Writing a new short story every week is proving to be an interesting experience. For each edition’s Brief Attraction, there is no idea, no concept, no outline ready to go. It is pure improvisation, and it often begins with some word vomit. This edition, I present to you Carbon Simularcrum, which started as a quick and dirty rogue-ish escape plot and evolved into nightmare hellscape in a cyberpunk dystopia. There is a lot of potential in this attraction; I may return to it and flesh it out further. But I digress. What often starts as little more than noise becomes a terror tale as the ideas take on form, giving shape to words. It’s a fun process, and one I have come to look forward to week over week. I’m enjoying this process so much, I have considered doubling up on Briefs each week, to have a spare to share on some other network, like Medium or Wattpad.

But enough about the Brief Attractions, what lies in wait for you across the rest of Backstage?

In Classic Horror, we careen through a town plagued by formidable beasts after a stranger with malevolent aims arrives and begins executing his plans. Isabelle and Edgar find themselves in a bit of a bind in this edition’s installment of A Vampire’s Vengeance. And the bus driver grows worried over the approaching swarm and nasty-looking monster in Bus Driver.

As a final thought, I want to point out that not a single word of this edition—nor any prior—whether expository or narrative (read: editorial content or stories) has been written with the use of AI. I now feel it entirely necessary to state this fact since AI has become prevalent in a number of ways across society, and I want to reassure you, my dearest guest, that what you consume here is all dreamed up by a human—me—and created by hand, the old fashioned way.

Let’s get into it →

This week was wholly devoted to deep cleaning my living space, therefore not much was accomplished outside of the columns featured here, including Carbon Simulacrum. Still, I do hope you enjoy the work you read below. It was all written under stress with a dash of tension and trauma and copious amounts of caffeine. More will be worked and shared about in the next edition.