We have a winner! Read the full winning story and an interview with the author below!
Winning Story:
Alex Wolfgang, “Brood”
Honorable Mentions:
H.V. Patterson, “Hyperdermis”
Kenyon J. Blunt, “The Crescent Cure”
We were wonderfully terrified to receive many great stories for the inaugural Okie Oktober Halloween contest. All of them were truly disquieting. The competition was tough, but one story stuck out.
The winning story is “Brood” by Alex Wolfgang. Blending elements of body horror and psychological suspense, “Brood” is a story that doesn’t seek to simply shock its readers, but to provoke questions about genetics, reproduction, and selfhood. Reading it, your skin will crawl as you begin to wonder what it means to be a body made of other bodies.
If you enjoy the story, check out Wolfgang’s latest cosmic horror novel Perfect Black. Much of the plot is set in OKC!
Thank you for reading. Have a very spooky Halloween!
-Elizabeth J. Wenger, Editor-in-Chief
Madeline C. Roper, Managing Editor
Brood
by Alex Wolfgang
Hundreds of babies pour out of me—mewling, crawling, writhing, crying in a pile of unshaped rubbery flesh. Their limbs tangle as they scramble to gain sentience over their bodies. I hadn’t realized just how small they would be. The largest is no bigger than my thumbnail, the smallest barely discernible as anything but a tiny, pink blob.
“Mika.” James chokes up, eyes watering as he squeezes my hand. “They’re beautiful.”
They don’t look beautiful to me—far from it. But my feelings will change when they’re whole. Everyone says they will.
I kiss his hand. “You’re gonna be a hell of a dad.”
I mean that. James is kind, patient, smart, compassionate. All the things a parent should be. It’s no wonder he wanted this so badly.
“Most of them look healthy,” Dr. Aster says, his voice monotone. “Only a couple of stillborn. We’ll get those disposed of as quickly as possible.”
Disposed of. Such a clinical term for what might have become a part of our eventual child. But the books all warned us not to get too attached. Less than half a litter makes the final cut, and the thought of what happens when too many babies converge is far more horrifying than that of losing a few. When that happens, they all die in the end anyway.
Four hours pass before they’re through testing the little ones and we’re allowed to go home. James drives, and the babies crawl around in the padded back half of our SUV. He drives slowly, trying to keep them safe in a world where they only make car seats for fully formed children. Trying to distract myself, I read the test results the nurse handed to me on the way out.
“On average they’re more me than you,” I say. “Actually, the seven that died were all over 75% me.”
“I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything,” James says, reading my mind. “And anyway, they’re all ours.”
I wonder what made the babies that were more me than him die, but I keep the question to myself.
It takes nearly half an hour once we get home to round them all up and get them into their bedroom. They take to it quickly, rolling around in the soft, thick sheets and learning how it feels to exist, to interact with each other, the creatures they once shared a body with and with whom, if they were lucky, they’d share another in a few weeks.
Within an hour we need to turn on the waste disposal system. The little robots work their magic, scooping up tiny mounds of baby shit from all over the room. It’s hard to believe parents used to do this by hand.
Then there’s nothing much for us to do for the rest of the day but watch in fascination. James and I don’t speak much—what is there to say? There’s too many to hone in on any one, to try and analyze their behavior for clues about who might prevail. We’re too tired, anyway.
He finally parts with me to make our dinner while I give our babies theirs. It tickles at first, lying down and letting them crawl all over me. They scramble one-by-one for a taste of my milk, shoving each other off for dominance. I want to like it, to take pride in providing them sustenance, but they make my skin crawl like they’re little leeches instead of my flesh and blood.
Even after they’re all finished, I can feel their phantom forms crawling on me while we watch TV to unwind. The feeling follows me to bed.
James has been awake nearly as long as I have, and he falls asleep within minutes of us lying down. It isn’t so easy for me. The sound of their crying and crawling seeps in beneath the bedroom door and keeps me awake. I creep through the hallway and open the door to look in.
An artificial night sky illuminates the room from above, and their bodies glow with a bluish tint that conjures images of ghouls rising and writhing in the dirt of a graveyard. Some are quiet and still while others crawl over them in a frenzy. It’s useless to wonder which ones are mostly me right now, but I do it anyway. Maybe they’re the weaker ones, those who get trampled by their brothers and sisters, or maybe they’re the most brutal and insistent, taking more than their share with little regard for the others. It’s likely a mixture of both, but I can’t help but feel it’s one or the other.
