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  MISCREATIONS: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors © 2020 by Written Backwards

  Anthology edited by Doug Murano & Michael Bailey; cover artwork & illustrations by HagCult; cover & interior design by Michael Bailey; foreword © 2020 by Alma Katsu; individual works © 2020 by individual authors, unless stated below.

  “Spectral Evidence” first appeared in Ploughshares, © 2017 by Victor LaValle; “Resurrection Points” first appeared in Strange Horizons, © 2014 by Usman T. Malik

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, recording, broadcast or live performance, or duplication by any information storage or retrieval system without permission, except for the inclusion of brief quotations with attribution in a review or report. Requests for reproductions or related information should be addressed to [email protected].

  The stories and poems within this collection are works of fiction. All characters, products, corporations, institutions, and/or entities of any kind in this book are either products of the respected authors’ twisted imaginations or, if real, used fictitiously without intent to describe actual characteristics. All lyrics are what you make of them.

  Written Backwards / www.nettirw.com

  eBook Edition

  Miscreations

  GODS, MONSTROSITIES & OTHER HORRORS

  Edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Alma Katsu

  A Heart Arrhythmia Creeping into a Dark Room

  Michael Wehunt

  Matryoshka

  Joanna Parypinski

  Butcher’s Blend

  Brian Hodge

  Operations Other Than War

  Nadia Bulkin

  One Day of Inside/Out

  Linda D. Addison

  One Last Transformation

  Josh Malerman

  Brains

  Ramsey Campbell

  You Are My Neighbor

  Max Booth III

  The Vodyanoy

  Christina Sng

  Imperfect Clay

  Lisa Morton

  Spectral Evidence

  Victor LaValle

  Ode to Joad the Toad

  Laird Barron

  Only Bruises Are Permanent

  Scott Edelman

  My Knowing Glance

  Lucy A. Snyder

  Paper Doll Hyperplane

  R.B. Payne

  Not Eradicated in You

  Bracken MacLeod

  Resurrection Points

  Usman T. Malik

  The Old Gods of Light

  Christina Sng

  Sounds Caught in Cobwebs

  M.E. Bronstein

  Umbra Sum

  Kristi DeMeester

  A Benediction of Corpses

  Stephanie M. Wytovich

  The Making of Asylum Ophelia

  Mercedes M. Yardley

  Frankenstein’s Daughter

  Theodora Goss

  Contributors

  Foreword

  Alma Katsu

  Psst, Gentle Reader. Yes, you, the one holding this book, trying to decide whether you’ll take it home with you. You’re looking for a good, long read, something to crack open as you settle into your favorite chair, a glass at your elbow. But a collection of stories about monsters? Is that likely to help you wind down in the evening, wash away the detritus of another long day at work? You waver; do you like stories about monsters? Not for you, dark scary tales about the boogeymen who haunt our dreams and daylight hours. Life is terrifying enough, you think. You don’t need any more monsters in your life.

  But that’s not true.

  Man and monster, monster and man: We are inseparable, twined together like ivy. If you dwell on it, the logic is obvious. Monsters couldn’t exist without man to will them into existence. Monsters are (nearly always) man’s creation, sprung from man’s mind. (We’ll get back to that parenthetical aside.)

  We blame monsters for the terrible things that happen in our lives. Monsters are responsible for the fright that comes out of the blue, the noise from the uninhabited basement, the weighty presence in the darkness at the top of the attic stairs. We’re told from childhood that monsters exist, in fairytales and in big, colorful picture books; in cartoons on television and in movies; in reality shows that hunt for ghosts and Bigfoot; even in commercials and advertisements. Before long, we don’t need anyone to tell us they’re real. We know it down to the marrow in our bones, and we’re afraid to look under our beds or in the recesses of our closets. In the darkest corners of the forgotten, old stand-alone garage or the very back of the cellar behind the furnace. In the farthest reaches of our mind.

  They’re waiting for us. Always waiting for us. Faithfully, even.

  But that’s not the only kind of relationship we have with monsters. No—we love monsters, too. Admit it. After the initial fright has worn off, the fascination remains. We are drawn to them; we’re curious about them. How did they get to be the way they are? How do they live with it, day in and out, knowing that everyone is afraid of them? They will never know the contentment of hearth and home. For them, only mobs with pitchfork and torch, baying hounds forever on their trail. Do they ever get lonely?

  We know that the monster has a story, too, and if only we knew that story, we’d come to understand the monster. See his side of things. That’s the story of Frankenstein’s monster: both the book and the movie portrayed the creature as sympathetic, a figure that didn’t ask to be made, and certainly not as his creator made him. He longed for his creator’s love and mankind’s pity, and when he got neither, turned on the weak and judgmental man who doomed him to an eternity of unhappiness. What heart, on hearing such a story, could still scorn the monster?

  We have, in Miscreations, many references to the king of the monsters. In Stephanie Wytovich’s “A Benediction of Corpses,” for instance, a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster comes to terms with what she is. And in Ramsey Campbell’s “Brains,” an intellectual is hounded by the angry mob into showing his monstrous side in this love letter to the movies of Frankenstein’s monster. Theodora Goss brings us back to the tale that started it all with her delightful “Frankenstein’s Daughter,” which shows why hubris is a sure indication of monstrosity.

