CZM Book Club: Girls Who Look Through Glass, by Alex Smith

Summary

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It Could Happen Here: CZM Book Club — "Girls Who Look Through Glass" by Alex Smith

Date: March 15, 2026
Podcast: It Could Happen Here (Cool Zone Media/iHeartPodcasts)
Episode: Book Club: Girls Who Look Through Glass
Host & Narrator: Cool Zone Media Team

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Cool Zone Media Book Club spotlights "Girls Who Look Through Glass", a short story by Alex Smith from the 2022 collection Arc Dust. The story blends literary and speculative fiction, following Vonda Ray, a co-op worker in West Philadelphia, as she is swept into a surreal, Afrofuturist adventure mixing themes of grief, race, memory, and radicalization. The book club is framed as a “read-along” where listeners need not have read the story—the host reads it aloud, interweaving commentary and centering the lived experiences and perspectives of marginalized people.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting and Character Introduction (02:43–05:00)

• Atmosphere: The story is set in a gentrified, bougie co-op, saturated with performative wokeness and packaged radicalism (“artisanal biscuits ... bacon-infused gluten-free Sriracha bars”, 02:43).
• Protagonist: Vonda Ray, Black woman, co-op worker, “wields her box cutter over these items like a samurai with her sword” (03:00). She’s both part of and alienated from the space, contending with the absurdities of white liberal consumerism and invisible labor.
• Quote:
  "But I do exist, she says out loud, snapping out of her reverie. Where am I?" —Narrator (04:10)

2. Isolation and Microaggressions (05:00–08:00)

• Socio-cultural Friction: The narrative explores Vonda’s sense of erasure as the only Black woman in her living situation and at work, feeling unseen in a ‘progressive’ context.
• Microaggressions: Moments such as Vonda’s exasperation with ingredient-checking customers, or feeling like “being stuck in the Gravitron at a carnival, dizzying, crushing weights slamming her against the wall” (15:54).
• Quote:
  "Being the black girl in an all white community house in West Philadelphia feels like being stuck in the Gravitron at a carnival, dizzying, crushing weights slamming her against the wall..." —Narrator (15:54)

3. Surreal Invasion: Ghosts & The Threat of Erasure (08:00–22:00)

• Security Footage Incident: Vonda and Chef spot a mysterious, staticky woman in a trench coat on the store’s security tapes—the supernatural intrudes on the mundane (08:30–11:20).
• Quote:
  “The woman in the trench coat leaps suddenly at them, her mouth wide, gnarled and grotesque, her fingers long and wiry. They both jump. Chef loses her cigarette, nearly falling out of her chair. The screen turns to fuzz and static, then black.” —Narrator (11:00)
• Manifestation: Later, a ghost—ephemeral, made of static and light—appears to Vonda, warning her:
  “We are beings of light. We mean you no harm. But the Dark Ones are coming. The Ragnaroks, the Trimetric Chimera, the monastic order of the Temporal Knights, those who bear no name except the name of the all acclaimed, everything — the men.” (21:32)

4. Afrofuturist Vision & Ancestral Combat (25:54–32:00)

• Dreamlike Shift: Vonda is transported to a mythic, ancestral African scene, where she is both herself and a “Virgin Princess”, wielding power against colonial/erasing forces.
• Intersectionality: The story layers time, identity, personal and ancestral trauma, and the fight for memory’s survival.
• Quote:
  “You are no mere girl, Vonda Alicia Ray of Western Philadelphia. You are the Steam Child, the Slave Liberator, the Two Spirit Warrior Woman… the Planeswalker, the Death Dealer, the comedic memetic virgin princess who rides the dragon beasts from the East.” —Ghoster (35:45)

5. Climax: Cosmic Restoration and Aftershock (38:40–42:30)

• Final Confrontation: A showdown occurs between Vonda, the Ghoster, and the erasing “men in black.” The Ghoster explodes in a burst of cosmic energy that shakes the very foundation of Vonda’s home and sense of self.
• Aftermath: Chef comforts Vonda, both forever changed by their brush with the supernatural.
• Quote:
  “Chef and Vonda cling to each other, tears streaming from their faces, and then—vmp. The light disappears, the debris falls… Chef pulls away and looks at Vonda, a loving, calming look, the kind of look that acknowledges that the life of the person in front of her will never be the same.” —Narrator (43:10)