A sick feeling festers in my stomach. After a few minutes, I return to bed. Sleep still doesn’t come easily. I turn a fan on to drown out their sounds.
#
James has to work the next morning, so I’m left alone with them. On his way out he shoots me a worried smile.
“You going to be okay alone all day?”
I nod. “They’ll mostly take care of themselves. For now, anyway.”
“They aren’t the ones I’m worried about.”
I look away. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll call you during lunch, okay? Keep me updated. Text me if you need to. I want to know how you’re feeling.”
I kiss his cheek. “Okay.”
He tousles my hair on the way out, and, for some reason, I fight the urge to recoil.
The moment he’s gone, his rumbling car out of earshot, I hear their soft mewling. They must be hungry again. I shudder and slowly trudge through the hallway toward their bedroom. On the way, I pass the bar and hesitate, my eyes drawn by the shining shot glasses. I stop and fill one with whiskey, then choke it down. Maybe that will make this more bearable.
The warmth is trickling into my belly when I open the door. Their cries become louder. Some of them look at me, and even though I know their eyes don’t work properly yet, it still feels like they’re judging me.
I strip off my clothes and let them overwhelm me again. For a few minutes I close my eyes, but when I feel one squeezing too hard with its gums, I grab it and look at it closely.
Up close, it looks like the photos I’ve seen of naked mole rats—tiny, pink, hairless, and hideous. It squeals and cries, mucus dripping from its nose. It opens its eyes wide and I glimpse their deep blue color and oval shape. My own eyes are staring back at me.
I’m instantly sure this is one of mine, at least mostly mine. It isn’t just the eyes. There’s something in the way it looks at me—so full of selfish confusion and helpless stupidity—that tells me there’s little of James in it.
God, he’d chide me for thinking something like that. Tell me that’s my mother’s voice, not my own. I know he’s right, but that doesn’t make it any quieter.
For a moment I want to squeeze it until it stops breathing. James would never know. So many will die anyway. This one probably wouldn’t make it, so why not put it out of its misery, save it the effort of trying to exist in a world where it doesn’t belong, where it isn’t wanted?
Then reality floods back in. This is one of my babies. If nature agrees with me, so be it, but I need to let it take its course.
While the rest of them feed, I watch them one-by-one. I’m shocked at how easy it becomes to determine which are more me than James. They make their personalities known so clearly, even at this stage, when they’re only a fraction of a human being.
The ones that take after James patiently wait their turn to suckle. They take what they need and finish quickly, returning to their explorations of the room and one another. The ones who take after me bite and squirm and scream when they don’t get their way. They push and shove; they suckle themselves until they’re fat. It repulses me.
#
I wake to the sound of them crying more loudly than usual, and when I enter their room, a group surrounds two lifeless bodies on the ground. I look at them closely, stare deep into their empty eyes. I can’t be totally sure without seeing the way they behave, but I’m almost certain they were some of James’s. The ones who surround them most closely are all mine. Looks of wonder and excitement light their scrunched-up faces.
Again, the urge to crush them arises in me. When James enters the room behind me, the feeling dissipates.
“Want me to take care of them?” he asks.
“No, I’ll do it after you leave.”
“You’re sure? I don’t mind.”
“I want to.”
He leaves to go make breakfast, and I head into our bedroom to grab a small marker from my bedside table. When I go back to the babies’ room, I find a few who still surround the bodies, staring with malevolent curiosity. I mark their heads with little black dots.
After James leaves for work, I go back and find the marked babies. A few more crowd the bodies now, so I mark them too.
From the kitchen I grab a large mixing bowl and return to their room, then pick up the marked ones and place them inside. I carry them through the hallway until I reach the basement door. I can’t extinguish the life I’ve created, but I can keep them from killing the others. Descending the stairs into the basement, I flip the light on and glance around the room we’ve barely touched since we moved in three years ago. James never comes down here. He’ll never know the difference.
#
“Where’d you take them?” James asks after work. We sit across the table from one another eating our salads.
“The bio-depository on May,” I answer. “A few more died after you left.”
“Weird,” he says, scrunching his face. “I thought it was supposed to be more gradual.”
I shrug, indifferent to my lie. “I guess it just depends.”
Before the next morning’s feeding, I visit the outliers in the basement. They’ve taken well to it, the resilient little things. They appear no less suited to the dank darkness than they did to the room upstairs. None of them have died. They still whine and cry as they explore the outer limits of the pen I set up for them, but they’re babies, after all. My babies.
I lay beside them on the floor and let them feed. Without the others, they’re more patient, gentler. They repulse me less. They can’t taint the others down here, can’t dominate and kill them. It makes all the difference. It surprises me to want the best for them now.
