HELL-O-WEEN | NAT’S LETTER

“NATALIE!” he calls out into the night.

I roll over in the makeshift cot that I’ve constructed for myself at the foot of his bed. I suppress any fleeting hints of annoyance. He is my sun and my moon. He needs me.

“You’re precious,” I coo. “People adore you. Your hair looks fantastic. Your face is a reasonable shade of orange.” 

“I had the dream again,” he gasps. 

“Which dream?” I ask as I flip the Keckly Quilt off my body - I’ve been told this blanket has some kind of historical significance but all I can say is it’s not very absorbent when it comes to spilled cranberry vodkas - and I straighten the skirt of the dress I wear to bed just in case he summons me.

“It’s the windmill,” he groans. His mouth makes dry, crackly noises as he mumbles: “Big, grey windmill. Churning. Renewable energy. They’re ugly. They’re noisy. They’re bad environmentally. They’re losers. I hate them. I want them to die.”

I worry that something might be wrong with his IVs. He has so many of them - a cocktail of liquids I’d never heard of before starting my new vocation - and then, of course, he has the colostomy bags, so I do my best to double check everything. “Don’t worry, precious one. You’ll kill all the windmills.”

“It’s the oil, Natalie. We’re making so much money. Hand over fist. So… so much. Billions and billions. But. What if the people? What if they…”

“Shhhhh shhhh shhhh” I say.

He rears up in the bed, his hands and arms tense almost like rigor mortis. His face grows pale. His mouth opens, contorted by some secret agony.

“The data centers! We need them! We have to compete! We… we…”

A cloud seems to pass over his face, then he turns to me - his eyes burning.

“Show me Husted’s ass!” He howls, “I need to see that meaty ass again! It’s all muscle and I have to look at it right now!”

I pull out my binder where I keep pictures of the hottest GOP candidates and flip straight to Jon Husted, Senator from Ohio. I should have this page dog eared, except by this point I can find the picture in my sleep.

“There you go, my Light,” I say as I display the page for him. “Go ahead and study his physique.”

“I made the mistake,” he slurs. “I started with his ass. It’s where his power comes from. His feet are massive. Look at his hands…” He trails off, his eyelids growing heavy again. “His power comes from the ass.”

“Sure it does, my King. Now, count the billions in your head and drift off to sleep...”

Woooooooaaaaahhhhh! 

It is I, the spirit of your author, writing to you from the great beyond! What you have just witnessed is called a cold open! It’s where we dive right into the newsletter without the usual introduction nonsense! We're always evolving here - like a Frankenstein's Monster or something! Yes!

Anyway, today is Halloween and, given the spooky, eerie nature of the day, I wanted to start with something truly scary: to take a peek inside of a diseased mind. Hope I didn’t frighten you off!

And now, speaking of diseased visions, let’s talk about the spookiest visions of them all: AI image generated slop!

FICTION: IN DEFENSE OF AI FOOD PICKS

Look: it ain’t easy owning a small business.

Here at the bake shop, we have tons of costs: everything from payroll to paper napkins, from butter to bakery boxes, from the water bill to the worms, grubs and maggots that we lovingly stuff inside our breakfast burritos.

And with inflation and tariffs and all of the other mounting costs that threaten the livelihood of your average small business, who can blame us for trying to cut costs where possible?

That’s why companies just like mine, the Eldritch Horrors Bakeshop and Cafe, turn to AI image generators for all our advertising needs.

If you’ve been to a fall fair or a local bar’s happy hour, you’ve probably seen them - offputting JPGs of shrimp pasta filled with what looks like creepy alien fingernails and bees, or churros that resemble crusty little dumps. You can find this slop everywhere these days, and indeed you can’t so much as open your internet browser without seeing some new person complaining about some terrifying “photo” of a cheeseburger that’s cheese is just a little *too* gooey.

Hey. I get it. AI imagery is offputting. It is at once too perfect and riddled with too many errors, both tiny and profoundly offputting. The people are glossy and vacant behind the eyes. And the food looks like something out of a fever nightmare.

But what if your business sells nightmare food?

At Eldritch Horrors Bakeshop and Cafe, we specialize in noshes painstakingly crafted specifically for Cthulu, the Elder Ones and the denizens of Y’ha-nthlei.

You all take it for granted that I want my food to look appetizing to human customers. But, jokes on you, I run a very specific niche business that caters to a variety of monsters, creatures and unholy deities. And these byzantine terrors happen to LOVE eating the nastiest, most vile comestibles imaginable to the feeble human mind.

