dear earthlings,
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”
Gustav Mahler
We are just coming out of winter hibernation here slowly in Indiana. I use the word hibernation hesitantly. This winter has not been restful. It has been cold, bleak, horrifying. While we have suffered through that I don’t think that most people have truly been awake with both eyes open here, or in the U.S. more broadly, for a long time. The little glass devils in our pockets have become something we depend upon to live and to sedate us from looking up. Hibernation isn’t quite the right word in that sense as hibernation has a biological necessity linked to it. The U.S. has become complacent.
We are in the midst of a fascist takeover of our country and we have forgotten what to do. People don’t dream, speculate, tell stories anymore. Myth, fable, tale used to shape action when we still told them around our hearths . That self mythologization has fallen to the wayside and we no longer know how to tell the story of ourselves. We let the ads on our screens tell our stories for us. We have forgotten who we are and what we do in times like this.
This collection is a trove of horror tales. Come sit by the fire with us, read them, let them wake you up a bit. Remind yourself what story does for us. Not all stories are the same functionally. Go find out what stories do for you and then go share some. Share some of your own, share old ones that you memorized as a kid, go share new ones bound with a cover and spine. We must wake up and sit together. Tend this fire. We must spin yarns about what a better world will look like so that we can strive towards it.
Best,
M.J. Woods
Contents
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After School
I look back. Landon won’t. In the window the monster lowers its gray muzzle. It might be grinning.
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Do Not Stand By My Grave, I Am Not There
Something came from deep inside her chest. A sound he’d never heard, and one he never wanted to hear again. Like every organ had ruptured and turned to liquid—and started to boil.
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It Grew Too Great
The strangest thing, Mr. Webber, was that each midnight, the feeling of being watched would stop.
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Night Work
Her boss, a doughy man named Howard, had received me at their tiny Midtown office an hour and a half before with the kind of sweaty furtiveness one would normally expect of a liquor-store thief or a public masturbator.
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Swarm Behavior
“I’m sorry I got a concussion on our fucking honeymoon,” Greg said. Lauren let out a warm, genuine laugh. It shocked him. Felt like a different woman stood next to him, the one he’d been with all these years.