  If not Frankenstein’s doomed creation, might we talk about other monsters of lore? We have a smattering of famous monsters in our collection. Take, for example, “One Last Transformation,” a wonderful werewolf story from Josh Malerman, whose narrator, a beguiling charmer, swears he’s ready to give up the Curse … or is he? Like many an addict, he claims he can stop anytime he wants, but it’s not clear whom he’s trying to convince here, the reader or himself. And for those who itch to make their own monster, we learn how to make a golem in Lisa Morton’s “Imperfect Clay,” from a woman who, with a track record of disappointment, refuses to accept anything less than perfection.

  Do we love monsters because they are more powerful than us, and we can turn to them to protect us, to vindicate us? In our collection, we have stories about the marginalized in society who make themselves into monsters in order to stand up to their oppressors. In these stories, the protagonists are weak and helpless, while the ones in charge are so strong. When those in power only use that power to victimize and torture, making yourself into a monster might be your only recourse. Brian Hodge gives a perfect example in “Butcher’s Blend,” where the powerful are running things, and feel free to make examples of society’s outcasts. They didn’t expect the outcasts to fight back. Similarly, in Usman Malik’s “Resurrection Points,” a pea
ceful boy is driven by the angry mob to use his inherited gift to raise the dead to defend the weak and the persecuted.

  And, of course, we can learn from monsters, too. We can learn to be heroic, such as in the heartbreaking and yet chilling “You Are My Neighbor” by Max Booth III, where a neglected boy elects to take the place of the monster in the cellar if it means he’ll no longer be alone. After reading this story, you don’t know whether to be utterly creeped out or to cry.

  Monstrosity can also serve as a cautionary tale, can teach us what not to do, how not to behave. Such is the case in Bracken MacLeod’s “Not Eradicated in You,” where a girl emancipates herself right into the loving arms of a demon because her mother is a waking nightmare. Or Joanna Parypinski’s “Matryoska,” where a woman learns of the terrible bargain the women in her family have made—for generations. Or Victor LaValle’s brilliant “Spectral Evidence,” which shows that even the best of intentions can have tragic, unintended consequences.

  There are also stories in the collection that defy categorization, that draw on emotion and imagination and dare to tap into the wellspring of weirdness that exists in all of us. Such is the case with Michael Wehunt’s meta “A Heart Arrhythmia Creeping into a Dark Room,” and Laird Barron’s witty, trippy fantasy piece, “Ode to Joad the Toad.” Mercedes Yardley’s “The Making of Asylum Ophelia,” M.E. Bronstein’s “Sounds Caught in Cobwebs,” and Kristi DeMeester’s “Umbra Sum” which all make you wonder about the role of the victim in his/her victimization. Scott Edelman’s thoughtful “Only Bruises are Permanent,” and, because for some people, sex will always be the monster in the room, we have Lucy Snyder’s “Her Knowing Glance.”

  There is still another aspect to the monster story, one that is less accepting, more judgmental. Sometimes, when confronted with a monster, don’t we wonder what it did to deserve it? Through this legacy of our puritanical society, we are taught to believe that misfortune is deserved. That it’s a punishment. To be monstrous is an indelible sign, proof of wickedness and failing for everyone to see. Linda Addison’s poem “One Day of Inside/Out” is a powerful depiction of our craving for justice—of our belief that, in a just world, a monster would not be allowed to remain hidden.

  Another story where monstrosity is a punishment for the wicked is “Paper Doll Hyperplane” by R.B. Payne. In it, a math professor—and aren’t all math professors villains, really, gleefully torturing the rest of us?—gets what’s coming to him after he reveals his utter inhumanity. It’s a cerebral puzzle box, a lovely bit of unconventional storytelling, so good it deserves to be enjoyed with a glass of your favorite beverage.

  And there are more delicious stories of comeuppance. In addition to Goss’s aforementioned tale, there’s Christina Sng’s poem “The Vodyanoy,” one of two of her works in the collection, which tells the tale of a woman who creates a monster (or has she merely trapped a monster?) through a violent and murderous act, but can any act that monstrous be justified?

  Monstrosity is such a complicated topic.

  Which brings us back to the question I posed earlier: do monsters exist, or are they only stories we tell ourselves? To frighten ourselves, console ourselves? To explain aberrant behavior?

  Let me tell you a little secret. For many years, I was an intelligence analyst, working for one of the government agencies you know so well. For a while, I covered operations other than war (which is, ironically, the title of Nadia Bulkin’s story in this collection, which shows that what’s a monster to one person is a savior to another). In the 1990s, this usually meant humanitarian operations—peacekeeping and humanitarian missions—and a subset under this, genocides and mass atrocities.

  It was a decade of mind-numbing inhumanity. Bosnia, Rwanda, the names everyone thinks of, but also Sierra Leona (where drugged-out rebels chopped off both hands of thousands of people as punishment for voting for the wrong man). Sudan and Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where thousands of children were torn from their homes and forced to become child soldiers. Anywhere neighbors who had lived peacefully for years and years suddenly believed that everyone who wasn’t like them had to be wiped out.

