Q: What is the scariest or most disturbing story you’ve ever read?
A: I read a short story by Sunny Moraine in Shimmer titled “Come MyLove and I’ll Tell You a Tale.” It’s narrated by someone grieving the end of the world and their lover. What shook me to the core was the beautiful prose describing the life before, then shifting to the events that ended the world as it was known, to the narrator now. I won’t ruin the story for anyone, but the way the narrator was forced to adapt, the things that had to be done to survive, and the knowledge of before and after, the splitting of thesoul, never quite left my head or my heart.
And for a novel, Mark Z Danielewski’s House of Leaves broke my heart, turned me into an insomniac listening for the shift of a house at night, and wrote about regret, heartbreak, loss, and an evil that wasn’t defeated. There is a page where the words “I’m sorry” are written spiraling out of control, into an event, that I will never forget. It’s an experience, to read that book. It never left me either.
L’Erin Ogle’s story “Mean Streak”
in Metaphorosis Friday, 22 February 2019.
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