THEMED DOSSIER: ELDRITCH

Themed Dossier

Noun

A themed dossier is a collection of artistic pieces, written or visual, connected by a central idea.

Eldritch is grotesque in beauty. On a broader spectrum, it can include metamorphosis, supernatural, otherworldly, fantastical, and post-apocalyptic concepts. We acknowledge some elements of the early origins of eldritch writing are rooted in vile beliefs, such as H.P. Lovecraft’s racist works. However, we’re looking beyond this and trying to redefine the genre to be encompassing–to embrace the unknown and humanities differences.

The

Endless Eion Magana

This House is Not Haunted

Jacob Mack

The floorboards do not creak in the middle of the night. My ears deceive me, latching on to any perception to keep me from sleep. They dream up fiction to probe my thoughts and stave off dreams. If the noise is real, it is just a mouse. It is just the house settling.

There are no shadows staring out of the windows. It is a trick of the light, a flicker out of the corner of my eye. The shadows do not watch me leave each morning and return each evening. Their cold stare does not prickle the hairs on the back of my neck as I walk to my car. I do not refuse to look back for fear of their harsh gaze. I do not avoid their eyes and keep my head down when I approach the door. It does not smell of burning flesh in the kitchen. It is a smell sustained in an old house, a queasiness I have not become accustomed to. The smell does not flood my nose each time I attempt to enter, bringing visions of screaming and hands reaching out for a source to extinguish. My appetite is not spoiled, negated. I do not starve in my own home as I think, each time, what purpose the flesh has been burned here for. There are no noises coming from the basement. I do not hear deep moans nor the clanking of chains. It is only a primal fear of the dark below. I do not dread walking past the open mouth, the stairs a downward tongue. I do not fear discovering what is down there and never returning.

There are no words written in blood on the walls of the living room. It is an illusion, the manifestation of an anxious mind. It does not remain no matter how I scrub and wipe. The blood does not drip, day and night, without staining the carpet. The words do not repeat the name of a lost loved one.

This house is not haunted. It is not swallowing me whole.

English Fog

Ghosts

Adonis Macasieb

You ever try to talk to ghosts? They love to linger in the dark corners of your mind and offer not a thing, through so why not drag them conversation. They’re fine listeners, though they tend to interrupt your thoughts when they hear you lying to them or yourself.

died long before

At the Gate

Frankie Lord

John Slater had died. It was recent, he thought. One moment, he was a week from retirement, at dinner with his family, with a strange feeling in his left arm, and the next, he was here. Though he didn’t know where “here” was. Or what it was, for that matter.

With no signs of life or death in front of him, he looked around, already standing on his feet, trying to discern what the walls were made of, or what color they were, for that matter. He supposed the human eye couldn’t discern it and then wondered how it could be that his soul was limited by the mortal human eye. He looked down, surprised to find himself in a suit, not the Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts he had passed in. Upon closer inspection, he recognized the suit from when his father remarried. When he was six years old. Yet it fit his adult shape exactly the same. He lifted his foot and looked at the toe of the sole, where he’d etched “J.S.” John hadn’t known the shoes, the whole outfit, were a rental until his dad came home screaming.

He put his foot down, looked onward, and now something had appeared: a man at a desk, far out in front of him. The man’s brown suit matched the brown desk in front of him, contrasting enough against the non-color to be visible enough to eliminate brown as the possible color around them.

The two stared at each other for a moment, John frozen in place. The man, aloof but a touch impatient, waved John toward him. He nodded his head with a rapid bounce before walking toward the desk.

When he approached, he stood in front of the desk. He thought this moment might feel like getting to the front of the line at the DMV only to realize, like dream logic, that you have no idea why you’re there.

“Am I dead?” John asked, with instant regret.

“Yes, Jonathan,” the man said. Though he’d already figured as much, John’s stomach dropped at the confirmation. He realized he’d asked for a reason after all—the human need for validation.

“Who are you?”

“A bureaucrat,” he answered. “Here to give you the bad news.”

“Bad news?” John blinked.

“Yes. You’re going to Hell, Jonathan Slater.”

“What?” Not only was John an agnostic in life, he was certain from research that Hell was a metaphor gone wild, a tool used to control the masses that had never been in the original Bible. Now it existed, and he was going there? “How?”

“Your kind always acts so surprised by this. Yes, Jonathan Slater, you were a killer. You took the lives of eight million, four hundred and seventy-two thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one.”

John began to laugh. “No, no. You must have the wrong John Slater. I worked—”

“You worked in human family law, handpicked cases to help formerly battered women gain custody of their children and legal disentanglement from their abusers; you were born January 26th, 1958, to Henry Slater and Jeanine Slater née Thomas; you married once to Naomi Slater née Marra, had two sons both on June 8th, 1992, named Robert and Darren,” the bureaucrat read off the data of John’s life like a grocery list, “and you murdered eight million, four hundred and seventy-two thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one.”

“No, this has to be a mistake, this can’t—” John began to pace. “Is this like that one show, is this a compliance to capitalism thing? I shopped at Walmart for five years, were the slaves in the chain treat—”

“You directly killed eight million, four—”

“Four hundred and seventy-two thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one, yeah, I’m getting that. I don’t remember this, how—”

“Well, Jonathan Slater, you’re wearing the outfit from your first murder spree now.”

John stared at the bureaucrat in shock, trying to remember the day of his father’s marriage. The morning had been chaotic; he was the ring bearer, and his stepmother insisted he wear makeup for the pictures, which brought him great embarrassment at the time, and he resisted to no avail. He was certain someone would notice, but they never did. The marriage ceremony went fine, and they went from the church to another venue for the reception.