6. Meta-Reflection: Commentary and Author’s Note (43:50–45:10)

• Hazel’s Take:
  “Vonda’s struggles with the hypocrisy and just plain silliness of the food she’s selling and its implicitly packaged politics really grabbed me. This was a time in my life when I was also being radicalized by grief ... I still firmly feel everyone who buys cage-free eggs needs to also be a prison abolitionist.” —Hazel, team contributor (43:53)
• Host’s Analysis: The story is celebrated for its metaphor of being drawn into greater struggles, of everyday life suffused with historical weight and collective memory.
  “I like stories that infuse our normal, everyday world with the weight that they actually carry. The weight that we are all part of history, that we are part of this grand story that continues… it made me think about a bunch of things, but that’s what I’m going to go with.” —Narrator (44:41)
• Author Alex Smith’s Perspective:
  Smith notes the story originated in zine form within a Philly-based Afrofuturist collective, mixing “fun SFF stuff” with the inescapable politics of marginalization and memory, inspired by lived experience and cultural activism.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Existential Erasure:
  "I’m erased here, she told Caroline over a bowl a few nights ago. Just, I don’t know. Like how did I get here, you know?" —Vonda (16:10)
• On Responsibility and History:
  “Despite the fact that, oh, I’m just some girl from Philadelphia. But I like stories that infuse our normal, everyday world with the weight that they actually carry. The weight that we are all part of history.” —Narrator/Host (44:41)
• On Politics and Storytelling:
  “It’s difficult for me to shed politics, whatever that is, post Obama, and just write pew pew zap zap. Especially because I write about marginalized people because politics are our lived experiences, the way we move through the world, the way we exist. Apparently all that is political.” —Alex Smith, Author (45:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------| | 02:43 | Start of story; Vonda at the co-op | | 08:30 | Supernatural emerges in security footage | | 15:54 | Vonda reflects on erasure in communal house | | 21:32 | Ghoster warns Vonda of cosmic danger | | 25:54 | Mythic, ancestral time-jump | | 35:45 | Ghoster reveals Vonda's cosmic/ancestral identity | | 43:53 | Hazel’s commentary on politics & co-op life | | 44:41 | Host reflects on history, responsibility, memory | | 45:10 | Alex Smith explains his intentions & influences |

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Final Reflections

• Themes: The story seamlessly blends speculative tropes with urgent social commentary—alienation, the burden of history, erasure, the struggle to preserve marginalized memory, and the surreal weight of identity as activism.
• Narrative Tone: Wry, vivid, political, emotionally raw; uses humor and horror in equal measure.
• Host’s Takeaway: Alex Smith’s mix of Afrofuturist invention with the lived politics of grief, labor, and belonging elevates Girls Who Look Through Glass beyond “pew pew zap zap” sci-fi into a meditation on survival, resistance, and community.
• Author’s Context: The story emerges from collaborative, grassroots art movements in Philadelphia. Smith emphasizes politics as inextricable from the lived experience of marginalized creators, giving the story both specificity and universal resonance.

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Links:

• [Arc Dust (Rosarium Publishing)]
• Metropolarity Collective
• [Find Alex Smith on Patreon/Instagram: @theyarebirds]

Next Week: Stay tuned for the next Book Club pick.

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Transcript

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[Narrator / Storyteller]

