L’Esprit de L’Escalier by Catherynne M. Valente (Tor.com, 25th August 2021)1 opens with a man making breakfast for his apparently undead wife:
She slices through an egg and lets the yolk run like yellow blood. Severs a corner of toast and dredges it in the warm, sunny liquid, so full of life, full enough to nourish a couple of cells all the way through to a downy little baby birdie with sweet black eyes. If only things had gone another way.
Eurydice hesitates before putting it between her lips. Knowing what will happen. Knowing it will hurt them both, but mainly her. Like everything else.
She shoves it in quickly. Attempts a smile. And, just this once, the smile does come when it is called.
[. . .]
Then, her jaw pops out of its socket with a loud thook and sags, hanging at an appalling, useless angle. She presses up against her chin, fighting to keep it in, but the fight isn’t fair and could never be. Eurydice locks eyes with Orpheus. No tears, though she really is so sorry for what was always about to happen. But her ducts were cauterized by the sad, soft event horizon between, well. There and Here.
Orpheus longs for her tears, real and hot and sweet and salted as caramel, and he hates himself for his longing. He hates her for it, too. A river of black, wet earth and pebbles and moss and tiny blind helpless worms erupts out of Eurydice’s smile, splattering so hard onto his mother’s perfect plate that it cracks down the middle, and dirt pools out across the table and the worms nose mutely at the crusts of the almost-burnt toast.
The rest of the piece (I wouldn’t call it a story) shows us variously: the daily life of, and tensions between, the couple; a visit from Eurydice’s mother, who bathes her daughter; a trip to the therapist; the arrival of Orpheus’s father Apollo and his groupies (there are various rock music and Greek myth references throughout the story—this chapter sees Prometheus giving Apollo a light2); Eurydice heating her body up with a hairdryer so Orpheus will want to make love with her; and, finally, a visit to Sisyphus, who asks Eurydice if she wanted to come back from the dead.
This piece is, according to the introduction to the story, supposed to be a “provocative and rich retelling of the Greek myth”, but it is actually a borderline tedious non-story apparently written for goths and classics students. Another effort from Valente that is both plotless and overwritten.
* (Mediocre). 9,300 words. Story link.
1. This story was fifth in the Hugo Award novelette ballot, and runner-up in the Locus Poll.
2. The Eurydice and Orpheus myth at Wikipedia.