Turns out, AI is perfect for this use case. It’s great for drafting fundamentally the same basic query emails for millions of people at a time, for making soulless, incoherent versions of the Odyssey as part of some wealthy madman’s vanity project, and it’s… actually, legitimately good for analyzing large data sets. But it also happens to be excellent at making Eldritch Horror food pictures. 

Why should I have to pay someone to take pictures of my food? Just to keep another artist afloat? Half these so-called “photographers” run screaming from the store and the other half slip into the realm of insanity! Also, I need all of my money to keep paying overhead - sales have been abysmal, with only a handful of supremely confused and appalled customers, and commercial rent ain’t nothing to sneeze at.

You might ask, “Why are you running a human business in the real world that makes inedible food for Lovecraftian fictional characters? You don’t seem like a very good businessman….” 

To you, I reply, “What are you, the first seventeen banks that turned down my loan application?”

So GET OFF MY BACK about the whole AI thing! I have trouble enough as it is! And if you know anybody who might want to buy out my business, please please please DM me on Instagram

Woooooooooooooo!  Scary salads and eerie edibles and frightening… I want to say fajitas? 

And now, watch out! Who’s that lurking in the doorway behind you? Is it possible that the cold open is about to become a runner?!

FICTION: NATALIE REPRISE

“NATALIE,” he hollers, his hands crinkling the blueprints in a sudden vice grip, “I NEED YOU RIGHT NOW.”

I know right away, his mind has slipped out and back again.

“It’s okay, my Binky Boy. I’m right here.” I shoulder my big black bag and rush across the construction site to be by his side.

“I saw it again! The arch! They pulled it down!”

“No no no,” I purr, shooing away the unnerved construction workers. The last thing I need is for them to witness a moment of illucidity or, say, explosive diarrhea or flatulence - for that to leak out to the world. The liberal media would have yet another field day. “Nobody would ever do that to your triumphal arch. It’s going to be too grand.”

“They pulled it down stone by stone, and each stone turned to a loaf of bread and they ate the bread.”

“It’s only a daymare,” I say as I pull a tablet out of my bag. For one, I need to document the time and length of the episode for the Walter Reed medical center - his doctors will want to know. But for another, I know the best way to calm him down…

“Have a seat right here on this bench. Let me show you some videos that Grok made,” I implore. “The libs get so pwnd, you’re going to love it!”

He shakily lowers himself down onto the bench. He tries to pull the hard hat off his head, but I intervene - we are still on an active site and there are beams flying around everywhere. He looks out over the construction.

“It’s gonna be the biggest, most bestest ballroom in the whole wide world,” he babbles. “There’s gonna be sniper pits and drone… hives and, and, a game room, and…”

“Of course it will, your excellency. Here: watch this. It’s that video of you pooping all over the No Kings rally. One of your favorites!”

He rests his head on my shoulder. I feel the otherworldly squish of his “hair” against my cheek. Then, his breathing slows. He falls into the little trance he does as he watches the poopoo flying out the back of the fighter jet.

“You’re okay,” I say, so convincingly that I find myself believing it too.

Man, what is going on in that guy’s life right about now? Suuuuuper scary, heh? Would hate to have sold my soul for that setup, hey what?

On a completely unrelated note, midterm elections are REALLY REALLY soon, so.

Anyway, now for the story of another guy with less-than-healthy obsessions.

FICTION: THE GRANGEWULF OF GAYLORD

Warren keeps a motion sensor activated camera trained on the gap in the fence, figuring that if the creature makes a break for the house then it will have to come through there.

Obviously, he had a better vantage point of the forest when he still lived in the house. At least the trailer sits much closer to the trees. Sure, it’s not as comfortable - the house has chairs and beds and running water. Toilets, that sort of thing.

But the house is not an option - at least, not for the foreseeable future - not until the Grangewulf situation is resolved.

Warren cannot wait to show the world. Not only does the Grangewulf exist, but it stalks the woods around Gaylord. Warren has seen it, moving in the shadows, traipsing beneath the trees.

“I’m gonna catch that rascally Grangewulf,” mutters Warren, then immediately resents himself. Who is he talking to? What is he, twelve?.

He’s just about worked his way through the resulting self-loathing and embarrassment of using a Loony Tunes catchphrase when he hears a sharp rapping at his trailer door.

That can only be one person.

Warren frantically runs his fingers through his hair - he left his comb indoors months ago and hasn’t been back to retrieve it, but he wants to make the best impression he can. He breathes into his palm to check his breath, a largely theoretical move because he doesn’t have any breath mints, then opens the door latch.

She stands at the bottom of the steps, her face scrunched into a Gordian knot of annoyance and disappointment.

