Good day to you! Here we are, March 3rd, 2022, and we are about to dish on the fourth story in our upcoming horror anthology, CHROMOPHOBIA. You can check out previous entries HERE, HERE, and HERE! We love the feedback that we are getting, and we thank everyone for their enthusiasm, shares, and pre-orders. So, without further ado…
Today’s story:
“Nesting”
by Ali Seay
And here is an except:
I want to be jaded. I want to not offer her any scrap of information. That is how they read you. They’re con artists, tricksters. They feed on hope and grief and desperation.
But I am desperate. So very desperate.
“Thank you,” I say. Then I laugh. Am I thanking her or Charlie?
She smiles at me, perfectly content to let me collect myself.
“He says you’re not sleeping well.”
Of course, I’m not. Who would be? He’s only been gone a month and somehow every day stretches out longer than the last. At night, I push my hand to his empty side of the bed, shove it under the coolness beneath his unused pillows.
I’d even like to hear the whooshing hiss of his morphine machine. Or his restless sleep.
But it’s only silence now. A big yawning blank where my husband used to be.
I’d take the sleepless nights and constant care and ever-present grief at watching him die to this.
Because at least he could reach out and grab my wrist and say—
“There’s my girl,” she says.
I jump. My eyes fill. I twist the hem of the yellow dress I know he likes in my fingers. He said it matched my “flaxen hair”. Flaxen. He was a man who used words like flaxen.
“My trophy wife,” she goes on.
I stand so suddenly, I knock my chair over.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I stammer, righting it. “I have to go. I—uh, I’m not feeling well.” It’s only been about ten minutes, but I toss sixty bucks on the table. The price of a full half hour reading.
“This was a mistake,” I say.
Ali Seay delivers a short story that might as well be an exposed nerve. Hints of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and nods to classic ghost stories of loved ones departed. “Nesting” acknowledges tropes without being beholden to them, and the story shines because of this.
Visit Ali Seay’s website HERE to learn more about the author!
You can pre-order the special hardcover edition of CHROMOPHOBIA from Rooster Republic Press HERE. A trade paperback edition will be made available in time for Halloween 2022. There is as of now no date set for an e-book edition, but we will make an announcement once that has been settled on.
We hope you like what we have been showcasing, thus far, and we look forward to sharing more and more with you over the coming weeks.
As always, Rooster Republic and Strangehouse Books would be nothing without the support and the readership. Thank you, most sincerely!
Pre-order your hardcover edition of CHROMOPHOBIA HERE.
Finally, a place to put those horror books when you’re out and about freaking everyone out!