call zone media book club Book Club Book Club hello and welcome to the Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. And this week we have a tour de force from an author, artist and musician named Alex Smith. It's called Girls who Look Through Glass and it's From Alex's phenomenal 2022 collection, Arc Dust from Rosarium Publishing. There's so much in this story to be excited about. It has incredibly niche radical cultural references. It has a main character who brandishes a box cutter as her blade of choice. It has white people being extra white. It has divine metaphors for the experience of grief or of being newly called into radical movements or I don't actually totally know what the metaphor is exactly about. It's up to you because that's the beauty of reading and it's what makes this story so good. So let's get into it. Girls who Look Through Glass By Alex Smith Packs of artisanal biscuits stacked in several rows, shrink wrapped and dusty rows of organic pickled sauerkraut in reclaimed mason jars. She wields her box cutter over these items like a samurai with her sword, ripping through splintered cardboard boxes down the aisles decorated with rows of burlap sacks filled with bacon infused gluten free Sriracha bars and oatcakes in cellophane bags adorned with pictures of old white men on horses. She slits the top of a package with one precise gentle glide, ignoring the picture of a knife with a ghostbuster slash through it, her blade gently grazing a packet of caramelized seitan chips. She then snaps the blade back in its metal sheath and glides the thing into her back pocket. It's a delicate act of violence. The aisles are quiet tonight. Minutes ago they were a yammering mix of gentrifiers glued to their cell phones on conference calls and soccer moms shrewish in their investigation of every ingredient in the packs of incense and the bags of frozen kale lining their carts. The only time it seemed to her that any of them cared about whether something was organic or free range was if enough of the horde was within earshot. They all seemed to compete for airtime. Bearded hipsters with their own grocery bags made of hemp rope, hippie nannies in thrifted sundresses still caked in dirt from repairing bikes all day or planting bok choy in the hydroponic garden they started in the cemetery behind a school. Ma', Am, that's it's not free range. It's lettuce, she'd say, tucking a whittled down pencil behind her ear, straightening her apron, backing away incrementally, trying to blend back into the background as if she never existed. But I do exist, she says out loud, snapping out of her reverie. Where am I? A quick look around at the shelves, some barren and scattered, some so sloppily haphazard now, melting frozen soy shark fin dangling over a row of numinose cookies and botanical powdered nutrient bath sites, supplements tossed behind cans of overpriced Amy's Three bean soup that she might have wondered out loud if any of that postgraduate school money they were earning could afford her customers some manners. She let out a snort. Oh yeah, inventory. She lifts herself off of her knees, dusts herself off habit checks for her box cutter. Get a hold of yourself, Vonda. Most nights were spent in the back room, sitting with Chef, watching her chain smoke as she scrolls through reels of security tape, looking for anything odd she might have missed on her shift. Hey, baby girl, chef calls to Vonda, patting the chair beside her as if to say sit, letting out sick, ropey streams of smoke with every word she barks. A white girl from the northeast who battled through the meth epidemic unscathed. Chef's presence is commanding. Her belly is a mound of asymmetrical flesh easing around her overalls in a liquid swim. Chef's fingers are sawn off, sticks wracked with jaundice and dirt, her hair a swath of tangled grease. Chef laughs, points a cigaretted hand at her monitor while Vonda eases into the doorway. This girl, she says, still chuckling. This girl in the goddamn trench coat. What a goddamn creeper. Vonda takes a step or two towards the monitor. She pulls back her long dreads and squints tightly, focusing. There's a woman on the screen in a long black trench coat. Yes, and a black, wide brimmed hat. Vonda thinks the woman on the monitor looks ridiculous. Who is that? She asks Chef. What? I don't know. I thought you knew, chef retorts, more amused than astonished. She just sort of appears on the screen over here every time you do. Like she scrolls. Yeah, like right here you're spraying down the apples. And she just sort of stands there, like hovering or some shit I don't know. You're telling me you don't know her? Nah. Vonda whispers as the hair on her back gently ripples. Nah, I don't know that woman. Oh Jesus Christ. The woman on the screen seems to coruscate as she moves, her body smeared with traces of staticky black lines. The mystery woman, this vague creature. She looks like a smudge of clotted ink barely cohesive, her every movement a streak. Did you just see that? See what? She's just standing there. What? Chef looks at Fonda with concern. You alright, baby girl? Vonda usually balks when Chef calls her baby girl and feels unfamiliar and a little forced, ripped from a butch to English dictionary, but this time feeling a little woozy. Vonda lets it slide without any remarks or turn of the lip. Vonda is transfixed on the security monitor. The woman of static stops moving suddenly in the middle of rummaging through apples, straightening up and smoothing out her coat, turning until she seems to be facing the camera, peering through the monitor screen. Her eyes are small beads swimming around underneath thick horned rims. She looks directly into the camera, her lips like a total blur, moving rapidly as if speaking in tongues. Whoa, okay, that's different. Chef yells. Is this some kind of prank, Vonda? It's like she knows we watching her or some shit. Like now, in real time. Chef's voice quiets as if she realizes the ridiculousness of her own statement. Honestly, I swear I've never seen her in my life. Vonda exclaims, panicking. Vonda can feel her breath getting shorter, her words quavering, bouncing and tingling off the backroom walls like metallic feathers. She moves nervously closer to where Chef's sitting, bending down and nearly shoving her face into the screen. Vonda gets so close that a waft of the smoky husk it's cardamom and carcinogen emanating off of Chef seems to float there in the space around her like an aura. The woman in the trench coat leaps suddenly at them, her mouth wide, gnarled and grotesque, her fingers long and wiry. They both jump. Chef loses her cigarette, nearly falling out of her chair. The screen turns to fuzz and static, then black and then back to the serenity of the co op where hippies and stay at home dads with large headed white babies in cloth sings on their backs frolic amidst vegan peanut chews and kale chips. But you saw that though, right? Vonda asks Chef with a tremor snaking through her voice. I'm not. I'm not just seeing things am I? I don't know. That was fucking surreal. What am I even seeing, Baby Girl? Vonda unfolds a chair leaning on the wall and slumps down in it beside her co worker. She cups her face in her hands and sighs deeply after a moment with Chef staring at her as if Vonda would provide an explanation somehow, magically perhaps, to the weird shit they'd both seen. Chef, I don't know. Vonda huffs. She leans back, reaching for Chef's pack of cigarettes. One left. She pops the Lucy out and gently tosses the pack at Chef, who, startled, catches it in her nicotine stained yellowing fingers. And stop calling me that. I call everybody that, chef responds, turning back to the monitor, her voice a muted murmur. And do you know who will always call you Baby Girl in a maternal but still kind of stilted way? That's right. It's the products and services that support this show because they love you so very dearly. But the confines of capitalism must always keep them at arm's distance. Here's Ads.

