Uncanny July/August 2026
Kate is cursed by her cousin Bo on his deathbed to never stay. They grew up together in a tiny farming town in the inland northwest, population 394, playing at sword fights with sticks and building cushion forts. Bo always wanted out, and on the day Kate photographed him for his senior picture, he made her promise she would escape too and not let her gift for photography dry up. He left for Seattle, returned broke with a petty theft record, and a year later lay in a Spokane hospital bed with a congenital heart problem. Joking, he brandished a plastic knife at her and said “En garde.” Then, terrified, he gripped her hand and told her she would never get stuck, never stay. A stroke killed him moments later.
Five years on, Kate rides her late father’s motorbike across the country, homeless, broke, and angry at Bo for leaving her with this. The curse begins as a chafe on the soles of her feet, bruise-like colors that shift like a lava lamp, and creeps upward the longer she remains in one place, easing only when she moves on. Fleeing town after Bo’s wake, she never finished high school and has not been home since. She haunts libraries in every new town, questioning librarians about curses, and posts photos of her bruised legs on forums. Her search has turned up three others. Samuel, a gay man in Durham, was cursed when his dying mother urged him toward a nice girl and children; his hands bruise when he goes too long without dating, and he sometimes considers giving in. A paranoid Canadian called A.J. blocks her. Geraldine Hewett, a retired science teacher in Arizona, was cursed when her dying daughter Lucy told her she would find God; Geraldine goes to church constantly, has made her peace, and threatens to shoot Kate if she keeps trying to break the curse.
Kate dreams of the curse killing her and of a moth she once cupped in her hands as a child, which Bo told her probably died from the touch. Now she heads to Wisconsin, where a forum contact, dog_lover_vi, claims to understand how curses work. This turns out to be Violet, a paint-stained woman walking two dachshunds. Violet asks Kate to tell her what she already knows, and Kate recounts Bo’s final moments. She realizes that each curse came from someone who loved the cursed person. A curse, she says, is just a blessing you can’t leave. Violet agrees and tells her Bo’s curse still holds her because she still loves him and cares what he would think. To break it, she has to get over it, however she can.
Kate calls Samuel from Violet’s phone, leaves Violet Geraldine’s name, and rides back west. The chafe flares the moment she crosses into Washington. She passes the grain silos, the train tracks, and the library, and stops at the baseball field where she photographed Bo. She sits against the chain-link fence where he once posed. The curse climbs faster than ever, reaching her stomach and then her ribs, but she feels no panic and no anger at Bo or herself. Violet believes the nightmares are the curse’s way of protecting itself, and Kate gambles that the only way out is through. Closing her eyes, she imagines both a fresh grave and a phoenix spreading new wings. Either way, she thinks, freedom. She thinks “En garde, Bo,” and stays.
Tia Tashiro is a multiracial Science Fiction and Fantasy writer hailing from the Pacific Northwest. She has won a Derringer Award and been a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Sturgeon, and Astounding Awards for her short fiction. By day, she works in cognitive science; by night, she writes; and in between, she dabbles in stained glass and juggling, though never at the same time. Her short fiction is published in Uncanny, Clarkesworld, and Apex, among other venues. Find her at tiatashiro.com.