I’m excited to share that my short story “Hippocampus Forgets” appears in Issue 990 of Bewildering Stories, an online magazine for speculative writing. It’s a fantasy story about a female hippopotamus. The idea sprang from a goofy thought I had one day—what if a hippopotamus named Hippocampus suffered memory problems? The idea set me off on a long road of writing, revising, and rejection before finally getting accepted.

Image by brgfx on Freepik.

The best part of the whole process was following the internal drama of the character Hippocampus, a mother of four who keeps forgetting the name of her youngest child, her son Corpe. Her memory lapse stems from a violent premonitory dream that serves as a warning as Corpe’s fifth birthday approaches.

Image by brgfx on Freepik.

In writing the first draft, I felt like I served as a portal for Hippocampus to materialize. I wasn’t so much writing as dictating the story from her. It’s a rare occurrence for me, but in this case, I followed the characters where they wanted me to go. And nearly six-thousand words later, “Hippocampus Forgets” was born.