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support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds and options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosure is [e-mail] Disclosures Flag football

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[Narrator / Storyteller]

And we're back. Vonda Rae leans against the wall behind the co op. Her backpack is filled with pre rotting potatoes, some bottles of a discontinued brand of cumin, coriander, oregano, all spice with Gwyneth Paltrow's face on them and a bundle of scallions that were, she finally admits to herself, just cold jacked off the rack. She smokes a cigarette. Chef leaves the store too with two other co workers. Hey. Vonda pulls a hit off the cigarette. Hey, all done in there? Yeah. Chef bangs the heavy door shut, then pounds at it with her fist. This bitch is secure. She leans into Vonda's ear. No fucking ghost creeps in this rat trap on my shift. Believe that? Chef smiles a breathy smile, puts her hand on Vonda's shoulder. You gonna be alright? Yeah. Vonda manages to smile back. Yeah, I'm good. She watches Chef and their Two co workers amble down 49th street recounting their day, ruminating about shitty customers and the dilapidated point of sale systems, repeat failures, and as they disappear around the corner, Florence street, she turns her attention to the tendrils of smoke she blows into the crisp night air. The moon is out, a reflecting pool of milk suspended in black, a weird mirror aimed at our hearts so we can see in the darkness, so we can see our own souls. Vonda gets a text from one of her roommates. Are you coming? You're supposed to bring cardboard from the co op dumpster, she texts back. Not tonight. You of all people should be there tonight. With a frowny face emoji, she starts and stops a message several times, struggling to articulate what she feels. It's the same weight of emotion whenever she neglects a chore on the chore wheel or whenever she's a day late for rent, or when she's playing music a little too loudly on her laptop tucked in her room, wishing the day away when she's sitting in the living room having Cheerios with a friend and watching Akira on the so called community vcr, she's taking too much advantage of the space when she's in her room smoking weed with her on again, off again Caroline. She's being antisocial. Being the black girl in an all white community house in West Philadelphia feels like being stuck in the Gravitron at a carnival, dizzying, crushing weights slamming her against the wall, a palpable gravity with no tangible manipulator, just constantly being betrayed by an unseen force. I'm erased here, she told Caroline over a bowl a few nights ago. Just, I don't know. Like how did I get here, you know? Caroline followed Vonda's grand gesture of here by looking around the room. Posters of Pat Benatar, a book on the Situationists, a pile of band T shirts with names like Filth and Pig Destroyer littering the floor. I don't know, cuz, caroline hummed, exhaling her slow Southern drawl untainted by two years of living in Philly, eking out across lips so dark they were black. Seems like you'd fit right in here. Vonda smiled. She liked the way Caroline's voice reminded her of the women she knew from the south, women who could weave a mosaic in cornrows, whose sweet tea poured out of a jug like cotton candy. The question is, Ms. Thing, Caroline said, putting the blunt out on a makeshift tin can ashtray and removing her oversized African print top in what seemed like one motion. What the hell am ah doing here? They grinned at each other. Vonda's foot grazed Caroline's leg, her toes walking up her friend's shin. Come here and find out. And now, while her roommates gather in the living room, hands sticky with glue and palms covered in ink, she's in that space again, desperately seeking something to give her control over her life, to give her space to scream. Vonda turns her phone on again. She's going to put an end to this shit. Yeah, she'd worked enough hours at the co op, saved a little cash. She'd stay on Caroline's couch for a week or two until she could come up with the remainder for a deposit. The worst she figured was that, yeah, she had stayed at the shelter before and yeah, she could sell her cousin's broken bike for parts. So it was okay. It was time to go. And she was going to do it through a text message. Sure, a taste of their own note leaving angry text messaging, Facebook shaming, medicine in all caps. Vonda would scream. This time for sure, not just in pursuit of a metaphorical truth. On her phone's screen, the letters swirl around in a strange soup. They dance like embers, then erupt. Leaping from the phone itself. Pixels form a dust cloud, like a swirl of a hundred star particles pulled from everywhere, coalescing until they are a static body. A girl, a girl of static, meshy dust and cosmic ephemera appears before Vonda, radiating shattered light. A ghost. Do not be afraid of me, please. I don't have much time. This can't be fucking real. Vonda sinks to her knees. The ghost being swirls about her, an ionized creature, half there, flickering. Vonda reaches to touch it. But no, I don't think you should touch me. Please, we haven't much time. What? Are you the woman from the store from before? No, I am not.

