The Continental Literary Magazine - Issue 6: Future, 2023

As one of the last traditional humans, the protagonist of Freak Show must thrive in a world populated by humans modified to withstand the effects of climate change.

This time, I wanted to write a story where humanity was given a chance: we are over the weight of the temperature catastrophe, the next generations just have to rebuild the world. But how would they look back on us? Can anyone take the burden of the crimes committed to make their fate easier?

The short story was translated into English by Austin Wagner. In addition to many others, you will also find the short stories of Sam J. Miller, Ken Liu and even the Hungarian A-class sci-fi author Markovics Botond in this volume of The Continental Literary Magazine. (You can buy it in print or digitally.)

Up on stage, I want to make my audience understand that what the old ones didn’t do is far worse than the havoc they did wreak, and that they still had the opportunity to go down a different path. The facts are common knowledge, but it’s different when the adapteds hear them from an old one. As if the past itself were speaking to them.

                I experience the anger every time. The heckling, the bared rows of teeth, the brandished fists. The audience brings in drinks from the seedy pub in the mall; by the end of the carnival, their money is burning a hole in their pockets, they want to have fun. Sometimes paper cups come flying my way, once a glass bottle even found its mark. It didn’t break my shin, but I was limping for weeks nonetheless. Ever since then there’s been a net of chicken wire pulled taut over the stage, and only liquid things are able to reach me. I wipe myself off with bits of dampened towel backstage, but the stench of beer always lingers, when I get home you make a face, scrunch your nose, I just laugh and say the audience and I had a great big party after the show.