I guess it’s never too early for Halloween vibes. Here are five horror stories that are worth your time.
I’m not sure if this is because I bought tickets to Evil Dead: The Musical, or just early Halloween stuff, but I’ve been reading a lot of short horror stories lately, both in print form and on the sites I follow. Here are a few online stories that I’ve loved lately:
You Work in the Worst Diner in Existence That’s Always Open for Business by Avitus B. Carle, in X-R-A-Y: This is a postapocalyptic horror comedy if that’s allowed to be a thing. It’s wild, gruesome and hilarious. I don’t want to spoil it, but it contains the sentence, “A man asks for an eyeball in his large glass of gasoline served with a bendy straw.”
The Husband Stitch is the first story in the Carmen Maria Machado collection Her Body and Other Parties. If you like that story, definitely check out the book. Read the review of the book for more about it.
Everything Got Worse by Kelli Dianne Rule in Heavy Feather Review is somber and serious ghost story, and has two threads that come together in a heartbreaking way. Here’s the first paragraph:
The earth-moving machines had long sputtered out and all the workers were eating or sleeping so I got bored and decided to run off to explore the woods behind our construction site. Tall pines and old oak trees covered the floor in dry needles and acorns and when the crunching stopped underneath my shoeless feet, replacing itself with sticky sucking muck, I looked up and saw I’d come upon a section of really tall grass that went back farther than I could see. I noticed the cattails a little too late and that’s when the alligator darted out of the pond and ate me.
Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson in Electric Lit: this is about the lasting effects of a traumatic and puzzling childhood episode. I hadn’t read anything by Evenson before, but the atmosphere and use of repetition in that story is incredible. I’ll seek out more for sure.
Review: The Hands are Coming Too by Lindsay Comer in Maudlin House: a review of a fictional film that sounds a bit like Evil Dead. It’s clever and funny:
‘The Hands are Coming Too.’ (2023) is the unneeded sequel to 80’s box office flop turned reluctant cult classic ‘The Feetening.’
(and yes, if you’re wondering, that house in the photo at the top is the IT house)