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[Narrator / Storyteller]

There were others. Panic strikes. The ghost woman's already tinny, darkly radioactive voice. She's phasing in and out. Please, we are beings of light. We mean you no harm. But the Dark Ones are coming. The Ragnaroks, the Trimetric Chimera, the monastic order of the Temporal Knights, those who bear no name except the name of the all acclaimed, everything, the men. The radiant being casts its gaze up and behind Vonda. It freezes, hovering there. It's lightning, pulsing now in and out from bright flash to dull glimmer. If it's possible for a ghost to turn pale, that's what Vonda would be seeing it do now. But do you know what will never jump scare you? It's certainly not these corny ass ad transitions that we write in that disrupt the flow of the narrative. Couldn't be them. All of the products and services that sponsor the show are the perfectly approachable kinds of divine and not the scary kinds of divine. Here's Ads.

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[Public Investing Sponsor]

support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures Flag Football

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is exploding and IFLAG is leading the way as the Guinness World Record Holder. Iflag hosts premier flag football tournaments nation nationwide for boys, girls, high school girls and adults. From first time players to elite competitors, iflag delivers top level competition, unforgettable experiences and a community built around the game. Ready to be part of it? Join the movement, find your tournament and learn [e-mail] that's iflag.org let's talk about modern home shopping.

[Redfin Advertiser]

It's sort of become a fun side hobby. Right scrolling listings at night dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script with listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app. You can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it? That's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise, and Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win. Not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com.

[Narrator / Storyteller]

And we're back. Vonda slowly stands up, turns around. Two bodies emerge from the black void of a shadow, their every step like a scratch on concrete. Their faces not quite like those of men, partially obscured by scarves, hidden under long brimmed hats and high button trench coats and horn rimmed glasses are scaly and wet. Say it. One of them hisses. Say it, child. The other whispers, a husky dark scratch of a voice. We're the men whose name is pitched black. We're the ones who drink to death. The stars. Then a third emerges, the woman from the security video. Her, her form like a lumpen snake, a stepless shuffle of feet obscured by her trench coat dragging the floor. Say who we are, she demands. No. Perhaps you will drink, but not of this light. The Ghost Woman bursts into a searing light, an explosion that shatters the car windows around them. When the light dims, there's blackness. The Ghost Woman is a crystallized glass shell, her torso large smoky black onyx. She falls to the ground. Vonda lunges to grab her, bracing herself for the catch. The Ghost Woman looks heavy, but when Vonda embraces her, she realizes that the Ghost Woman is soft as gossamer and nearly as light as the air around them. Vein like cracks weave up the creature's arm and shoulders and back from only such a gentle touch of Vonda's well worn box, tearing blunt, rolling fingers. Give her to me, child. The men in black coats are hovering over them. Opal shadows warp around them.

