Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > Uncanny Magazine Issue 11: July/August 2016

Review first posted on Fantasy Literature. Right now this review is just for the short story "An Ocean the Color of Bruises" by Isabel Yap; I'll probably add more short fiction reviews later. This story is free online at Uncanny Magazine:

Five old college friends, Heinz, Nina, Rich, Josie and Chino, reunite for a three-day vacation on Punta Silenyo, a small island in Phillipines where, many years ago, a tropical storm killed a large group of high school and college students there for Beach Week.

The tragedy wasn’t real to us. Typical Philippines: large swathes of people cleared out in one go, like a giant hand had slapped them off the earth. Everyone thought Punta Silenyo wouldn’t recover, but even if it never regained its former glamour, people came just the same. Even the ghost–hunting tours stopped after awhile. Death is only one other song often played on these islands.

Even though the island is, curiously, almost deserted, the group of five friends enjoys reconnecting. Heinz and Chino are dating, but the rest haven’t seen each other much lately. They go parasailing, get drunk, and just hang out and enjoy each other’s company … until horror crawls in through the hotel window.

“An Ocean the Color of Bruises” is an oddly introspective horror story. The narrator seems to be the entire group of friends, speaking always as an elusive “we” that is not the viewpoint of any particular person. The terror that they face on Punta Silenyo is just a different type of horror than the despair of their day-to-day lives, where the friends all feel lost and adrift.

3.5 stars.