“I thought you said you were leaving,” says Doris.

“I am,” says Warren. “I will be.”

“What’s keeping you?” she asks, her arms crossed like the most delicious pretzel that Warren has ever seen.

Warren considers - should he make up some reason for staying so close to her? But he has never been good at lying to his wife, despite trying it repeatedly, so he just admits it.

“I’m watching for it.”

Doris lets out an exasperated hiss. “You’re ridiculous,” she proclaims.

“I’m telling ya, Dore, he’s out there. I seen him, and I know he has designs on the house - on us. I’m the only one who can protect us.”

“What IS a Grange Wolf? Do you even know?”

“First of all, not “wolf.” It’s wulf,’ like the German…”

“Then what’s a grange, captain brilliant?”

“It’s - I - Look…” Warren hates stumbling over his words like this. Anytime Doris challenges him, he gets flustered. His thinking loses clarity and his lips become numb and awkward.

“You’ve done all this ‘research,’” spits Doris as she gestures to Warren’s overly detailed ‘murder board’ of cryptid facts and grainy pictures of the creature, “and you can’t tell me what the name means?”

“I don’t need to know what a grange is!” shouts Warren. “All I know is that he’s out there, skulking, and I’m gonna be the first to prove it.”

“If that’s how you want to waste your life then fine. Clearly, spotting the Grangewulf means more to you than any wife or potential family ever could. But do me a favor and do it from somewhere else.”

“This is my property too for the moment. At least until the lawyers are done hashing things out.”

Doris narrows her tempestuous eyes. “Move this godforsaken trailer or so help me God…” Then she storms back towards the house.

“I have rights too, you know!” calls out Warren as Doris rips open her front door, flashes a middle finger at him and then disappears into the house.

Warren sighs. He wishes that had gone better.

He has so much he wants to say to Doris: how he watches the forest to protect her; how he thinks about her all the time and loves her with every fiber; how deeply he regrets the day that they moved to this accursed town, or how he wishes he’d never talked to that old timer, Dan Dangler, over at the General Store. 

Damn you, Dan Dangler and your tall tales! How Warren wishes he’d never heard the name “Grangewulf!”

But Warren can’t live in that world now - the one where he moved through life blithely unaware of the cryptid creature haunting the forests of Gaylord. Even if Dan’s stories hadn’t consumed his imagination, then the first sighting would have ruined him anyway.

Seven feet. A furry shadow. Some sort of long, stick-like tendrils poking out from the top, like a crown or an array of peacock feathers. Glowing red eyes. Hiding, watching, from behind the treeline on Flag Day’s eve, 2021. Warren had a fair amount to drink that night, but even with his slight impairment he knew he could trust his eyes.

Something lurks there - Warren is convinced - and no amount of “You’re crazy” or “You’re imagining things” or “Cryptids aren’t real” will sway him from this certitude. He will get to the bottom of it, right after he watches another three hours of videos about it on Youtube and maybe finishes that six-pack in the minifridge.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The motion sensor beeps. Warren’s eyes snap open. 

Normally when this happens it’s a deer or something significantly more boring, and yet he can’t help but get his hopes up every time it goes off. He wipes a slick of drool from the corner of his mouth, flips the coat he uses as a blanket off of him and then crawls out of the bucket seat to go search for the monitor.

At first, no signs of anything. Another false alarm?

But then he sees it: tall and furry with some sort of stick-like protuberances. It has to be!

Holy shit, he thinks! The creature moves through the gap, like a shadow passing between the fence posts.

He blinks. Holy shit! He almost can’t believe his eyes.

“Holy shit,” he mutters.

He knows that he must act, that he’s the only one who can, but paralysis overtakes him. He’d imagined this very moment so many times, developed and redeveloped a plan of action and thought through every eventuality. Or so he thought, because in every imagined eventuality Warren immediately springs into action.

Yet now, doubts linger in the back of his mind. Fear peeks out from its hiding spaces. Will he have to battle this creature? To the death? Can he justify the ultimate self-sacrifice for the sake of a woman who kicked him out of his own house?

But then, if he never alerts Doris to the threat, then he robs himself of the chance to prove to her: he’s been right all along!

Power over his limbs returns to Warren. He darts for the only real closet in the trailer and grabs his weapon of choice: an old field hockey stick.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Doris! Doris!”

Warren rushes for the front door. His breathing, labored. His legs, burning. He curses himself for neglecting his fitness - of course that should have been part of his preparations. Of course.

“It’s coming for you!” he gasped, “Doris!”

As he reaches the entrance, he sees the door left wide open. The Grangewulf must have made it inside!

