My story, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, went live on Terror House today. Here’s a link: https://terrorhousemag.com/lay/

I originally had a content warning on it, but the site didn’t run it. I guess they figured anyone signing on to a place called Terror House was willing to take their chances.

I’m not very happy with the story they published. After I sent it to them I found some typos and more important, some stylistic flaws that really bothered me. I contacted them and they said to send them a corrected copy. Guess which one they published. Yeah, the original. Just keep that in mind when you spot errors in the story.

While the serial murderer angle provides the creepy factor, the story isn’t really about that. It’s about our unnamed protagonists struggle with his father. Wow, I never realized until now that I never gave the kid a name. It didn’t seem important to the story. But our hero is on the cusp of manhood and trying to figure out what makes the measure of a man. Does he want to be the kind of man his father is? Obviously not. But his final act pushes him in that direction. A deeper story would show if he simply followed the path of least resistance or fought his way free.

A few readers complained that I didn’t reveal the identity of the killer, but as I stated above, that wasn’t what the story was about. However, I did write a final scene tying everything up. Terror House has first rights to my story for seven days. So next week I’ll post the version of the story I like, with the final scene as a bonus.