Table of Contents
Note from our Editor, Richard Scott Larson
In my open call for submissions to this October issue coinciding with Halloween season, I wrote about how I’ve always been drawn to the metaphors provided by the horror genre to explain my very real fears of the world around me. Horror tropes often reflect the darkest parts of ourselves back to us in the disguised form of culturally recognizable narrative conventions, and I wanted to hear from other writers who have found something personal in the genre—maybe a revelatory moment of outsized terror or revulsion that finally named the otherwise unnamable, a light thrown on to chase away the shadows. Each of these essays has something urgent and vulnerable to say about the hauntings only we know are there.
Elizabeth Austin explores the final girl trope through the lens of single motherhood, situating herself in a long tradition of women who have been forced to fight alone. Piety Exley confronts body autonomy and the act of writing about our obsessions as she narrates her years-long relationship with Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth. Jason Haaf shares the images that have informed his identity and sexuality, beginning with his adolescent fascination with Wes Craven’s Scream, as he leans into the pleasures of being afraid. And through a chronicle of relationships thwarted by her mysterious instincts of doubt and evasion, Kelly Thomas arrives at revelations about the indeterminate nature of horror narratives and how the threat at hand can never truly be vanquished. These essays plunge like a knife directly into the mess of the body, where horror always begins and ends.