You set up your camp on the place where I died.

All that snow stomping, tent rustling, stakes hammering, cookpot rattling woke me. You woke me up.

You brought light. The sun set fast behind the cold mountains, so when you wanted to keep reading in your heated tent, you lit your fancy, vintage looking lantern.

I blew it out.

Cursing, you relit the lantern.

I blew it out again.

Eventually, you gave up. Lay in the dark, afraid. Burrowing into your sleeping bag, I cozied up next to you.

The darkness settled in to stay. For both of us.

Thanks for reading!

Subscribe for new stories, sneak peeks, book reviews, and updates delivered to your inbox and social feeds.

Links

Summer’s Latest

Beneath the Bluebonnets: Tales of Terror by Texas Women

Read my eco-horror short “Well Being” in this fabulous new anthology, in which a mother follows strange impulses from tainted water to find her daughter.

From Mary Shelley to Tananarive Due and Mariana Enríquez, women have long shaped horror—often without equal recognition. Living closest to the genre’s edge, women know these fears firsthand: lost autonomy, violence, childbirth, survival.

Set in Texas, a land of haunted histories and increasingly restrictive laws, Beneath the Bluebonnets emerges from the raw intersection of terror and endurance. Written by twelve Texas women writers: R. J. Joseph, Lauren Oertel, L.H. Phillips, Kathleen Kent, Madison Estes, Jess Hagemann, Emma E. Murray, Jae Mazer, Iphigenia Strangeworth, Jacklyn Baker, S.G. Baker and edited by Carmen Gray, this collection is urgent, unflinching, and deeply haunting—stories that refuse to look away.