Introducing: “Lambs of Slaughter in Blue and Gold” by Matt Spencer

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horror fiction, story excerpts, writing

I’ve followed her for days, and I’ve almost gotten used to how much this hurts! It hurts less at night, but she sleeps too much then. She never used to. Often that was because of me, last time, when we both stood at the crossroads, the ones she’s headed back to now.

If I tried, I could keep her awake. She’d deserve it, right? She’s the one who makes it hurt. But I always drift behind her, and she never senses me. So why do I know how blue her eyes are, that that’s where this infernally tranquil sea floods out of? If I stepped in front of her, would she see me with her eyes now, or her eyes from back then? I only get to look at her face when she sleeps. She looks almost exactly the same! Even with the lights off, I can see that. At those times, I can almost relax, almost forget the shredding agony her blue glow locks me in when she’s awake.

Now she walks around town, smells the summer smells of pollen, thistles, and fresh-cut grass. I smell it with her, scorching my brimstone nostrils. She drops by the same places where things happened. She hangs out with her friends, drinking and smoking up and playing the guitar she’s learning, telling ghost stories in the woods and graveyards and the abandoned sawmill lot, all the same spots we used to go.

No one tells the best ghost stories anymore, the ones I was there for, even when they sit on the same spots where things happened. Maybe I should do something about that. You can’t say I’m not in the unique position to do so. I have other things on my mind, though. She makes out with boys in the same spots in the woods where we used to make love, next to the railroad tracks or that sandy spot by the river. The town’s full of such places, places where things happened, and she never notices!

She hangs out in a coffee shop that used to be a speakeasy, back when we were both young and alive and together. We weren’t much older than she is now, but we got in one night, dressed in fancy hand-me-downs to look the best we could like the gangsters and dames we’d seen in the pictures.

By then, she was already used to drinking. I wasn’t. She thought it was so cute how I tried to act tough, pretended to hold my liquor better than I did, how I got snappy when she noticed.

It was one of them who ran that speakeasy. He wore a wide-brimmed hat like a preacher, but otherwise looked like the pinstriped gangster you’d expect to run a place like that. When he took an interest in us, we were scared out of our minds at first. We thought he knew we were too young, that he’d kick us out, tell our folks. Which I have to admit is pretty silly, considering the kind of place it was to begin with, but you know how kids are. The truth was, he’d noticed what we’d only faintly started to notice in ourselves. He bought us drinks and said things that made us sure he was off his rocker. By the end of that night, though, we understood plenty. He showed us things going on in that speakeasy that no one else saw. Or if they did, they mistook it for odd shapes the cigarette smoke made in the air. He got us plenty drunk, too.

She managed to sneak into her house that night, to pass out like a good girl. I woke up in the speakeasy’s basement. My pa beat me plenty when I staggered home with an obvious hangover, but I didn’t mind so much anymore. I just grinned through it, which made him think I’d gone crazy so he beat me worse. Now I understood that the pain was just weakness being chased out of my body, letting in strength I’d need for the new world my eyes had been opened to…a world of power we’d build right under the noses of this silly little town.

Now she drifts through it all, sleepy and sad, not quite sure about what…through the sea that bleeds out through the air around her, from her clear blue eyes. It’s the soft blue that hurts so much. After the last time, I awoke in the scorching blackness that’s almost red, a constant blaze that feels wonderful to me because I’m part of it. Bit by bit, it’s replaced everything but my memories. As I’ve learned to work this new ephemeral matter, I’ve mastered it. I rule it, along with everything it touches in the world it bleeds out into. My fingertips are needles, and my bones are sharpened with sword edges. In the realms I travel, I flex and flail my razor limbs, cutting to ribbons anything stupid enough to come against me. I suck in those bloody ribbons like spaghetti and grow ever stronger. But my blades can’t touch the blue that bleeds from her eyes, mingling with the reddish gold that wafts off her silky hair. Now I’m trapped in it, following her until she wakes up…to me, to everything she doesn’t notice yet.

To find out what happens, pick up Story Time With Crazy Uncle Matt, a collection of wild, weird, dark short fiction by Matt Spencer, coming in September from Back Roads Carnival Books, or read it as a Kindle Single coming June 15, which you can pre-order for just 99 cents, by clicking on the cover image below:

Follow author Matt Spencer on Facebook at Books by Matt Spencer and on Twitter at @MattSpencerFSFH

Interview with dark fiction author Stacey Longo

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author interview, ghost stories, horror fiction, New England dark fiction, New England ghost stories, New England horror writers, Stacey Longo, Vermont ComicCon, zombies

One of the highlights of 2014 for me was to appear at the first annual ComicCon Vermont in Burlington. One of the many delights was to meet, talk with, and sample the works of fellow grassroots/up-and-coming New England artists in the field of science-fiction, fantasy and horror, in a variety of meetings and striking voices. One particularly striking discovery was the dark fiction of Connecticut author Stacey Longo. Her collection Secret Things; 12 Tales to Terrify cements her place among fresh voices in dark fiction, with wicked reassurance that the art of neatly crafted short-fiction is alive and well, if you know where to look.

Stacey Longo’s short fiction has appeared in over a dozen anthologies and magazines. She writes a weekly humor blog at www.staceylongo.com and owns a used bookstore in Colchester, CT. She spends her free time reading everything she can get her hands on at home and relaxing with her husband, Jason, and two cats, Wednesday and Pugsley.

