Everything Has A Price
Some rules were written before the world was.
Happy Monday Macabrians!
Something ancient and mysterious runs through the three featured storied this week. From a Lovecraftian horror at a weekend getaway, to the untempered revenge of the gods, each of these stories is a cautionary tale.
The forbidden wears many faces. Sometimes it’s a crumbling house on the moors that promises a quiet weekend and delivers something you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to unsee. Sometimes it’s the audacity of a minor goddess who dares to heal what the powerful broke. And sometimes it’s a century-old secret buried so deep in loyalty and punishment that by the time it surfaces, you can’t tell the executioner from the condemned.
Enjoy…but not too much.
Announcements
An author interview series is making its way to Macabre Monday! Featuring Substack authors we all know and love. Get ready to meet the people behind the stories!
Summer is finally here. At least in spirit. As I write this, I’m outside listening to birds, and one particularly noisy cricket who seems confused about the time of day. Bees are buzzing. Ants are collecting for the colony. And I’m thinking about what an incredible time summer is for horror.
Late fall and winter are simply too dreadful. Notice the manufactured cheer that the flurry of holidays brings. A reminder that the world is not always dark and dead, that light will come again. It can be hard to peer into Pandora’s box in the middle of winter.
But during summer? Summer is the time for exploration, for trying new things. And in honor of that, I’d like to announce a new summer community event.
Welcome to Macabre Monday’s Summer Drive-In.
A community event that will last until the end of August. Each week, a new summer scary prompt. The Macabre Monday team will curate our favorites, and at the end, we’ll open it up to a vote for your favorites!
Submissions start next week, and will be open all summer long.
The Prize: Enter to be featured in a limited time Macabre Monday anthology.
Rules:
Submissions must be 2,500 words or less
To submit, you must post to the Macabre Monday chat! This makes it easy for the community (and the admins) to access each week’s stories.
Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?
Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.
Featured Stories
Standout posts from last week.
A remote house on the moors. A sleepless night. Something tapping at the window where no trees grow. What begins as a creepy weekend getaway curdles into visceral nightmare when the darkness outside finds its way in. Wendy Cockcroft delivered a cross between the creeping dread of a gothic story and something out of Lovecraft’s . Enjoy!
Kate M. Sine posted a short story, “Goddess of Gaps.” Meden, a minor goddess, cannot turn away from the widows of Troy, the fatherless children, the wounds that empires leave behind. But healing the forgotten is a dangerous act when the gods who made the wreckage are still watching.
D.W. Davison wrote a reimagined origin story of the most enduring military treatise the world has ever known. In a crumbling prison-fortress older than memory, two men have shared a century-long ritual of punishment, strategy, and strange devotion. Each day, the eunuch Jia Lin journeys through a labyrinth to administer the ancient rite of lingering death upon the legendary general Ying Zheng. But between executioner and condemned, something far more complex than cruelty has taken root. A game of weichi. A brotherhood hidden in plain sight.
Community Recommendations
Have a story you think deserves more readers?
Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.
Recent Publications
Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?
Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.
New Voices
New to the Macabre Monday community?
Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!
The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.
Thank you so much for the mention and wonderful write-up! 😱
Thank you very much for this! And thanks again to John Watson for the prompt!