Short horror story! GLEAM

A rarity from Peaches Christ’s Theater of Terror anthology

I forgot how much I liked this story!

A few years ago, Justin Hall invited me to contribute to Peaches Christ’s queer-themed horror anthology. Whenever I get asked to do short stories, I only commit if my contribution can be semi-autobiographical— that way if I collect them all myself, there can be some connective tissue. Justin was more than into the idea, and I jumped at the opportunity to explore what I as a gay man am scared of.

At the time of making the story GLEAM, I had a cat Amelia who in real life sadly died from rapidly growing cancer. The Fyre Festival fiasco was still fresh on everyone’s minds, and the idea of a Something Wicked This Way Comes-type malevolent guy using social media for his dark designs clung to my imagination. Add the vapid allure of social media, and you have GLEAM: a story about the lengths a budding social media influencer will go to in order to save his cat. There are aspects of this story I will want to pursue, and may expand on the concept at a further date.

The timing of rediscovering this story is all too funny: I just spent more than half of this year putting my dog Henry through chemotherapy and I utilized my meager social media following to get like $15,000 of funding through GoFundMe and webstore/ original art sales. Everyone will be happy to know that Henry is on month three of remission, so the effort is totally worth it.

Also, hey, it’s good to know I’m a ride-or-die pet owner.

Enjoy Gleam.

"Gleam" short story written and drawn by me!