After I read Secret Things, Stacey was kind enough to let me pick her brain in this short interview.  

One running theme I noticed in the yarns in Secret Things was the use of the unreliable narrator, or technically in most cases, the unreliable POV-character. The realization that what’s going on somehow doesn’t match what we’re being told at face-value, it’s a powerful way to sneakily, steadily crank up the tension and keep the reader off-balance. What would you say keeps drawing you back to this approach?

SL: The world is full of unreliable narrators – I’ve dated, been friends with, or am related to plenty myself. I’d argue that this doesn’t necessarily make them bad people (okay, sometimes it does) but certainly keeps you on your toes around them. Unreliable narrators make life interesting. Plus, some of my favorite books (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Fight Club) feature unreliable narrators, so I’m sure that influence is there, too.

The unifying theme of the collection is clearly secrets, and how everyone has them (as the title suggests and the tag line on the back cover makes explicit) – Sometimes those secrets are tangible things, like covered-up crimes, the characters’ proverbial skeletons in the closet. Sometimes it’s the unspoken resentments and skewed perceptions they harbor over the years, ’til it eventually boils over unchecked into reality and causes tangible problems, like murder. What would you say it is about this theme that keeps drawing you back?

SL: Everybody does have secrets, and I think the reveal of what a character is hiding often makes for an interesting story.  It sometimes amazes me the sort of things people feel the need to keep secret. I have consistently found that whatever it is that they’re hiding is not nearly as much fun as what I’ve made up in my head in the meantime.

While your narrative voice is distinctive and engaging in and of itself, elements of your work often reminded me of various old favorites, like Edgar Allen Poe, Jim Thompson and Stephen King. Among your own favorite authors, who’s been a particular influence on you, and how would you say you’ve made those elements your own?



SL: Certainly Poe was an influence, and I think it’s impossible as a horror writer today not to be influenced by King. I try very hard not to sound like King, but the simple clarity of his prose is something I make note of when I’m reading him, and that probably comes through. I’m a huge fan of Jeff Strand, and I love how he uses dark humor. But every author is different, and it’s important to read really good literature and be aware of what you like about it, and try to incorporate those elements into your own style without out-and-out copying it.

The lion’s share of the stories in the collection are straight-up psychological/grounded-in-“reality” thrillers. While they never stray too far from relatable empathy with these flawed characters, there’s an overarching dry, darkly comic flavor to a lot of them – the wicked glee the storyteller finds in these unfolding bad situations is discernible, and infectious…The narrative tone somewhat reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s introductions on old episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, if you get what I mean. The two stories that involve overt paranormal elements [titles redacted to avoid spoilers] stand out in stark contrast to this. These pieces (and to a lesser degree the last of the zombie stories) cut straight to the raw pain, of things like loss and doubt and regret. Would you say there’s something about these paranormal elements that makes them natural metaphors for the things that haunt us through life like that?

SL:  Thanks for the comparison to Hitch – that’s high praise! I’ve rewatched those old episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents a million times. Both of the stories you mentioned sprang from real losses that happened in my life at a young age. So arguably, they’re not even metaphors – they are very real incarnations of two losses that haunted me for a long time. But if it makes me sound smarter to say they’re representative of the disappointments and bad decisions we’ve all lived to regret, by all means, say that!

Your “The Stories Behind the Tales” notes in the back of the book were fun and informative. Some of the stories seem to originate, bluntly, as revenge-fantasy pieces. There’s nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. Part of writing effective, honest dark fiction is being willing and able to let out the darkest things in yourself, warts and all. Have you ever encountered squirmy static from people – either readers or family and friends who you bounce your stuff off of – who mistake this for something actually unbalanced or unsettling-in-a-bad-way about you (confusing the message with the messenger, etc., if you will)? If so, how do you deal with that/respond to such concerns?

SL: You’re absolutely right – some of these certainly are revenge-fantasy pieces. I find writing a better form of therapy than, say, stabbing out someone’s eyes with a turkey baster. I’ve had a couple of family members who’ve had hurt feelings over what they perceived as an insult directed toward them, but in those cases, it simply wasn’t about them, and there were enough other character traits in the story to point this out to them. And a few people have mentioned that they think I’m weird/disturbed/crazy. But my immediate family thinks I’m okay, and that’s all that really matters.

That said, when delving into those dark places, do you ever feel like you might be wading in too deep, maybe coming up with a something that’s too over-the-line, over-the-top and disturbing in some ways? If so, at that point, do you decide “Okay, maybe it’s time to reign myself in a bit,” or do you take that as all the more of a sign that you’ve tapped into a new level of something raw and powerful, so it’s “Be willing to go all the way or go home”?

SL: The only time I reign myself in is when I think someone in my immediate family might be hurt or embarrassed by what I’m writing. Remember how I said everybody has secrets? So does my family. That’s when I pull back and try to go in a different direction.

So what future big writing/writing-related projects do you have in the works or on the horizon?


SL: My novel Ordinary Boy is due out in spring 2015 from Dark Alley Press, so I’m working on lining up appearances and readings for that. I’m shopping around a YA novel (My Sister the Zombie) and hoping to find a home for that, too. And I’m currently working on a parallel novel to Ordinary Boy that explores the life of one of the characters from that book.

You can order Stacey’s books from her Amazon page and of course follow her on Twitter.