Fragments – Jessica Victoria Fisette

Rating: 5 stars

Fragments is a fantastically interesting short story that fascinates you from the first word until the last. I have long been a fan of the short story medium becauseit’s a quick way to get to know the author as they are forced to examine a subject and tell a story, and Fisette doesn’t disappoint.

The story is presented in two different voices, highlighted through two different fonts, two different eyes into the world. I greatly appreciated the difference, going so far as supertextual details such as line spacing because they seem like two different stories, and they are, but they aren’t. Without revealing too much, one is the story of a semi-ethereal woman in some sort of trauma or conflict, and one is the story of another woman undergoing a vague mental difficulty, reminiscent of depression or PTSD. The former evokes a sense of tension and fear, evocative in me of a horror story that gets the blood pumping. The latter says few words but the right ones. The protagonist is haunted by herself in a psychological mode.

The strength of a story that’s this short but covers so much with few words is that we learn far more than we would in a longer story. Both stories come together in the end in a way that satisfies the reader and, like any good story, makes the reader ask more questions than it answers, especially the most important one: when can I read more?