Introduction and Guide: Unexpected Visitations and Arrivals

by L. Andrew Cooper, editor

with Monte Remer, editorial assistant

and Silas the Scribble Man, spiritual guide

Welcome to Unexpected Visitations and Arrivals, the “Ruined Ruby” phase of the second Exhibit from the Horrific Scribes archive of dark fiction and (some) poetry.

While the “Baby Blue” phase focuses on children and childhood experience, the “Ruined Ruby” focuses on adult pathways, the unexpected places we sometimes end up and the unusual people we might meet along the way.

What the hell is an “adult pathway,” anyway? How many people experience adulthood as a series of moments spent asking, “Where do I go from here?” Children under a certain age tend to think adults have all the answers. Adults who reach a certain level of maturity learn to cope with having few, if any, of the Big Answers. Maybe we stray from the path because we were never on a path to begin with.

Of the four galleries in this phase of the Exhibit, the first three all deal with familiar, typically safe activities and places—dating at a restaurant, eating in the kitchen, scrapbooking in the dining room, sleeping in the bedroom, drinking at the pub, riding on the train—that nevertheless lead down radical pathways involving strange meetings and outcomes.

The fourth gallery deals with larger paths, paths that have implications and repercussions for, history, human identity, and human existence in a global sense. As you might guess, because Horrific Scribes is about dark fiction and poetry, the deviations, the partings from the path, on display in these galleries do not tend to involve visitations and arrivals that characters want to celebrate.

Because adulthood is confusing.

Adulthood is dangerous.

Adulthood is a horror.

Like Horrific Scribes in general, the Exhibits are recommended for mature readers who are not sensitive to content many people would find disturbing. For specific trigger warnings, consult the main archive. Otherwise, proceed at your own risk.

GALLERY ONE: UNPREDICTABLE DATES

“The Virtues and Vices of Vegan Vampires” by Sarina Dorie. This story is actually pretty funny… if you think dinner conversations about cannibalism are funny (I do). So, how does a vegan vampire survive? Furthermore, how does a vegan vampire manage the LGBTQ+ dating scene? What would you do if you found out your date was a vampire? What if said date used your moral beliefs against you in an argument that might cost you some precious plasma?

“Dinner and a Show” by Jennifer Peaslee. Note that this story is extreme horror. That a man who habitually exploits women gets a nasty and (just in the world of horror fiction) satisfying surprise from a woman he goes home with isn’t what makes this story worth reading. What sends it over the edge is the way the woman stages the man’s experiences with him as the audience, making him the exploiter and the exploited at the same time. Would such a man ever understand how he could end up in such a position?

GALLERY TWO: UNINVITED GUESTS

“Kitty’s Hobby” by Jen Mierisch. Kitty likes scrapbooking about murders, but she still seems like a sweet old lady when she invites a politician in for tea after he unexpectedly knocks on her door. The uninvited man has unwarranted assumptions about Kitty, and Kitty has unsuspected plans for her guest, all of which leads to no obvious moral about judging by appearances—some stereotypes hold up, and some don’t—but does lead to a devilishly deviant outcome.

“Funky D” by Kasimma. The narrator receives unwelcome visitations from two demons, who explain that he’s in a predicament that undermines his understanding of life and language. This story plays games with words, ideas, and time in ways both amusing and frightening (the narrator’s situation is far from enviable). One unlikely meeting, or a few careless words, could change everything… maybe these demons were invited after all?

GALLERY THREE: INTERLOPERS

Three Distorted Visions by Ian Hunter. Hunter told me that the first two of the three poems in this selection were at least partly inspired by images seen in a pub. I prefer pubs to be less creepy. For this gallery, I call the uninvited “interlopers” rather than guests because they assert themselves more forcefully. In “Something Down the Dark Alley Looks Like Elvis,” Elvis is coming, and he’s not going to stop. Likewise, the “Ghosts from a Christmas Carol” intrude and linger, too.

“The Imposter Syndrome” by Eric Nash. This piece returns from Exhibit One, where it was in a gallery for “Invasions,” which is similar to the concept I just described for the last piece, but this time I want to think more about the title. I first encountered “Imposter Syndrome” as a graduate student listening to a professor talk about how no amount of academic success stops him from feeling like a fraud. I’ve heard fiction writers talk about the same thing: despite good reviews and good sales, they feel like imposters acting like they have writing know-how to share. In this story about doppelgängers, who are the imposters? How might an encounter with someone else reveal that you’re a fake?

“The Train” by L.N. Hunter. In this story the main character, Francis Tate, has a very unexpected visit with a very unusual group that changes him profoundly and affects the “arrival” of the passengers on a train. Recalling without duplicating Clive Barker’s “Midnight Meat Train,” the interlopers in Tate’s attempt at transportation gesture toward the cosmic. Humanity arrives at its own insignificance.

GALLERY FOUR: TRANSITIONS

Luminous Darkness: Escape and Transgression by Gerri Leen. Focusing on transgression, Leen’s poems in this selection often depict movement and arrival. “The Line” suggests a post-apocalyptic world with a night side and a day side, observed by a woman with the ability to ferry people from one side to the other. She encounters people wanting to cross but knows not to watch them as they do, as some people do not survive the transition, and their destruction is a horror. In “The Collector Prince,” an objectified Snow White crosses over into being an empowered avenger of other objectified women, reversing the horrors of the Prince. Movement, visitation, crossing, arrival—all dangerous, but all potentially liberating.

“To Play the Queen of Hearts” by Daniel Stride. We move from meditation on transgression to a transgressive, transitional age, the French Revolution, a time when “ordinary” people were using the guillotine to behead people who supposed themselves their “betters.” This story follows a woman of the aristocracy who thinks herself very much most people’s better and continues to think so even after she’s only a severed head. Her prejudice and snobbery narrated as her head has adventures are absurd, yes, but also frightening as they frame the social order Revolutionaries were trying to cut away.

“No Vacancy” by Susan L. Lin. This story starts as a haunted house tale, and visitors are involved, but the less I say about what makes it great the better. It ultimately involves issues related to human identity and different people’s rights to exist.

“Final Confession from the One-Woman Department of Mind Control” by Phoebe Barr. A young woman with good intentions does research that she hopes will help a friend and many people like her, but instead her work leads the world further and further into dystopian conditions. This tragic, horrific tale of being stuck on a path that wavers beyond control and leads deeper and deeper into darkness seems a fitting end for this phase of the Exhibit. Perhaps we should expect good intentions to lead to Hell, but we usually don’t.