Fetch:
A 14 year old named Greg finds himself and some friends in an abandoned pizza place. He finds a toy dog there, it becomes attached to him, does stuff for him, both good and bad.
The story doesn't make much sense. Fetch not only knows Greg's wants, but somehow watches his movements. If this is the case, and Fetch decided to take Darrin's finger, the question of why he didn't also bring money is questionable. Fetch is not controlled like one controls a drone strike, he must make decisions on how to pick and choose particular things that he fetches, so why he chose the finger and not the money, when the money was foremost in mind and the *cause* of the desire for the finger, seems rather backward. Was Greg simply more people-focused? Was his desires idle? Or is Fetch evil?
Kimberly's death seems even more strange. Can Greg not abort a mission, can he thoughts about protecting Kimberly not penetrate Fetch's mind? And, further, this type of thing isn't done by Fetch coherently. Manuel, desired by Greg, is not killed; when Greg desires his friends Hadi and Cyril, the both of them are not mauled and carried to his room, and Greg must take days to text them into doing what he wants. And, if we may say that Fetch understood what Greg wanted Hadi and Cyril to do, then we must also think that Fetch understood what Greg wanted to do with Kimberly: work with her later on their project.
With the apparent death of Kimberly, we could say that Fetch has gone berserk: he wants revenge on Greg, I guess, and instead of killing his friends who Fetch has watched interact with him for days, or going to put the final blow on Darrin his stand-in father, he decides on the girl he loves for some reason, even though in real terms, their connection cannot be as strong as the connection with the others, for he has just begun to start talking to her. In that sense, then, Fetch wants to kill an innocent, but not an innocent to the story--for Darrin is innocent, of course--but an innocent to the reader, someone who is barely within the work and has characteristics most like Greg's than anybody else: Kimberly.
I suppose I didn't like this story. The message is probably good, however, for the whole point of the story--the ability to wield almost unlimited power through mental suggestion alone, like when he forced a situation in which he and Kimberly are put together in a group--seems inherently evil to me. It is coercion without coercion, it is attaching strings to others' and using them as puppets with them knowing you have done so; and, hence, it seems to treat people as if the were lifeless, as if they were nothing but ragdolls, and abuse of such a power is probably inevitable. The story cannot help but, therefore, corrupt Greg's desires through the use of Fetch, for Fetch is too easy, and Fetch is power if only he functioned as a better slave than he is capable of. Fetch is like Greg's plants but functionally capable of being controlled but not capable enough for comfort, so that what Greg learns, ultimately, is his own stupidity--that it is just too dangerous to mess around with this type of stuff, that some things must be kept in the closet (or, in this case, cubby hole)--yet that message, I feel, fails to hit a bull's-eye by not showing that the power Greg wants is itself disgusting.
Lonely Freddy:
Alec is a Dunning-Krueger. He doesn't know his sister, he doesn't know his parents, he doesn't know his life, and he doesn't know his own feelings; however, because he knows only a little about them, and has an internal agenda far stupider than most people, and thereby he thinks himself all-knowing and is entirely too suspicious of things that go against his pre-thought thoughts. Like any Dunning-Krueger, he also hates it when people denigrate his clearly inferior intelligence.
The story is mainly about his experience of his life and about his sister. He considers her faux-perfect, a creature that dissembles her true personality. His parents treat her as a princess, because she acts like one, and therefore he is angry; he feels his life is unfair, and even owns that he thinks himself uncared for (quite ironic, one must say). One day, this sister (Hazel) helps him get back at his parents, and a relationship slowly buds between them--a relationship filled with suspicious on one side (we all know whose).
By the end, a party occurs in which Hazel wins a Yarg Foxy that he really wanted and associated with her being 'spoiled'. He tried to rig it but failed, making him incredibly angry; he raves, and she gives him the toy (of course). This results in his eventual destruction of his idiotic idea, too bad he is condemned to die a long and painful death as a toy in the trash. (Although he rages first.)
In double irony, Alec refuses to believe his sister and turns into a Lonely Freddy, giving his lonely sister (who only wants his love) that which she desires--a companion--and putting him into the position that he always thought he was in: outside the family fold.
Also: Alec is like 15 and Hazel is like a 10 year old, how in the world does he have his particular prejudices?
Out of Stock:
This is a rather simple story about taking life into your own hands--as the old man who serves as a pseudo-father-figure says, one day you've got to stop farming and harvest. It is one of the more suspenseful stories in the book, too.