What Ned Said, by Gary Phillips

 

"What Ned Said," by Gary Phillips, in Hollywood Kills, edited by Adam Meyer and Alan Orloff, Level Short, 2025.

Thanks to Kevin Tipple for catching some typos. 

This is the third time my friend Gary Phillips has appeared in this blog. 

I have said before that stories I like best tend to have at least one of four characteristics: great characters, twist ending, heightened language, or great premise.  We will go back to that.

I learned a new term from this story: grief tech.  As the British would say it is exactly what it says on the tin, meaning it is the use of advanced  technology to help with the mourning process. 

In this story it refers to Ethereal Essence, a company  which uses videos, text messages, and other mementos to create a virtual reality experience between the mourner and the deceased.  The mourner here is Clayton and the deceased is his old friend Ned.  They have a terrific session together - right up to the end when Ned tells his pal that he had been murdered.

And that, my friends, is what I call a great concept. A very enjoyable story.

 

Spiders and Fly, by Gary Phillips

 

"Spiders and Fly," by Gary Phillips, in Witnesses for the Dead, edited by Gary Phillips and Gar Anthony Haywood, Soho Press, 2022. 

This is the second time Phillips has appeared on this site.

A nice suspense story, told in an interesting manner.  We start in media res, to get all fancy, with Cresston running for his life.  Then we see how he got into that mess.  And then what led to that.  After that we return to his desperate chase.

Seems Cresston saw something nobody was supposed to see.  A murder.  And worse, the killers were cops.  Better keep running, pal.

He winds up with a surprising (and surprisingly resourceful) ally.  And then the story takes a turn I never expected.