What inspired this intimate exploration of chittering shadows?

Well, like many horror stories, the inspiration for this began in summer camp where I was visiting the latrine, as one does, and happened to hear what I thought were the sound of raindrops on the roof of the privy. Spoiler: they weren’t raindrops, but a thick carpet of spiders over my head, thrumming out a warning to me as I was sitting there in abject horror. And all I could think of was what if they had fallen on me. Or in my underwear.

The other part was the frustration many of us feel if we’re able to become pregnant and our period is late, or we’re trying not to get pregnant for whatever reasons—that frustration of having no certainty about your very own body, no way to tell what’s going on in there, and that at any time, that bodily autonomy can be taken away from you.

This story was written very shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, so that issue of sudden loss of bodily autonomy was occurring both inside as well as out. Like other people who can become pregnant, Anna has lost her right to decide what happens to her body on multiple levels: personal, medical, and legal.

The medical maze surrounding OB-GYN healthcare can be fraught with shadows and terrors some might, luckily, never understand, yet here you straighten the maze with a cold, metal speculum and usher in the dark. What is it about the “mysteries of human reproduction” that make it ripe for the horror genre?

It’s body horror at its finest. You literally have a whole other person with a separate consciousness inside you moving around and remodeling their environment. And you are the environment.

And in the present state of medical care, people seeking permanent sterilization with methods like bilateral salpingectomy or tubal ligation are often denied access, usually accompanied by excuses such as, “But what if you get married later and your husband wants children?” That’s really not the physician’s business, now, is it?

Besides being enforced heteronormativity at its finest, this attitude communicates very vividly that your own choices over what you wish to do with your reproductive organs take second place to the fictional future needs of a fictional future father.

The other issue is that we really do not like to discuss is how lethal pregnancy is, especially in the U.S. and especially for Black women, indigenous women, or women who are marginalized in any way. But that opens up whole other discussions we need to have about who gets to control their own body, doesn’t it?

I adored how you managed to bring the remarks from Anna’s father full circle in such a way that she is able to reclaim her agency even in the face of everything that happened. Which would you see as being the greater horror, Anna making the doctor pay or her being a good mother?

I think they are both horrifying. No one deserves a doctor like that, and unfortunately, his patronizing treatment, while not based on a specific provider, isn’t particularly fictional. Almost anyone who’s dealt with an OB-GYN has had that doctor. And Anna didn’t want to be a mother to anyone—or anything.

Did Shanelle take that long break?

Good God, I hope so. I hope she had a full-on breakfast buffet with extra coffee.

You are delightfully familiar with the horror genre. What first sparked your interest in the shadows?

Ha. Life? Yeah. I’ll go with that. Life.

What’s next for R.A. Busby? What can fans look forward to in 2024?

I am looking forward to my second novella, Words Made of Flesh, coming out from Cemetery Gates Media in 2024, about a book made of human skin that bonds with the life of its owner. Fun stuff!