Straight (Chuck Tingle)

Straight
Chuck Tingle
Chuck Tingle, publisher
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: It started three years ago, when Earth first encountered a tear in the cosmos. For nearly twenty-four hours, a large segment of the population turned into homicidal maniacs, nearly unstoppable, only to completely forget everything they'd done afterward. It didn't take long to figure out the common factor: the monsters were straight cisgendered heterosexuals, and their targets were anyone who deviated even slightly from strict sex and gender norms. Parents and children and loved ones even turned on those closest to them, mindless as zombies and far more gruesome. Last year, as Earth's orbit passed through the tear again, a vaccine helped reduce the carnage. This year, most everyone predicts things will be even better; after all, now people know to expect "Saturation Day" and take precautions, and as scientists learn more about the phenomenon, surely it's only a matter of time until the threat is neutralized entirely. In the meantime, if people just hide away or lock themselves up, that should reduce the destruction and body count. This Saturation Day, rather than shell out the exorbitant fees for a walled-off compound like Palm Springs or lock themselves in basements or attics, four friends on the rainbow spectrum - bisexual Issac, homosexual Jason, trans Nora, and lesbian Hazel - decide to head out to the California desert and a remote rental cabin, far away from any presumed would-be zombielike killers... and also far, far away from help when their isolated retreat becomes a death trap.

REVIEW: It's hardly a secret in late 2025 that a rabid anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda has rampaged through decades of fragile gains in equality, education, and understanding, sparks of ignorance and fear and hatred deliberately fanned into political wildfires that threaten far, far more than the ostensible target populations. This novella crystallizes the rabid, mindless violence behind that agenda that lies just barely beneath the surface of everyday civility, how marginalized voices crying out for help and justice are too often dismissed, how the collateral damage of inherently hostile cultural and legal norms is brushed aside as acceptable sacrifices, and how allies cannot always be relied upon when knives are out and blood is drawn. Even when Saturation Day brings the horrors out of the shadows and forces the majority to confront the fear and violence that non-straight, non-majority populations endure every second of every waking day, the blood literally glistening on the hands of straight perpetrators, it's too often treated as a minor inconvenience, something to be brushed aside and downplayed or a thing that someone else will surely fix soon, so in the meantime it just has to be tolerated. Tingle also addresses the internal schisms that fracture what should be a united front against the horrors perpetuated against them, as some within the community question whether bisexuals or transgenders or others "count" or should be ostracized to their own ends of the rainbow to fend for themselves.
From the very beginning, the sense of impending doom and madness is quickly established; as Isaac is packing up to flee the city, he encounters an elderly neighbor, a normally nice and liberal-minded woman on her way to be locked up by her son; she's too old for the vaccine, she explains, though she surely means him no harm... until she offers him a fresh-baked cookie with a "surprise" inside. (Signs of mental instability in the affected show up several hours before Earth enters the rift itself.) This establishes the paranoia inherent in the tale, where nobody can be considered safe - not even those who got the shot (which doesn't work on everyone) or are ordinarily more accepting in daily life. Isaac and his friends think they've found a way to outsmart Saturation Day - avoid people, avoid problems - but underestimate just how many people can be in a seemingly uninhabited desert, and just how determined the affected are to find and eliminate target populations. The metaphor's as sharp and obvious as a bloody pitchfork to the neck, though even in the midst of the carnage Isaac tries to resist and deny his own rage at his helplessness and the ineffectiveness of those who insist they'll help the foursome escape. Tingle does an excellent job evoking the terror, tension, and jump-scares of a horror movie, along with some truly gory and gruesome moments. The ending stumbles a bit, but the points it makes shine clearly.

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