Summoning the Daemon
Every year, the editors of Fourteen Hills choose an outstanding short story published in one of that year’s issues. This year, we are honored to award the Bambi Holmes Award in Fiction to J S Khan for his short story, “You are Being Hijacked,” which appeared in Issue 18.1.
“The Octopus Wrestler” by JS Khan lays on more weirdness with the story of “Stingray” Radcliffe Stevens and how he became sucked into the seedy life of professional octopus wrestling... The situation is completely absurd... but the feelings of lost glory and entrapment are genuine; the reader feels just as entangled as Stevens... This story also has some of the most erotic descriptions of octopus tentacles I have ever read: “all its elaborate grandeur, tendrils uncoiling in strands across a nebulous void, impossibly phallic, irresistibly labic, the loneliest creature alive yet possessing a gliding elegance like a woman in a lace dress.”
