Finalist for the Seventh Annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the Literary Fiction category
Includes author-curated discussion questions!
Traci Skuce’s Hunger Moon is a collection of stories that echo with the yearning to be replenished, to be made full. Here are characters at cusp-points in their lives, attempting to shift their trajectories: to cease wrapping up their heart's desire in a pink bubble by launching it into the universe. Some turn to ESP, some to a belief in ghosts, some to the future caught inside a glass bottle, each character taking the hackneyed adage “Follow Your Bliss” too literally to blissfully follow their own storyline.
Emotional charged, evocative, and lush, Hunger Moon’s thirteen short stories each set out on profound quests to satisfy an emotional hunger.
Hunger Moon
You follow Foster through the side door. He chucks his jacket and gym bag onto a row of boots, taking down a pair of salt-stained lace-ups. You attempt First try fails, and your jacket skims into a gritty puddle. Second go 'round and Foster's laughing saying, "Just throw it anywhere, man." But you're persistent, and finally, with some rearranging, it stays put over a trench coat and rain poncho.
You kick off your high-tops, only a couple months old and already too small. You won't report this to your mother, not until your feet bleed or she's better, back at work. Great. There's your big toe. Jabbing right through the fresh hole in your sock. Goddamn. Somewhere between wearing shoes all day and removing them, it's happened: your feet have taken on another centimetre.
You are like the fucking universe, expanding.
Or like that kid with a messed-up gene. The one you read about, his DNA gone haywire, pumping out signals to never stop growing. At sixteen, the guy's legs are so long he had to remove the driver's seat of his Volkswagen Golf to work the pedals from the back bench. And still he had to bend his neck funny to peer out the windshield. He's probably eight feet by now or exploded right out of his skin. That could happen to you. Is happening. Every night you feel bone-splintering pain, as though tiny people are scaling beneath your shin bones with crampons and pickaxes.
Now your stomach groans. Foster's mom peeks around the partition wall, says, "Derek!" She folds her arms, flicks the filter of an unlit cigarette with her thumbnail. She's wearing a fuzzy teal sweater which gives her an out-of-focus look, espe-cially with her smudgy green eyeliner.
Foster runs past her, does a sock slide across the kitchen floor, right to the fridge. "You hungry, man?" he says.
You're never not hungry.
When you step into the kitchen, Foster's mom tugs your sleeve, says, "Jesus, Derek. You join the basketball team yet?"
"It's not really my thing," you say. Every other person begrudges the fact you don't put your height to good use. They must picture you slam-dunking a million shots, and not how you trip down the court in gym class. Especially your dad who, when not in the Caribbean with his new girlfriend or closing another so-called deal in New York, hassles you to try out for volleyball or B-ball like he did. He's always recounting his glory years, captain of this and that, telling you about team trips he went on, cheerleaders he dated.
Foster's mom says, "What is your thing, Derek?" You shrug, mumble something about guitar, though you only play an A chord and a G. She places the unlit cigarette in her mouth and opens the oven. Lasagna smells waft out. "You staying?" she asks.
For the past two months, you've eaten mostly grilled cheese sandwiches, Doritos, cereal, and those bags of deli corned beef. Occasionally, your mom's friend Evelyn drops off a casserole or a pot of chili, something your mom cries over, thanks her for and doesn't touch. Supper you and your brother eat for two or three days in a row.
Your stomach groans again and you say yes to Foster's mom.