Warren peers into the darkness. Shouting for Doris may only upset the intruder, may cause it to enter some feverish berserker’s rage. Better instead to sneak inside and surprise the bastard. 

Stepping through the darkness, tiptoeing down a hallway he’s travelled many times before in much happier days, Warren peeks into the rooms he inhabited before his obsessions got the better of him. In each room, fond and bittersweet memories bubbled up to the surface, and at each room he pushed those memories to the back of his mind. No time to reminisce - a cryptid hides somewhere ahead of him.

Finally, Warren makes it to the end of the hall: the master bedroom. Muffled by the door, the sound of animalistic grunting seeps through the cracks. Is he too late?

Warren puts his hand on the doorknob, turns it as softly as possible to prevent the lock from clicking. He peeks his head around the doorjam.

“Oh what the hell?” slips from Warren’s lips before he can process what he sees:

Doris, in her negligee, reclined on the bed. At the foot, the creature - hunched over, a tangle of sticks and tree branches jutting from his furry back. His face is just a normal human face but surrounded by a well-defined line of hair that joins up to the rest of the Grangewulf’s pelt.

The Grangewulf uses his great big paws to massage Doris’s feet. Doris writhes in an ecstasy she seems to have never before experienced.

The Grangewulf’s tongue laps at the air: “Awoooga! Awoooga!”

“What in the name of Lucifer’s hell is this?!” shouts Warren. “What— what the…?”

Doris jolts out of bed. “Warren?! What are you doing in here?!”

“What am I doing? What’re… What’s he doing?”

“He’s doing none of your goddamn business!” she shouts. 

The Grangewulf backs into a corner of the room, uses the wingback chair that Warren’s uncle gave them as a wedding present for a shield against the awkwardness.

“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Warren stammers, “You? It? Or… him?”

“Oh it’s a him alright,” crows Doris. “He’s all man.”

Warren catches a weird little shrug from the Grangewulf.

“I think I’m owed some sort of explanation! I think I’m entitled-”

“You’re entitled to nothing, Warren. You had a choice - me or your sick obsession - and you picked the wrong one!”

“My ‘sick obsession?’ You're the one who didn't believe the damned thing even existed! Now I find him feeling up your feet?!”

“Oh what do you care, you haven’t touched me in a year and a half! Now go! I don’t want you here! Leave! Don’t make me call the authorities!”

“Call them!” shouts Warren. “They’ll take one look at that thing and haul him off.”

“Except he’s welcome here. You are not.”

Doris crosses her arms, daring him. Bewildered, Warren casts his eyes on the Grangewulf. Then, looks back to his wife.

He bows his head and turns away.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Warren regrets finishing his whole six pack from before. He wishes he had some sort of chemical stimulant in the trailer to help numb him. 

He turns to his murderboard, the focus of so much of his time and energy, the distraction from so much of his self-doubt and anxiety. Now, instead of some unsolved mystery, he sees only a hairy, seven-foot-tall foot fetishist.

Maybe he should have settled down, like Doris had asked. Devoted more time to his old job, or found something to do with their acreage. Talked to some people - people other than Dan Dangler and the folks on the Grangewulf message board. What will they have to say when they find out what the creature and his wife has been up to? 

Hell, maybe Warren and Doris should have had children, as they’d planned in their thirties or even their forties.

There comes another rap on the trailer door. Warren wonders - his wife, maybe? Come to explain? To apologize?

No, it’s the Grangewulf.

“We cool?” grumbles the Grangewulf.

Warren squints, surprised to hear the creature’s high, raspy voice. “What?”

The creature shifts on his hind legs. “We cool are?

Warren’s mind goes completely blank.

“Me fond are you. But Doris. She so sexy am. She… sooooo sexy am,” the creature purrs. “Me help canno am. Feet weakness have, since born. Understand you have?”

Warren thought for a moment, then said, “I recognize this is a moment of incredible historical significance, talking to the Grangewulf and so on, but I cannot do this right now. I’m worried I’ve lost my mind.”

The Grangewulf nods, then says, “Can have backrub you want? People pleaser am.”

“Nooooo,” says Warren. “No thank you. Uh. Have a good night.”

The Grangewulf gives him a thumbs up, but where the thumb happens to be a talon of his claw. Warren grimaces into a tight, polite smile and carefully shuts the door.

The time has come, Warren knows, to move the trailer.

HUUUUOOOOOOAAAAAAHHHHHH! What a frightening story! Makes you kind of want to reevaluate your priorities and hug the people you love, amirite? What could be scarier than your loved one… getting her feet rubbed by a… made up creature.

