to play her first notes on that piano, decades ago. She knew its vocabulary intimately: the delicate chuckle of the upper registers, the lisp of its sticky high A, the squeaky press-and-release of the sustain pedal. There was no mistaking it.