[Devlukia from A Really Good Cry]

No.

[Narrator / Storyteller]

They scream when they sense that Vonda has no intention of handing over the Ghost Woman so freely. They lurch for her with one swift motion Vonda snatches her box cutter from her back pocket with one hand, holding the ghost woman with her other, and Vonda is on a patchy grass plain. She is being carried in a cage like carriage by hulking men, all smoldering, all coal skinned and barely clothed. The sun rides high and drifts on its own vibratory heat, stroked mirages. The men stop as Vonda gasps with wildly, as if she has emerged from the sea itself. Her eyes search the space. In the reflection of shiny tin bangles that adorn the carrier cage she sees herself. She is draped in shimmering playful accoutrements like a North African queen, perhaps jewelry and colorful clothes wrapped tightly around her. But is that her? She looks closer and the woman reflected back is jet black, shaven, with eyes so watery they seem about to burst. She's beautiful, Vonda whispers, raising her hand to the reflection, the reflection doing the same. We must protect the Virgin Princess. Virgin Vonda says aloud. She opens the curtain and through its veil she sees an army amassing over the horizon.

[Devlukia from A Really Good Cry]

Whoom.

[Narrator / Storyteller]

The carrier cage lands with a thud on the ground. A hatch is opened and a wrinkled, gnarled hand pokes its way through to her. Protect the Virgin Queen. A cackling voice emits. The hand gently yanks Vonda out into the sun soaked world. She is the one who should be protecting us. She is the one who has spent her life in the king's glass house, fed the knowledge of the ancestors, she who has fought dragons in pits of living entrails since the age of two. Let her pass her sword through the bosom of our enemy with the might of Isis herself. The woman is frail, a small thing, hunchbacked. Her gown's heavier than she is. The old crone of a woman ambles over towards a small thatched quiver and pulls from it a small sword. She hands it to Vonda, staring deep into her eyes, past the eyes of the virgin princess that Krone perhaps once knew, and into the eyes of Vonda, the co op girl herself. It's time now, child, the old woman says calmer, knowingly, one bony hand atop Vonda's with her other hand holding the unsheathed bladed end of a sword. Vonda takes the sword. Reluctantly. She looks from it and then to the soldiers, to the woman, then finally to the gathering of large grotesque white men carrying horn shaped muskets across the horizon, edging violently ever closer, the hooves of horses and giraffes and elephants sounding through the veldt, getting louder until they're like jackhammers on the West Philly street at 6:30 in the morning. The white men's muskets crack the still quiet air and beside Vonda the men in war paint and loin cloth cloth fall. They are black drops of rain hitting the earth in death. Vonda faces the old crone who has gone into a smile even though her soldiers fall to an unknown magic with a sulfur discharge. Now, the crone whispers. Now she steps aside to let Vonda face the war as it swirls around them, a pale, ashen, snarling bush faced man on a harnessed lion right in her face, the beast sleeping, tongue licking her eyebrow. Strike now. Vonda the virgin princess swings her blade at the lion, catching it in the belly and with the same twist of the box cutter, one being in black falls down to the ground in a heap, blackness spewing out of him, once as thick blood like liquid, then as evaporating inky shadow stuff. A deafening scream emits from it as if it has never experienced harm before. Around the corner a stream of men on motorbikes blast up the street. A gaggle of frat boys drunkenly looking for a pub stumble up the sidewalks. An army of gay boys laughing at women loaded down with grocery bags and a few children shoulder past them, the perfect cover to get away. Vonda, on instinct, grabs the now a fine glass ghost woman eschewing the streets, cutting through backyards and over fences. Vonda races forward, eyes ahead, her one free hand on her box cutter now searching for her keys. We're going out. The vigil's tonight. But it's almost midnight. Oh my God, it's an all night vigil. Robot Squad is going to. They're doing a puppet show. Isn't? Wait, isn't this a peaceful vigil put on by Black Lives for Justice? What is that? An art project? Vonda forgot that she's holding a glass woman in her hands. Yeah, she says, looking past her nosy roommates to the stairs. An art project, sure. She beats a path up the stairs, leaving unspoken chides lodged in the agape mouths of her judgmental roommates and into the hallway, nearly knocking her room door off the hinges. She closes it behind her, tosses her bag on the floor and lays the ghost woman on her mattress. Vonda can see her now. The ghost woman's hips are wide, her chest ample, her lips lush. She seems quite large, almost 7ft tall. The cracks in her shell slowly close, sealed with dim thinning radiance. Vonda sits in the corner, murmuring