Town's End

Town's End is a fantasy short story by Yukimi Ogawa, which can be read online at Strange Horizons. I found this a fascinating story, not at all what I expected. It was a fun read where strangeness beyond imagining happens right at the edge of a perfectly ordinary town. Flexibility is a useful ability. It begins:

At the counter of a marriage agency at the end of the town, I felt my lip twitch in spite of myself. "Pardon me, ma'am?"

"I need a male," the woman in front of me repeated. "I badly need to bear a child."

I looked down at the PC and tapped the corner of my mouth, hoping it would stop twitching. It didn't help. "Well, I see you're a very straightforward person. But perhaps that sort of statement could wait until you are closer to the man."

"But why?"

"It'd scare the man."

"Really? I didn't know."

I read this as part of the Once Upon a Time Challenge Short Story Quest.