{"id":6057,"date":"2022-12-04T14:41:54","date_gmt":"2022-12-04T14:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6057"},"modified":"2022-12-11T18:17:53","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T18:17:53","slug":"choke-by-suyi-davies-okungbowa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6057","title":{"rendered":"Choke<\/em><\/strong> by Suyi Davies Okungbowa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Choke<\/em><\/strong> by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Tor.com, 14th<\/sup> September 2022) sees the narrator, K\u00e9dik\u00e9, accompanying Afonso, a fellow academic and friend who \u201cworships free food\u201d, to a family assigned by the International Friends program:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The house, when you arrive, is more conspicuous than you had expected. Apparently, it used to be a church, back when this town was still a part of Mexico. The Spanish architecture and Infant of Prague statues, both of which you recognize from your Catholic upbringing, are huge tells. When you go past the motion-sensored outdoor lights, the statues come to life, casting slant shadows, like sentries over something poached.
The gate swings open into a large compound containing multiple buildings. The door at the top of the steps is open, ushering you in. From inside: the smell of good food, laughter, a cat meowing. Afonso beams. There is joy here.
You have forgotten your ancestors\u2019 whisper that you will choke.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This passage pretty much presages the three narrative threads that are developed in the story. First, there are the whispered warnings and statements (of variable reliability) that K\u00e9dik\u00e9 regularly receives from his dead ancestors in the \u201cGreat Across\u201d\u2014and they have already warned him that he will \u201cchoke\u201d at this gathering; second, we learn about K\u00e9dik\u00e9\u2019s abusive religious upbringing in Nigeria; and, third, it becomes obvious that the hosts of the meal, the Paxton family, are proselytizing Christians using the Friendship program to recruit new converts.
During the evening the ancestors continue to give K\u00e9dik\u00e9 nudges and brief visions at the meal, and he also becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the religious observance that occurs (prayers and passages from the bible between courses, etc.). This discomfort increases when (spoiler) a final member of the family arrives, Elijah Paxton, who, after an aggravated assault on a woman with a baseball bat (he called on the \u201cLGBT slut\u201d to repent), was banned from all campuses in a fifty-mile radius.
The story climaxes with K\u00e9dik\u00e9 experiencing an intense vision:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The world flickers, and the last light in the room is snuffed out. Your ancestors, tired of waiting, step forward.
Every guest at the table is a faceless two-dimensional darkness, bodies draped over furniture and cutlery, trapped in the plane of shadows. They speak but are unheard; scream but are stifled by a form too shallow to hold all their selves. The only bodily parts spared are their fingers, fleshy ends clinging to the flattened shadows at the table. With these they call for attention, scratching at the wood, pulling splinters, drawing blood.
But the sound of water drowns them out.
Each Paxton is a white robe wearing a stole, like the men from your exorcisms. Sticky gray tendrils, borne of each utterance, each interaction, connect the whites to every guest, bonding all in a closeknit web. Water so saline you can taste it pours from the depths of each Paxton to the dining room floor, enveloping the slant shadow-selves. Alessia\u2019s ejections happen, like her words, in drips, slipping down the sides of her mouth. Charlotte and Donny, Hollywood smiles still intact, spout huge bucketfuls. But no one gushes into the fast-rising lake like Elijah, from whom water pours out of every orifice: eager, hungry, restless.
Young Joshua is the only Paxton left untouched. He is still stroking the cat. But rather than the vacant expression he has presented all evening, his face is warped by fear as he watches the water rise. His eyes turn, slowly, and find you, realizing you have joined him in this separate reality.
\u201cHelp,\u201d he whispers, choking. \u201cHelp me.\u201d
The flesh-fingered shadows scratch the table, echoing his words in wood. HELP. HELP ME.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The narrator quickly leaves, and realises that the ancestors were warning him that he might drown (in the host\u2019s religion, presumably).
For the most part this is a readable piece (and economical, too\u2014it does a lot with its four thousand words) that slowly and successfully builds unease in the reader\u2014but it is somewhat anti-climactic (K\u00e9dik\u00e9 runs away), and unsatisfyingly open-ended (what does he subsequently do to help Joshua, who appears to be in a similar situation to the younger K\u00e9dik\u00e9?) It also feels a bit like an anti-Christian hit job, and an unsubtle one at that.
All in all it reads like the beginning of a longer story, and I wonder if it is a novel in progress.
** (Average). 3,950 words. Story link<\/a>.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Choke by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Tor.com, 14th September 2022) sees the narrator, K\u00e9dik\u00e9, accompanying Afonso, a fellow academic and friend who \u201cworships free food\u201d, to a family assigned by the International Friends program: The house, when you arrive, is more conspicuous than you had expected. Apparently, it used to be a church, back when this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1394],"tags":[17,539,1392,1393,12,1391,116],"class_list":["post-6057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-suyi-davies-okungbowa","tag-17","tag-539","tag-ancestor-spirits","tag-christianity","tag-short-story","tag-suyi-davies-okungbowa","tag-tor-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6057"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6080,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057\/revisions\/6080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}