At one point, John got bored, and he snuck out. He had been a real troublemaker, never mean spirited but constantly pushing boundaries. He wanted to see if he could leave with an open bottle of wine, and he did. Kids were invisible back then; stranger danger would mean nothing for another couple decades. He snuck around to the back, took a mouthful of the red liquid, and immediately spat it out.

John looked down in front of the bureaucrat, and sure enough, the tiny dribbles of wine that didn’t clear his chest were still there on the now too-large suit.

He’d gagged and wretched, never throwing up but absolutely appalled at the adults for drinking this stuff on purpose. He stood up and wandered around the field behind the venue, stumbling to imitate the adults inside. Eventually, he found an ant mound. With little thought, he poured the wine down the hole—

“Ants!?” John exclaimed, looking up over the desk. “You’re talking about fucking ants!?”

“Not just ants,” the bureaucrat said, a tinge of incredulity in his voice, “all insects, arachnids, the general bug community.”

“I’m destined to an eternity of suffering for that!” John began to pace again, kicking off the oversized shoes. “I saved countless lives, I intervened in life-or-death situations, redirected a court system set up against victims, I volunteered at soup kitchens, and I did it all without even believing that it would do something for me long term.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You did nothing for bugs.”

“Nothing!” John exclaimed, thinking of the bee feeders he kept in the backyard.

“Well,” the bureaucrat corrected, “so little it barely matters.”

John began to laugh, mirthless. “So,” he began to argue, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “you’re telling me the only thing that matters in the life of any creature on planet Earth is whether they contributed to the well-being and prolonged lives of bugs??”

“Yes,” the bureaucrat said, flat and sincere.

John froze midstep. He ruminated. The anthill, the wasps’ nests under the roof he used to have to poison and tear down two or three times a year, the cockroaches he killed before his college apartment could be fumigated, the mosquitos, the fucking mosquitos, the ticks he took off the dog after hikes. The spiders. A butterfly that startled him once, and he felt guilty all weekend.

“I purposely killed that many bugs?”

“Oh, no. Most were accidental.”

John felt his eyes getting hot, tears blurring his vision. “Accidental??”

“Yeah. You stepped on, sat on, drove over, ate, so many lives. You were mean sometimes, sure, but mostly you were careless.”

“How was I supposed to be constantly aware of something a millionth my size all the time? How was I supposed to see a beetle from INSIDE my CAR?”

“Prevention is not my problem, it was yours.”

He stared into nothing, drained. His mind raced.

“So what, most bugs go to hell too? They’re always fighting and killing each other.”

“Rules are different, that’s a fair fight,” the bureaucrat responded.

John stared on still, wanting to cry and scream and protest and somehow die again and please, please see his wife once more, warn his children, something. But instead, he glazed over, dread eating him from the inside like a swarm of its own.

“You can take your time, but when you are ready,” the bureaucrat spoke, John detecting a hint of compassion. When John looked, barely able to see over the desk now, the bureaucrat had his arm stuck out to a gate, a gate that wasn’t there before. The gate wasn’t pearly, as it’s always described, closer to gnarled wood than anything else.

John stared at the door for a long time. He contemplated asking the bureaucrat what was coming but figured he’d have an eternity to learn the answer to that one. John tried to sit in the uncertainty of standing in front of this gate, to not guess at the answer. A strategy that once brought him a sense of groundedness and radical acceptance now only brought him nausea.

Though he’d been aware for a while, he finally acknowledged to himself that he was shrinking and what that could mean for him. He took one deep final breath. Then, he stepped through the gate.

Field Report from a House Which May or May Not Have a Crime Scene, Compiled By Someone Who Watches Too Many Crime Shows

Mary Christine Delea

I. Introduction

The rope claims to have been taken from the shed but cannot identify the person who grabbed tightly, transported quickly.

II. Description of Activities

What: I observed several knives, a hammer, an axe, and a rifle at the scene. Where: I was led to the bedroom. When: I do not know the normal routine in this household, but on this day, there was no blood, no signs of a fight, and no warmth from the grandfather clock that stood in the hallway like a prison guard. Who: I asked the rope if it was alone. Before I got an answer, the room swarmed with the homeowners.

Why: I have no doubt of the rope’s truthfulness, but I don’t think the knitting needles can be trusted. Those scissors look rusty and filled with rage as well.

III. Interpretation and Analysis

There is no reason for me to be here. I am not a cop or a handyman. What I have observed has no meaning. There is nothing to analyze except perhaps my own behavior, which is never typical or expected. People looking at me, asking me why I am in their house, need to get off my case.

IV. Conclusion and Recommendations

I have learned nothing beyond knowing that I hate the sound my body makes when homeowners toss me out of their houses.

V. References

Nope. Not one recommendation. Just handwritten fan letters I have written to Mariska Hargitay and S. Epatha Merkerson that remain unacknowledged.

Acute and Obtuse Angles

William

Doreski

Another day of acute and obtuse angles dueling.

Rain sozzles the village view. We agree that cosmic forces distilled from old comic books have revised the gray perspectives to account for changes in taste. You suspect that California will eventually crumble with drought and spill millions of citizens into the ocean where they’ll drift until minesweepers rescue those still undigested by sharks. I’m certain that New England in an era of rising water will rumple with newborn fjords.

Why do we torture ourselves with cruel scenarios when friends are birthing children shaped like pottery, their brittle cries referring to fresh imperatives?

We should indulge in their indulgence, coo over little forms, pet every passing dog. The treble of weather mustn’t dissuade us. The wrinkles we earned by teaching three unteachable generations mustn’t discourage our lust for the finer points of view. Those include standing on rocks by the river, watching the current ruffle past. Also climbing the hill in the graveyard to enjoy autumn hills rimming the lake.

We meet at acute and oblique angles at once and anchor ourselves to a vanishing point created by an artist we greatly admire.