And now, because of the rule of threes…

FICTION: NATALIE REPRISE REDUX

“NATALIE!” he screams. “NATALIE, WHERE AM I?!”

I spit the pumpkin spiced chai latte out of my mouth and leap up from the corner of the room.

“It’s okay, Honey Bear! Calm down. I’m right here!”

“I HAD ANOTHER DREAM AGAIN.”

He takes a spastic breath. His face is as grey as it can be, given the cosmetic circumstances - the greyest shade of orange. 

“I SAW FRED’S FACE. It’s… it was being flayed. Strips of flesh - I’m pulling them off with my teeth and tossing them aside. But the more flesh I remove, the more I see: underneath his face is my own face. And now I can hear the people…”

He lets out a funny sob - like a giggle but also like clearing his throat. “The people tell me I’m a loser. That they don’t love me. That I was never loved. I try to talk over them but they won’t stop talking, so I talk louder and longer and angrier and I keep talking and talking but my throat is getting dry… my throat…”

I hand him his sippy cut of water. I help him lift it to his lips - I know he’s been having trouble with this lately. I need to exude calm. He needs that from me. I am his rock.

He seems to calm down, that dull reptilian smarmy cool returning to his eyes, but just as it seems like we might be out of the woods, he sees the rest of the room.

“WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?! WHAT’S HAPPENING?!”

I throw a look at everyone else. “It’s a cabinet meeting, my Liege. We’re just wrapping up. Isn’t that right, everyone?”

He lashes out, swiping papers and empty two liter bottles of Diet Coke from the conference table.

“THE VOTING - IT’S RIGGED! THERE ARE ILLEGALS! THEY’RE CONSPIRING AGAINST ME! HOARDS OF ILLEGALS, RUNNING ACROSS THE BORDER TO DROP OFF THEIR BALLOTS AND THEN RUNNING BACK AGAIN! THEY’RE OUT TO GET ME! I WON CALIFORNIA! THEY LOVE ME THERE!”

“Of course, they do. The Movie Stars all love you. And we’ll stop the illegals, oh Great One” I say, readying the syringe with whatever melange of chemicals the doctors have prescribed for these occasions. “Isn’t that right, Todd?”

“Wwwwwe, wwwwe’re doing out b-b-b-best…” says the empty suit.

“Is he going to be okay for Mississippi?” asks another empty suit. “We need him at the rally to remind the people who they’re voting for….”

“I think it’s executive time now, don’t you think?” I ask the assembled, trying my best to sound pointed and authoritative. It must work, because the “Capital S” Secretaries and the other cronies begin to slink out the doors.

Meanwhile, he starts to tear off his sack-like black suit in the middle of the room.

“I NEED HUSTED! I NEED THE SOURCE OF HIS POWER! I NEED TO LIVE! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?! I LOVE THE MEAT! I HAVE TO HAVE IT! NATALIE! NATALIE, I LOVE THE MEAT!”

I look for my opening. His mania pauses - he can’t sustain so much activity for so long, which is why he asks me to cheat at golf for him - I spring at the chance, sink the syringe into his crinkly grey shoulder and push down the plunger.

He howls, so I pull him into a hug. I cradle his head.

“THE POLLS ARE RIGGED THE POLLS ARE RIGGED I’M MORE POPULAR THAN ANYONE EVER DID YOU SEE THE POLLS THE ONE FROM FOX I’M UNTOUCHABLE I’M UNTOUCHABLE…” he chants.

“I know,” I purr. “I know.”

Slowly, I ease him down onto the floor.

“I’m untouchable,” he says. “Nobody can touch me. Not my sons. Not my daughters. Not my wives. I’m untouchable.”

“You’re untouchable,” I say, stroking the nape of his neck. I wonder, have I made a mistake? Hitching my wagon to what just might be an insane old mule rushing straight for the cliffs?

No, I decide. I’m here to serve my country, and to get a piece of the corruption. I adopt my most assuring voice. “Nobody can touch you.”

“I’m…. untouchable…” he slurs as he drifts off to sleep, his body slumped over onto me. I can feel the blood starting to drain from my right leg, but if I move then he’ll wake up and the cycle of mania will start anew. 

I make peace with the fact that I’m stuck like this for at least another two years.

And that’s it! That’s the newsletter for this week! If you enjoyed any part of this, please feel free to forward it or share it with someone! Don’t be shy!

Hey, by the way. It’s been a year now since I started this whole adventure. Check out last year’s Halloween post - there’s a fun little short story about a ghost going up against some A24 film fans.

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Hope you’ve enjoyed!  Love each other! Take care of each other!