I opened the trashcan because the contents were almost too heavy to empty into the dump trunk. Inside, a cadaver had been squished down to fit – knees pulled up to the chest, arms crossed, head pushed facedown. I got a good glimpse of lank brown hair and a bad whiff of death before I slammed the lid back on with a clang.

Cadaver. One of those fancy words Jerry liked. I took several deep breaths. “Hey, Jerry! We got another one!”

Jerry leaned out the window of the idling truck. “A cadaver? Again?”

We both groaned. Jerry dialed the police.

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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.