Low-Limb High

by Tom C. Underhill

Caroline’s brother ran away from home shortly after her dad walked out. She doesn’t know why either left.

Then she finds her dad’s watch.

It’s not particularly pretty, and it doesn’t tell time anymore, but when she inserts the family heirloom into her home-made dioramas, the shoeboxes’ static scenes come to life and reenact the series of events that led to her household’s disintegration.

“Low-Limb High” first appeared in Bewildering Stories, issue 339, June 2009.

16 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 4, 2012

About the author

Tom C. Underhill (real name: Nick Wisseman) lives in Bear Lake, Michigan with his wife, daughter, fifty cats, twenty horses, and ten dogs. (Okay, so there are actually ten times less pets than that, but most days it feels like more). He's not quite sure why he loves writing twisted fiction, but there's no stopping the weirdness once he's in front of a computer. Eventually he hopes to merge this stubborn surrealism more fully with his academic training to produce something in the historical fantasy line. But for now, he's content with the purely speculative fiction he's published in magazines like Allegory, Battered Suitcase, Bewildering Stories, The Cynic Online Magazine, and Mysterical-E.

Reviews

[Infinite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Low-limb High starts out slow, as the story progresses the reader is slowly engaged. Each scene builds upon the next, until the final shocking ending. The reader is slowly pulled along with the protagonist, and when the answers to her questions are finally given the emotional upheaval caused by the revelation is felt. Low-Limb High is a story, about betrayal, secrets and the harm that can be done by a person’s actions. Low-Limb High shows the same High-Quality and engaging writing that is present in many of this author’s previous works.
Disclaimer: Story was obtained from author for review

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of Underhill's collection "Outcasts" and this one was really interesting. The concept was so strong, but I kept getting tripped up because I just had no sense of time or age-relation in the story. It may not bother everyone, but it was really distracting for me. The descriptions and allusions, the way it was built were so well done, but that confusion really took away from settling in completely.