April 3 - "Her Voice in a Bottle"

“Her Voice in a Bottle”
by Tim Pratt
Subterranean: Winter 2009 (2009)

* * * * * (Excellent) Fantasy

Tim Pratt recalls the mysterious Meredith, a weeklong love from college who vanished from sight only to return years later before vanishing once again. She floats in and out of his life in those moments of loneliness, last time leaving a message in a small blue bottle for when Tim needs to call on her again.

It was difficult finding the correct label for this story – fictionalized reality, memoir, or fantasy? I settled on fantasy because of the ephemeral nature of Meredith, and because of Pratt’s short digression about fantasy.

“…and just because I write fantasy doesn’t mean I believe that stuff. I’m a skeptic. Sure, I knock on wood, I have little superstitious rituals, but I know they’re merely magical thinking, that they don’t exert any influence on the world, that at most they exert influence on my mind, which is enough, sometimes.”

There’s a quality here, something slightly off, slightly magical, in Pratt’s recollection of his time with Meredith. There’s even a weird mix of The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, Pratt’s first novel, which I enjoyed, but remember in only broad strokes (as is true of most fiction I read) and Pratt’s own mentioning of a faulty memory, a mind incorrectly (maybe) filling in the past. Everything about this story – there’s even a mention of air hockey – clicked for me tonight in ways I know I won’t be able to articulate, or even remember correctly, come tomorrow. This is a story worth saving, a hopeful story for lonely hearts in troubled times.