#26: your monthly microfiction

state-regulated holiday arson and small-town secrets

2023 was bozo, y’all. This year, I moved to France, (mostly) finished my novel, started this Substack, participated in my first immersive art installation with a collective of rad folks, and fell asleep/ate/kissed in five different countries, a personal record.

I created more visual art and fiction this year than I ever have before, made new friends, learned a new language, and set up my very first private art studio space. Of course, I also spent 50 hours in the past two weeks alone playing Zelda, frustrated myself by not learning French fast enough, racked up a fellowship rejection I’m still nursing wounds from, and dissociated on the couch in the midst of late-stage capitalism and war.

All in all, a good, honest year.

And in these final 36ish hours of the year, I’ve got a few things for ya…

💌 Nazis are still bad,

💌 the voting results for this month’s prompt and next month’s historical topic,

💌 some bite-sized fiction,

💌 the art I made my paid subscribers/patrons this month,

💌 and some creative news.

💩 A note on Nazis

By 2024, aren’t we supposed to be, I don’t know, living a utopian dream of friendship and vertical farming and electric cars and vacations to the moon? The phrase “fighting Nazis” feels archaic, something our grandparents and great-grandparents contended with - not us.

Yet here we are.

Substack (the platform you get this email from) explicitly states in their terms of service that they won’t allow speech that directly incites violence on their site. However, Substack platforms several Nazis who run popular paid newsletters on the site, including idiots like Richard Spencer. Many Substackers have called on the company to take a stance against Nazis, but the business takes a 10% cut from each subscription. Money hungry to the last, they’re refusing to say no to Nazi money, despite massive upticks in hate-based violence. A growing number of Substackers have joined the call to pressure the company to deplatform Nazis, sharing this letter here:

Substackers Against Nazis

As a small-time, working class artist on a budgie, I haven’t yet thought of a (free or very cheap) alternative to Substack that helps me grow my publication. If you have suggestions that can reasonably and actively let this publication thrive without Substack that don’t cost hundreds of dollars, I’m all ears!

Tl;dr - nazis are bad, and I can’t believe we are still having this conversation a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

And now onto your dose of fiction, to escape this dumb reality.

🗳 The votes are in

Patrons and subscribers voted for this month’s postcard-fiction prompt:

Action: starting a fire

Word: Krampus

Inspiration: the history of Letters to Santa.

If you haven’t yet, read that article first:

🔥 The story - Gretchen ain’t a Grinch

Here’s the card I wrote the story on:

I got this card 9 years ago in Bar Harbor, Maine, where my love for Krampus began.

And here’s the story I wrote:

Every winter, the good folks of the Oroton, CO post office burn all incoming letters to Santa in the potbelly stove behind the counter. The Krampus Act, as it was called, became law after little Bowie Cooper from Limeville snooped through the trash out back and found a sack of letters addressed to the North Pole. The trauma the USPS inflicted on him, or so his parents said, was so great, it cost the state over half a million in damages.

Due to this - and budget cuts - branches closed. Oroton now boasts the only remaining post office in a hundred-mile radius. Today, Gretchen (USPS manager, lost the mayoral bid five years back, proudly plans to live and die in Oroton) feeds letters into the fire one by one. She sits on a metal folding chair by the stove, a notebook pressed open in her lap. On mornings without customers - which is often, especially during snow like this - she reads each letter before burning it. Kids tell Santa everything, like Danny Osenberg, who asked for binoculars to watch the neighbors with Mommy, and Robyn Hall, who begged Santa for her own wine bottle so she could dress up like Daddy.

Gretchen records it all, jotting confessions, names, and addresses into neat little rows in her notebook. Filing secrets is her special hobby, a way to honor the town she loves. Strictly speaking, reading the letters is against the law, but if you ask Gretchen, they’re local history - and she’s Oroton’s chief curator. Someone has to keep a record. The town’s lucky she silently nominated herself for the post.

She pulls a letter from an unmarked sack, twirling her pen in her hand. Return address: Gina Applebaum’s kid Jonah. Gina walked around with a perpetual shiner til her husband abandoned his family seven months back. The town’s been peaceful since he left.

As Gretchen reads, she stops twirling her pen:

Dear Santa - for Christmas can i have flower seeds. Mom planted flowers by the porch this year and says i can help plant more when the snows done. She says we have to feed the ground extra when it’s warm again. Shes been serious about the yard ever since that night she dug a hole and put the big bag inside. I saw her do it from the window even tho i was sposed to be hiding but you already know that Santa and im sorry i wasnt hiding but it was when Daddy was yelling and mom hid me and then the house went all quiet. I’ve been good the rest of the year.

For Christmas also i want a Gameboy color…

Gretchen reads the beginning of the letter again. After a moment, she starts writing the Applebaum address into her notebook, then stops. She drums the pen against the page, thinking, before scratching out the address, obscuring the entire row in blue ink.

The town’s been calm without the Applebaum father. Maybe it’s best if some secrets stay unrecorded. Nodding to herself, decision made, Gretchen tosses Jonah’s letter into the fire.

✒️ Your turn!

Write a short story using the prompts and share it with me here. Y’all are all so brilliant and creative, it’s a fucking gift every month to see your takes on the same prompt. Email them to me, post them here in the comments, or tie them to a pigeon’s ankle and send them to Toulouse.

If you’re feeling stuck, here’s an article I wrote on microfiction fundamentals that can help you get started.

⭕️ Next month’s theme

It was neck and neck between two topics, but subscribers and patrons narrowly chose next month’s theme, where we’ll explore…

⭕️ the Circleville mystery letters ⭕️

Next month I’ll include the Egyptian queen’s war-inciting marriage proposal for y’all to vote on again, since it ~almost~ made the cut.

In the meantime, buckle up for the Circleville letters - its one helluva ride.

🎨 A month in postcard art

Maybe all the deliveries and mail from the holiday season got to my head, or maybe it was because Rhody and our friend Charli played Elden Ring all holiday season, but this month I cooked up delivery hand weirdos for my patrons:

I love these so much, they’ll be coming out in a pack of postcards on my website sometime this winter :’).

If you want a card, you can always upgrade your membership at any time or join my Patreon. On a budgie? I feel you, refer folks to my newsletter for a ~free~ upgraded membership!

🌍 Updates in my creative world

• I am a quarter-finalist for PULP Literature’s First Page Cage Match! My novel’s first page was among the top eight selected for the next round; I submitted my first ten pages their way and am still in the running to win. How exciting!

• I deleted social media off my phone and am amazed by how much happier I am already. Wild how much time you have when you’re not checking how other people spend their hours.

• I finished an oil painting in 25 hours and am happy (enough) with it. As someone who takes seven thousand years to complete one painting, this is a feat!

Are there things I’d change with 40 more hours? Sure. But for now, I’m happy enough to move onto the next one.

And that’s a wrap! What went well for you in 2023? What’re you looking forward to in 2024? Let me know; I want to hear from you <3.

All my love and stamps for 2024 and beyond,

Nikita, Your Snail Mail Sweetheart