  Following genocides and mass atrocities taught me a few things about men and monsters. First, no one, no matter what crimes he’s committed, believes he’s a monster. He justifies his behavior, dissembles, denies. It’s not his fault: he was driven to pull his neighbors from their house, unarmed and defenseless, and leave their bodies to cool in a mass grave. Or, he was in fear for his life, and that’s why he chopped up the bodies of children and grandmothers he’d murdered and let to rot for ten days in the sun before going back to hide whatever was left so the UN peacekeepers wouldn’t find them. They brought it on themselves. They’re not people, they’re vermin, they’re insects. They’re monsters.

  Are monsters real? This is why I always answer yes.

  And that’s why we need stories like these, and why these stories need to be read.

  Alma Katsu

  Washington, DC

  September 2019

  A Heart Arrhythmia Creeping into a Dark Room

  Michael Wehunt

  The sun lowers until it’s caught and torn on the mountains and I’m caught watching it, through a filthy window, thinking about how I have never been able to plan my stories out before I write them. They come in floods, lifting the surprised boat of my mind on their sudden waves, or they come stubborn as sap from a longleaf pine. I have two weeks to write this one. From the carpet near my feet, my dog makes a noise in her throat for my attention. I nearly always give it to her, but these days I am supposed to be regaining my momentum as an author. “In a minute, little bear,” I tell her. In a minute she’ll break me, and I’ll be on the floor with her.

  The story is for a book called Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors, and the loose theme is the Frankenstein myth. When Doug and Michael, the editors, invited me to write something for it, I said yes because I trust their vision and because I assumed life would have “turned around” long before now, the deadline drifting toward this streaked window and blocking out its view. I was over halfway through a year and four months of no stories when I said yes. There was no room inside my cluttered, stressed head at the time, and so I told myself I would miscreate a monster later; there would be plenty of time. Plenty of sunsets.

  (And life did end up turning itself around, to a degree. I started working for a new company, fixing words, tuning content to the right frequencies. My breath, most days, grew easier and filled the lungs more. But I didn’t consider the creative rust, the clumsy decay that had set in. I assumed the exhaustion carried home every day on my shoulders would be no heavier than it had been in the past. I assumed the fear I had grappled with would break apart like a ghost I no longer allowed to draw my eye, and would not seep into my heart. I thought my pride would have scabbed over.)

  A scratched Bartók record is playing at a low volume, managing to sound like these American mountains, ancient things in a land we pretend is new. It’s a concerto I found in a thrift store, and I’ve always felt it must have spent too much time in the sun. I picture a windowsill with open curtains, ambient heat seeping into someone else’s room. The record kept out of its sleeve by an inconsiderate listener. There’s the mildest warp in the vinyl that causes the needle to rise and fall like a buoy on a black sea. It could be a symbol, foreshadowing that this story will break into a flood. Coupled with the saltwater static the needle reads in the scratches left by its former owner, the imperfection of the concerto moves me. The flaws bring me closer to something.

  The Appalachians are flawed, from a certain perspective. They sit like old, worn teeth coated in moss, rooted in the earth’s jaw. I can see three eroded peaks from my desk, as their distant tree lines rake through the egg yolk of the sunset. The broken light turns from an aged yellow to a purpled orange, as though blood swirls in. What will my monster be like? What will fill its veins?<
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  My dog loves her neck to be scratched beneath her collar. I lean forward and take care of this important task and my heart palpitates for the first time today—it skips a beat, pauses a beat, then stumbles back into its rhythm. I straighten in the chair, breathe deep in frustration, and look out the window for the fortieth time as the color of night leaks down. Calm leaks back into me with less grace. I half-chant the list the ER doctor counted off on his fingers four months ago, afraid to lose the force of its litany: heart enzymes good, electrolytes good, no clots, blood pressure OK, rhythms textbook strong, no atrial fibrillation or arrhythmia. And the coda, lighthearted for a heart heavy with fear: Try cutting back on caffeine.

  The dog puts her front paws up on my knees and stretches her nose toward me, concerned and offering comfort for her Boy. Her left ear never straightened, and I stare at how it flops over before closing my eyes. I am as aware of the squirming organ in my chest as an owl is aware of the animal it snatches into its beak, the texture of warm flesh, the movement of the small bones down its throat. The owls are waking in the mountain foliage any moment now. The presence of my heart is as incongruous as a panicked fly trapped in a closed hand. I spill similes across the carpet. I meditate for a minute, but meditation has always eluded me. It, too, comes in a rush or like sap from a narrow tree, never the holy middle ground.

  My monster must be as inconstant as my heart. If it were a viola—another middle ground—in this Bartók concerto, it would be played vibrato, or perhaps in between the still lake of a legato and the skipping stones of staccato. It would corrupt the rhythm in a way that would need several measures to discern. I lower myself to the floor and a rough, warm tongue greets my face. The opposite of a monster—though we call her a monster often—pounces on me, licking my nose, my eyes, my cheeks until I tell her that’s enough.