to herself. Her roommates, they of the chore wheel, of the dumpstered vegan shrimp, of the combination organic cotton knitting circle China Mieville Book Club will never understand any of this. Hell, she thinks to herself, I don't even understand this. Yeah, what the fuck is any of this? She edges closer to the still frozen woman of ghost and glass. What are you? Vonda whispers to her. She gets a buzz on her cell phone. It snaps her out of her trance. Vonda scrambles for her phone. Digging through her bag, she finds it and on the screen is a glowing face. It's her. I am a ghoster. The phone speaks with pixelated digital lips, the crackle and buzz from before gone and replaced with a voice, warm and weighty. I know. I'm sorry. This is very startling. I had to warn you. They are here to erase you, to take your stories, to fold them into the secret tombs of the past and then toss them into the abyss of forgotten knowledge deep within the wells of nothingness of the no universe crap. Vonda snaps. She's suddenly angry at herself for not paying attention to her little sister's relentless meandering soliloquies about Star wars and hobbits and warp drives and other nonsense. It would help, she opines, if I had some kind of frame of reference for this shit. I what do you want from me? I'm just a girl who works at a co op. You are no mere girl, Vonda Alicia Ray of Western Philadelphia. You are the Steam Child, the Slave Liberator, the Two Spirit Warrior Woman, the the Planeswalker, the Death Dealer, the comedic memetic virgin princess who rides the dragon beasts from the East. Right, the virgin princess right back there behind the co op. It was like I was transported to another place, like I traded bodies with someone. And yes, you are all of those things, my child. And I am a Ghoster, the physical manifestation of the ephemera of the souls of the of lost guardians of ancestors, sent here to protect you by a powerful sorcerer, to guide you on a new journey. My new journey. Yes. You will save memory. You will save all of us. You will save the universe. A knock at the door. Hey, you in there? It's Chef. What's she doing here? One minute. Are you naaaked? Chef sings. Come on, I'm just playing. I came back here to check on you. You alright? I'm fine, vonda says, scrambling for a blanket or something to throw on the fragile lump of the ghoster. I'm fine. Just give me a minute. Her phone turns brighter and brighter until a burst of light plunges from it. Sparks fly out of it and light loops towards the Ghoster, coating it with living energy. Energy. God damn it. This thing is not subtle at all. Vonda yells as the Ghoster rises towards the ceiling. It is a swirl of cosmic brightness, of neon on fire. Vonda. What the fuck? I'm coming in. Chef barges in just as the Ghoster explodes. Its eruption is high, piercing the ceiling, blasting through the roof and into the night sky. Whoa. That's that thing from before. Not exactly, Vonda retorts, bracing against the shaking walls. It just fucking blew up. Yeah, Vonda affirms over the din. She. She does that. A swirl of energy beans pulse from the Ghoster's rising body as the roof shards crumble and burn in the afterglow. The Ghoster is sucked up into the vortex along with shoes and coats and pencils and records. Chef and Vonda cling to each other, tears streaming from their faces, and then vmp. The light disappears, the debris falls to the ground and they are surrounded by darkness. They sit on the bed, huddled together, whimpering, quivering. Chef pulls away and looks at Vonda, a loving, calming look, the kind of look that acknowledges that the life of the person in front of her will never be the same. Vonda looks at her co worker for a second and in Chef's deep, cigarette soaked visage she sees beauty. She sees the commonality between them dissipating by the second. And then, after a brief pang of dread remembering that she left a few containers of oat milk in an unopened box but by the dairy fridge, an act Vondo is sure she'd be written up for. Her eyes narrow in focus. As to all of this, she sees an ending. And that's the ending of the story. The story has ended. Welcome back, gentle listener. This is a rich story is bursting at the seams with characterization and scenery and metaphor. Hazel, who helps behind the scenes, says about this quote, I also have worked at multiple bougie food co ops, so Vonda struggles with the hypocrisy and just plain silliness of the food she's selling. And it's implicitly packaged politics really grabbed me. This was a time in my life that I was also being radicalized by grief. And I remember so firmly feeling that everyone who went out of their way to buy cage free eggs needed to also be a prison abolitionist. Still do. The Alice in Wonderland Stranger in a Strange Place format is a staple of short fiction, but the way that Alex uses this structure to describe, at least as I'm interpreting it, the feeling of being pulled into the movement, of being called into a struggle between the forces of justice and injustice. One so bigger than