The surgery is an aortic something-or-other—you don’t really bother to listen. You don’t need some surgeon barely out of pull-ups to tell you your heart hasn’t worked right since Sam died. They put you under for it, and isn’t that a wonder: to sleep without dreaming. Or if you do, the propofol makes you forget, and that’s almost as good.

I have a longstanding fascination with fungi—their interconnectedness, their otherness, their ability to emerge from seemingly nothing. I also have a longstanding fascination with serial killers and the dehumanization they inflict. When I began writing “Primordium” it was only a vignette about mushrooms and their drifting spores, but it grew unexpectedly to incorporate both interests.

I have lost count of the number of discussions I’ve had about what the difference between horror and dark fantasy might be. Plenty of people have very crisp definitions and think applying them helps them better understand dark fiction. Me? I have a tougher time every year. I’m inclined to say that dark fantasy is the stuff that when you finish, you care more about what couldn’t be explained than the parts that were trying to make you feel scared.

Lisa Morton literally wrote the book on seances and spiritualism (you should all check out her delightful book Calling the Spirits). Here’s a short reading guide from her compiling great fiction about ghost hunters.

I.
Simple, tiny blood-cuts on a calf.
She cut herself shaving. The wind whipped
weasel-clawed, in circles around her legs.