by Zilla Novikov

Amniotic fluid drained from my lungs; as they filled with air, a nameless horror bloomed, and I shrieked.

Abigail Patel didn’t come back wrong.

She was always exactly like this.

My mind began to clear. I was a baby. I’d been born. Something was wrong.

Reincarnation should be a fresh start, a second chance, but Abigail is reborn with all her adult knowledge, cursed to relive childhood, repeat her sins.

Would Faye spare me? Recover herself? Change? I did not believe people changed. My most shameful, my ugliest shortcomings did not feel like choices; they couldn’t be changed like changing a shirt. They were unalterable. To depend on hope that Faye would fix herself in this life, as I never had in the prior one, was to risk too much.

Gyre tells the story of the cycle of abuse, how it perpetuates itself, the way that perpetrator and victim are bound together by the endless loop.

Abigail, ashamed, overwhelmed by self-loathing, doesn’t believe escape is possible.

Gyre is a complicated, fascinating read that troubles you long after you finish reading. Recommended reading for a dark January night.