post 14: short story in Fiyah Mag, reflections on anger

[Originally published on Substack: Apr 02, 2025]

I have a short story called “Schadenfreude” in the most recent issue of Fiyah Magazine — yay! Fiyah is a dream venue for me, so today is a good day. Many thanks to DaVaun Sanders for his kindness as an editor. Nelson Rolon put together a haunting playlist based on this issue (compiled from contributors’ recommendations) that you may enjoy listening to. The songs I recommended for my story were “America Eats Its Young” by Funkadelic, “Pushin Against the Wind” by Kelsey Lu, and “Capillary” by Human Bloom.

“Schadenfreude” is a story involving the love and revenge two black ghosts share. It’s one of the stories I drafted when I participated in the 2023 Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, and it was not easy to revisit. I needed to be in a certain headspace, emotionally, to add fictional death to the real-life death (literal and figurative) that defines our human epoch.

You probably know what schadenfreude means. The act or state of taking pleasure in the suffering of others, sometimes with the implication that the suffering is deserved. Honestly, I’ve been having a schadenfreude kind of week. Last night, sitting in the dark, I told my partner I was rethinking the existence of the human soul. If the human world could become this dire, if enough has not yet been enough, I was no longer agnostic about the human soul: I was sure it must not exist. This realization was followed by a short wave of euphoria, in which I completed tasks on autopilot, because soulless hunks of meat don’t have to worry about the implications of their actions or the delicacy of their work.

Then I launched a scenario program in my mind. I could be swayed into believing in the human soul again, but only with some adjustments. No longer is it well-formed from birth in my mind. Rather, souls thrive in soulful environments. Souls must be tended to like garden plants, or they wither.

I believe the human epoch we live in is one of widespread soul death. People who insist on style and substance, their souls are most alive.

Maybe you’re right, Jack.