After I’m through, I go back upstairs to the others. No more died here overnight either. I wonder if they would have if I hadn’t quarantined the others. Maybe it doesn’t matter if they die rather than disappear, just that there are fewer. If that’s the case, I’ll need to find more to take downstairs. I’ll skip the marker this time. Once I’m through feeding them, I scoop another handful of mine into the bowl to join the others.
#
Within a week, the baby upstairs begins to form. Flesh merges with flesh. The cries of many become the cry of one. For the first few days it looks like no more than a mutant conglomeration of organic tissue. Its feet are composed of dozens of tiny, stubby toes, its head a lumpy mound of hardening skulls. Even though our doctor prepared us for this, it still terrifies me. It isn’t until its eyes and mouth become recognizable that it starts to feel like a real child.
The more it resembles a normal human, the more it resembles James. It’s a boy, even.
There are still stragglers, ones who are determined to make the final cut, even when it becomes hopeless. Their reality is one of inhospitable cruelty. They’d die if I didn’t take them downstairs. As far as James knows, they do.
After James leaves for work again, I bring the final few to join the others. The sounds echoing between the basement walls have changed. The healthy cries and coos are now wet and strained, the sound of inferior flesh trying to realize its biological imperative. They’ve started to come together, but they’re nothing like the boy upstairs. Their bodies have seeped into one another like a soup of melted, contorted flesh. They have no discernable limbs. Occasionally, a bulbous appendage will extend out of the mass and reach for nothing before collapsing in on itself. Cries of pain accompany these failures.
I struggle to remember how many I’ve brought down here. Hundreds, I think. More than I let remain. But James deserves only the best for his son.
I expect the mass to die at any moment. It’s such a feeble attempt at life. But until then, I will keep coming down here and nurturing and feeding it until it comes time for its last breath. It deserves that much. I deserve that much.
James’s face lights up when he comes home each day to see our boy’s progress—his boy’s progress. I wonder how much of myself is in him. A little, I’m sure, but not too much. With so many variables, mistakes were bound to be made.
“He has your eyes,” he says one day, and my stomach turns in on itself.
“No, he doesn’t.” My words come out more aggressive than I mean them to. “He has yours.”
He cocks his head and squints at me. “Mika, are you okay?”
“Of course.”
“Have you talked to Dr. Korda lately?”
“No, but I don’t think I need to.”
“You sure? You seem distant. Like last time.” He says the last three words quietly, like he’s afraid.
“I’m just tired. It’s exhausting keeping up with him.”
He hugs me. “It’ll get easier. But if you start to get those feelings again, promise you’ll tell me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
It’s so easy to lie. This should bother me, but it doesn’t.
#
Our boy is complete. We wake to hear him crying as one. When we enter his bedroom, he’s lying on the padded floor, looking around as if confused about where his brothers and sisters have gone. He’s beautiful. The kind of baby most mothers dream of, healthy and excited and curious. I hope he’ll grow up to be just like my husband.
James chokes out a sob and scoops him into his arms. A cold prickling sweeps across my skin. I don’t want to touch this baby. But when James turns around and holds him out to me, I have to. I try to force a smile, pretend to be moved. James watches me, eyes watering. I kiss the baby on the forehead, and James smiles.
“I’ll go get the crib,” he says.
While he goes to the garage, I try to muster up some feelings for this son who is, at least in small part, me. I try when James returns and rolls up the floor padding, when he assembles the crib piece-by-piece, but when he takes the boy from my hands and places him in his new crib, I still feel nothing.
“You okay?” James asks.
I reassure him with a nod and a fake smile.
“We’re gonna need a bunch of new stuff,” he says. “Toys, a mobile, diapers, a car seat, a stroller. Shit, I should have gotten him a car seat already. I didn’t think this would happen so fast.”
Neither did I. Maybe that was my doing.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll look after him. You go pick up what we need.”
He nods, and, humming to himself, clears out his van and gathers his things. By the time he’s gone, the boy is asleep in my arms. I gently lower him into his crib, and he barely stirs.
I dread the trip downstairs, but I have to make it one last time. The floorboards creak beneath my feet.
My baby’s breath gets more stunted and shallower by the day. She never formed properly, but she did form. She’s now one bulbous mass, gelatinous and miserable. Her limbs have recessed into her body so that only hands and feet stick out. She no longer cries because she isn’t able.
