Up to now, my friends and I had solved every puzzle, survived every horror of this sick fun house, but now they both lay in pieces among the hidden traps guarding the exit.

I bit my lip, reading the sign again. You made it! Just waltz on out!

Following the sign’s suggestion, they had both tried to just walk through. But spikes had popped up, tearing them apart.

I wondered if…

Sniffling, I danced forward, stepping in triple meter. Perpetually circling, as if a partner held me in their arms.

No spikes triggered and, as advised, I waltzed on out.

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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.