Incorcisms: Strange Short Stories
“You have to understand,” says the woman, “an incorcism is nothing like its counterpart. No bells and whistles, no drama. All it takes is willingness, which you already have in spades.” Strange stories about strange things for strange people. Tales of possession and obsession. Of destruction and restoration. Of the demons we hold inside us, and those we leave behind in others. An odd apocalypse freezes a supermarket on Mother’s Day, a vanished village holds an ancient curse, an abandoned ice cream van tears a street apart. Rival rainbow setters, the woman who sowed a crop of elephants in her garden, and what happens if you keep on turning the clocks back. Perhaps you had a demon then lost it. Do you miss it? Our time here is brief and so are these curious fables. But the smallest of splinters are the hardest to dig out. Come and be snagged. Come, be unsettled. To be strange is to be human.
David Hartley
David Hartley is a writer of weird short stories designed to sit in the space between your brain and your skull. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester where he researched narratives of neurodiversity and wrote a novel about autism and ghosts.He is the author of four books: Threshold (Gumbo Press), Spiderseed (Sleepy House Press), Incorcisms (Arachne Press), and Pigskin, a standalone single-story chapbook which was published as part of Fly on the Wall’s political Shorts Season. He lives in Manchester with one human, two rabbits, and an endlessly shifting number of guinea pigs. #AdoptDontShop Twitter: @DHartleyWriterInstagram: DHartleyWriterWebsite: davidhartleywriter.com