The doctor was right. So were the books. There’s a reason not every baby makes the final cut. A reason why so many must die so that one may live. The suffering creature makes me weep in a way that boy never could. She is me, maybe more me than the body I’m in. My daughter deserves love and kindness. She deserves mercy. Sleep well, little angel. I’m sorry there isn’t more for you in this world. I thought I couldn’t do this, but motherhood has given me the strength to do things I never imagined.
Interview with Alex Wolfgang
Questions from Madeline C. Roper
What drew you to begin writing? How did you get your start?
I read a lot growing up, and I wrote some stories here and there in high school, but I didn't take writing seriously until it was time to pick a route in college. I went to OU and studied Professional Writing there. That honed my basic skills, and I fell in love with the craft, but it was the beginning of a long, slow journey.
Are you a big horror reader? What authors/stories have inspired you?
Horror is my favorite genre, both as a reader and a writer. The first time I found something I wanted to emulate, it was Clive Barker's Books of Blood series. To me, it's the perfect balance of campy and fun with literary and psychological. His prose is poetic and elegant, but it also never gets in the way of the story. I've also fallen in love with horror writers like Philip Fracassi, Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson, and Brian Evenson. Right now, I'm reading The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, and I'm in awe of how rich his voice is.
Where did the idea for this story begin for you?
I've always been interested in genetics, and the idea that certain genes and traits outcompete and dominate one another, that we are a sum composite of all the winners. But it all happens invisibly, and before we leave the womb. I started the story by asking myself what it might look like if a parent could see that process happening in their own child post-birth, and what kind of psychological effects that might have during such an emotional period.
What is your writing process like?
For the past couple years, I've been focused on novels. When I'm drafting one, I like to set aside about an hour and a half each morning to write. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen, but when I'm in the habit, I become way more efficient with my time. For whatever reason, my creativity seems to peak from about 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., so that's when I aim to write. Thankfully, my day job work is pretty flexible. As for short stories, the process is more nebulous. I find I don't have to be quite so methodical. It's fun to try and squeeze a couple out between novel drafts as palate cleansers.
There are elements of both bio-science fiction and body horror in this piece. Do you find yourself writing a lot within these genres?
This is probably one of those most sci-fi heavy stories I've written, but I do like how the genre crosses over with horror and I hope to do more. Body horror is a different story. I don't do much violence or gore in my work, but bodily transformations and loss of bodily autonomy show up frequently.
I appreciate that this story doesn't over-explain itself. We don't understand why babies are born in a new way in this world. How did you decide what to omit and why?
I tried to be very deliberate in how much I revealed because I didn't want to distract from the true focus of the story, which is the psychological journey of the main character. The goal was to reveal the absolute minimum amount of information the reader needed to buy into this alternate version of reality. If something made sense without further explanation, it got cut.
To me as a reader, the central fear of this story seems to be the fear of what "bad" genes/lessons/characteristics we pass on to our children. Do you see it that way? What inspired you to write about parenthood in this way?
I do see it that way. I think it’s inevitable that parents pass on something they don’t like about themselves to their kids, whether it’s a physical trait, or a bad habit. You can tell yourself all you want that you’ll raise your kids to be better than you, but you’re always doing so with your own limitations. I’m not a parent, but as a married man in his mid-thirties, I’ve spent a lot of time speculating about parenthood, and the well of anxieties is deep.
This piece is well-developed with a distinct voice. How have you found your voice as a writer?
Thank you! In my experience, voice is one of those amorphous concepts you can’t directly work toward as a writer. It develops when you aren’t looking. The only real way to make it happen is to write, and write, and write, and get to know yourself along the way. At some point, I developed the confidence I needed to bring my voice to life.
What does it mean to be an Oklahoma writer?
There are so many talented and creative people in Oklahoma’s literary scene, and the more I dig, the more I find. Everyone seems to support each other a great deal. One of the best horror magazines in the country, Cosmic Horror Monthly, operates out of OKC. Local bookshops are community staples. I’ve made multiple friends through online writing groups, only to find out they’re local and befriended them in real life. It’s an honor to be a part of the community, and I hope to become more involved, which is a large part of why I submitted my story to Okie Modern. Living here can be frustrating for a lot of reasons, but it’s also deeply inspiring.
Alex Wolfgang is a horror and weird fiction author from Oklahoma. You can find his work in Cosmic Horror Monthly, Nocturnal Transmissions Podcast, and anthologies by Grendel Press, Nosetouch Press, Howl Society Press, and Future Dead Collective. When not reading and writing horror, you can find him hiking and camping, drumming, playing tennis, and watching movies with his wife.
