Sam J. Miller is the Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best of the year) and Blackfish City (a “Must Read” in Entertainment Weekly and O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine). Sam’s short stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus Awards, and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. He is the last in a long line of butchers. Find him online at samjmiller.com.
You know the story. You’ve seen the news clips and the Behind the Music episodes and the biopics: the poor kid from the Chicago projects, her church-obsessed single mom, how Ti spent every spare moment of her childhood there, singing her little heart out. How that safe and stunting space celebrated her, and how it maimed her. How she got on television; how she captured the heart of America from the first moment and didn’t let it go until she died.
Half a block away I could feel it already, the old giddiness, the limb-tingling bliss at being about to dance, to sweat, to shake my body beside other bodies, and that’s when I knew I was in true mortal peril. I walked slower, then stopped, and took ten deep breaths, until the urge subsided. I waited until I felt nothing.