My midwestern folk horror story is the fourth chapter of this anthology. 

Deliver Us

The Nose Thief

"You don’t remember being told you were dead. You just knew. You were dead and sitting in a chair and there was a woman in front of you and you didn’t understand that, because you were dead." 

Saint Maria's Home for Murdered Girls

"At twenty-three years old I still ask others to kill my bugs. I hate the feeling of the exoskeleton giving away. I hate the crunch, the squish of pus-colored goo that seeps out beneath a shoe or the folds of a napkin."

Points of Entry

Page 84

"Sunset feels like a threat and a promise here: it will darken and then lighten; the heat will rise. We will do this dance again tomorrow, and I will be here—waiting."

Witching Hour

"1. Open up a fresh Google Doc. Change your settings from default to Times New Roman, 12pt., double-spaced. The poets tell you that the best poetry is written in Garamond, but you’re a fiction writer, so it’s TNR all the way, baby."

How to Write a Short Story

Published in the inaugural issue of the Lovers Literary Journal.

"You’ve become

a feeling, untranslatable, like 
charmolypi — Greek, a beautiful sadness, 
a deadly bite you need to remind you 

you’re alive."

Coda

Days Of

"Before we left that morning, the two men had warned us that octopus hunting was not for the faint of heart; after spearing the octopus you had to kill it quickly, and the best way to do that was to bite into its brain. Right between the eyes."

Mother of Octopi

"Water lapping at the leftover concrete echoed throughout the hull. From the outside, I’d thought it looked like a skeletal grin, but once inside, I realized that was wrong; the ship was a rib cage, and I had breached its chest cavity."

Sydney Koeplin

Books

Selected work