The text “There are three children jumping over a can outside a bodega” begins the story even though, as a title, it’s not a direct part of the narrative. Why did you choose this particular opening and title? Did the idea come to you with the story’s inception, or did it happen with later edits?

I like to start my short stories by immediately taking a plunge with my audience, a phrase or a certain voice or tone that lets them know what kind of tale they’re getting into and to trust this voice. This notion, supported with a sense of immediate urgency, i.e., give them something or someone interesting to latch onto—guides most of my work. As a grad student at the University of Alabama, I picked this up by reading various short and flash fiction authors, including one of my professors, Michael Martone, who often uses every bit of the page to tell his story or amuse the audience—from the title, the author bio, footnotes, etc. I did a similar style with my flash story “My Sad Werewolf” in Split Lip Magazine.

The title and the story came about from four thoughts/moments last year when I wrote it. First, there’s this quote by a comedian, or at least I think it was a comedian, who said that their greatest fear in New York or LA wasn’t crime but rather some random person coming up to them with a hot mic and an iPhone asking them what they’re listening to or someone ready to prank them. While being the person on the street with a camera isn’t new, it’s the readily available access to that, the idea that anyone with a smartphone and stable camera work can create content where anyone can be turned into that “person of the day” based on someone’s carefully edited video is interesting. What kind of terror stems from that, I thought? The second was that, around this time, charity cosplay videos were popping up in my curated TikTok list and that guy who didn’t get into Julliard but had a million followers was also a thing. The latter also had content on living “cheaply,” like living in a shoebox New York apartment, buying groceries in Chinatown, and remarking how unique and exotic and strange the city was. He kept remarking how broke he was. When he didn’t get into Julliard, the New York Times did a profile on him. Days later, it was also revealed that he came from a rich family. The third was that while all this was going on, I would sometimes commute into Manhattan from Queens by taking the Long Island Railroad. There, standing at the westbound Queens Village LIRR station, I saw three Brown boys, probably no older than six years old, jumping over a closed iron gate outside a bodega. The final part was that I rewatched Nope. It was after the last moment that I had my title, and the rest helped me formulate my story.

Some of the historical narrative points are darker than others, adding depth to the story. Tell us something about the inspiration behind the tale and your choices.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the viewer, the viewed, and the consumer for this story. History has never been kind to what the majority consider strange, deem the Other. While today we look at photos of dehumanizing situations like human zoos in the early twentieth century and decry racism, we can find a similar practice in influencer YouTube videos where creators post attention grabbing content that ostracizes people or entire cultures to make a buck off the ad revenue (not to mention sponsorship and other incentives). Because it can be so lucrative, creators are motivated to shock and awe their audience to get their attention—even if that means Othering people for views. I thought about creating something where the people being viewed push back and give the viewer what they want, what they truly desire—the chance to partake in something real. In terms of literary works that also helped this story take shape, I read Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark and The Source of Self-Regard.

 The narrative voice is spot on, taking a cooler, more distant third-person approach that allows readers into the multiple realities of the moment—the boys, the content creator, the online audience. It reminded me of works by Le Guin and Jemisin, different explorations of the “real real.” Can you see yourself in the story? How much of Mark Galarrita ended up on the page?

Thank you so much, that’s such great praise! Haha, no, I couldn’t see myself as the narrator here. I’m a lot more anxious and grumpy with a dash of mumbling and bad jokes. For this voice, I was thinking of a cool, far-removed relative of the narrator from Edgar Allen Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. I imagined this contemporary millennial or Gen Z’er narrator speaking in a nonchalant tone; a narrator who is aware and overwhelmed by the normalized complex madness of the world that they have become sarcastic and partially numb to its small horrors.

Not only do you write prose, you have given yourself over to stage plays as well. Is there a particular work of genre fiction you would like to adapt to the stage, either your own work or another’s?

There are quite a few short works from authors that I admire that I’d love to adapt for the screen or the stage like Cadwell Turnbull’s “Jump,” Natalia Theodoridou’s “What It Sounds Like When You Fall,” “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience” by Rebecca Roanhorse, “Friday Black” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and “Spectral Evidence” by Victor LaValle, “Hard Mother” by Emma Törzs, “Gordon B. White is creating Haunting Weird Horror” by Gordon B. White, and plenty of others I’m missing. I don’t think I should be the one to adapt this, but I’d love to see someone adapt Vina Jie-Min Prasad’s Fandom for Robots.

What’s yet to come? What can readers expect from Mark Galarrita in 2024?

I’m revising my manuscript “Thanks for Your Service” and probably by the time of this publication, I’ll have sent it out for representation. Otherwise, I’ll continue to write and read here in Jamaica, New York. Right now, I’m reading Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang, which comes out this May.