This week Strange Horizons published the first of two installments of Alyssa Wong’s “Santos de Sampaguitas”. It’s an engaging story so far and made more so for me by the setting of Manila, where I spent July. There are a lot of little touches about the city that bring to life a lot of the sights and sounds my memory holds. The audio fiction is excellent, but the text version is also available at http://www.strangehorizons.com/2014/20141006/sampaguita-f.shtml ,
“The dead god descends on me as I sleep, the way it did my mother the night before my conception, and my grandmother before that. Even with my dream-eyes shut, I know it’s there; the weight of folded limbs on my body threatens to crush my ribs, and I can smell the wreaths of sweet sampaguita hanging from its neck.”Go away, po,” I tell it, adding the honorific since Nanay always taught me not to be rude to gods. “I’m having a good dream for once.” I usually have nightmares during bangungot, trapped halfway between sleep and waking, unable to push my way fully to either side. The pressure on my chest, the terrible prescience that something very bad is about to happen, and the sound of distant screaming, like a boiling saucepan of human voices, are too familiar to me. But tonight there is only a pleasant floating sensation, fresh from a dream of flying over the oceans cresting Manila.”