yourself and so far beyond your own control. Yeah, it's just fucking compelling. And Vonda's frustrations with her roommates, because they don't. And on some levels can't understand that even if they do have books about the situation or whatever. Because they're in it for the clout or the social aspect or for whatever. Yeah, Alex really just sticks the landing on that one. That's what Hazel has to say. What do I have to say about it? I liked the story even more on further readings. Right. Like, I liked it on the first reading. But on the first reading I kind of let it wash over me. And on the second reading I could kind of feel more what was happening. And yeah, it's just like. It's really well done. I really like this story. I like this idea of being called into this larger than life thing. Being called into, oh, I suddenly am responsible for memory against forgetting. Despite the fact that, oh, I'm just some girl from Philadelphia. But I like stories that infuse our normal, everyday world with the weight that they actually carry. The weight that we are all part of history. That we are part of this grand story that continues. And we're all on different sides of these struggles. And we're all just doing this thing. This idea of being like you of West Philadelphia, as if that's as amazing of a place to be from as some place in North Africa or some far off and distant place. Because it is right. Wherever we are from is something. And we can have this weight in our lives if we acknowledge it. I don't know. That's what it made me think about. It actually made me think about a bunch of other stuff too. But that's what I'm going to go with. Alex, the story's author, has this to say. The story Girls who Look Through Glass first appeared in a long out of print split scene I made with Kame Ayoia, also known as More Mother from Black Quantum Futurism, Irreversible Entanglements. We had been in a collective together called metropolarity. Metropolarity.net they used SCI fi and Afrofuturism as a form of activism, knowledge seeking, distributing and art practice. And we passed these out at events like More Mothers, Rockers and the readings I put together, like Laser Life and Chrome City. When it came time to do Arc Dust, which itself started as a zine, I knew this story would be one I wanted to refine a bit and include in the collection. It's definitely one of the weirder stories amongst a whole lot of weird lol. I had been doing a lot of spoken word when I wrote these stories 1015 years ago and I made a hard pivot to not only writing sci fi and fantasy, but reading it in public. It's been an interesting journey. This particular story is mostly me wanting to write about a woman who experiences strange future, past, ancestral shifts, some time displacement and just general atmospheric stuff. Like I wanted it to be about the fun SFF stuff, but I couldn't help but also talk about microaggressions and colonialism. It's difficult for me to shed politics, whatever that is, post Obama and just write pew pew zap zap. Especially because I write about marginalized people because politics are our lived experiences, the way we move through the world, the way we exist. Apparently all that is political. Also, this story was written in like 2012, but it shares some similarities to an episode of Lovecraft Country. I've never read the book book where there are similar elements. A black woman visited by a metallic, ethereal woman who enables her to shift into ancestral time in Africa. I love that episode, but the more I thought about it I was like, wow, that really reminds me of my story Girls. Maybe I'm doing something right. Ha. And then Alex Smith's Bio Alex Smith, AKA Alexo Tarek, is a writer, artist, curator and quote unquote musician, noisemaker living in the cosmically kinetic city of Philadelphia. His work reflects that dichotomy stark beautiful, wrought with Afrotopian tension, avant garde fashion and assemblage and dynamic visual presentation. He is a founding member of the Philadelphia based sci fi arts collective Metropolarity Essential Personnel in Philadelphia's early Afrofuturist community. Smith won the 2020 Pew Fellowship of the Arts, presenting works such as his short story collection Arc Dust, Rosarian Publishing, his experimental art punk bands Rainbow Crime, Solarized Spectral Forces, Glitch Proverbs, the cyberpunk superhero indie comic series Black Vans, among others. His work appears in anthologies such as Stories for Chip, A Tribute to Samuel R. Delaney from Rosarium Black, Quantum Futurism Volume 2, Black Punk now from Soft Skull and the Black Fantastic Library of America. He invites you to join him in the next chromatic exploration of the unknown, his art a visual portal to that liminal space. Find [e-mail] theyarebirds or theyarebirds on Instagram. All right, see you all next week.

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[Narrator / Storyteller]

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[Devlukia from A Really Good Cry]

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