Laurie stands in front of a door. It’s old but solid, as many old things are. Whatever paint once covered it has long since worn away, and the wood beneath is striped, and furred with splinters. It is her very first door, of her very first day, of her very first job. Her ankles wobble over brand-new high heels, and her smart jacket is slightly itchy and entirely unsuited for the warm weather.

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“The Tentacle and You” was originally published in Nature Futures back in 2019. “Backers” is a PseudoPod Original “Your Honor, My Undead Client Opposes the Application to Probate His Estate” is a PseudoPod original. “Backers”: “My wife and her friends are obsessed with podcasts about serial killers – something I find it hard to understand. My kids are fans of various chirpy…

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PseudoPod 803: Them At Number Seventy-Four is a PseudoPod original. When body number four is discovered, Mrs Patterson thinks that surely now she and her husband will be caught. Days creep past, then a week. Two. Three. Their excitement and relief begins to fade. Once again, the desire blossoms, delicate at first, but growing bolder as the hours and days pass.

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“Laughter Among the Trees” was previously published by The Dark Magazine on February 1st 2021. The highway to the campground cuts through the granite Laurentian Plateau like a desiccated wound. It’s been twenty five years since I’ve retraced this road and, though the comfort stops along the route have been expanded and stream lined, the forest and rock remain the same…

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PseudoPod 801: The Bear Across the Way is a PseudoPod original. I paid no more attention to the bear than I would have any new neighbors. Despite what my husband might tell you, the fact that he was a bear played into my curiosity very little. It was his behavior that concerned me. The same behavior that would have concerned me of any new member to our community. And if people had…

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“The Parricide’s Tale” is an excerpt from a larger work, the notorious Gothic Novel Melmoth The Wanderer (1820) Wikipedia article on Melmoth The Wanderer This week’s quote It was in the midst of one of his most licentious songs, that my companion suddenly paused. He gazed about him for some time; and faint and dismal as the light was by which we beheld each other…

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“February Moon” originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies in May, 2020, and was the first in a series of monster stories I’m writing that take place in old Texas. Something killed our rooster and three of our brown hens during the night. Thin ice crusts the ground, and it breaks in delicate patterns as I step toward the scattering of feathers and bones.

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“Sometimes Boys Don’t Know” was originally published in the July 2021 issue of Nightmare Magazine. “Human Body as Compendium” is a PseudoPod original. “Never Enough Pockets” is a PseudoPod original Never Enough Pockets: body horror, self-harm “Human Body as Compendium”: “In moments of high anxiety I like to imagine that I can crack my skull open and take my…

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“New to It All” first appeared in the collection I Would Haunt You If I Could published in March of 2021 by Undertow. My first girlfriend, Niamh, was a scratcher. Saoirse wasn’t like that. The first time Niamh asked me to stay the night, she was testing me out. I can see that now, in retrospect. Nothing too scratchy to begin with. “I didn’t want to scare you away…

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“The Horse Leech Has Two Maws” was originally published in The Jewish Book of Horror This story deals with the Holocaust. This story has an academic frame and that the text on the website has a number of scholarly footnotes that provide additional context. The first footnote is “In Hebrew, alukah means “horseleech”—a type of leech with many teeth that feeds on the…

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