People always ask why anyone would willingly scare themselves. I’ve asked it too, more often than I care to admit. But the truth is, horror can be comforting. There’s something honest about it. It doesn’t pretend the world is safe. It just builds on the premise that darkness is there, waiting, always. And somehow, facing it on the page makes the real shadows a bit easier to live with. Horror, to me, is a way of naming dread and making it tangible. And maybe that’s the point: sometimes it isn’t about scaring yourself, but about finding comfort in admitting you’re already scared.
When I was writing Dead Air, it didn’t scare me. Not once. If anything, it gave me space to let go of the discomfort I usually feel when things are too quiet, or when the dark feels too thick. Writing it was a release, the same way poetry is. I started in fragments, in images, in rhythm, then had to go back and shape those fragments into something that looked more like a story than a poem. 4 full months of almost daily editing, and then imposter syndrome set in. Which usually is the time (at least for me) to say okay this is done. Could the story be better worded? I'm sure it can, I might eventually go back to it and create a second edition. But for now, I feel this is the best I could do. I don’t know what I expect readers to feel. Recognition, maybe. Or just a moment of entertainment. That’s enough. I’m not chasing perfect reactions, I just wanted to put silence on the page and see what shape it would take.
What frightens me most isn’t the supernatural. That’s already creepy by default. What gets under my skin is the ordinary turned strange, the familiar gone slightly off. A sound where there shouldn’t be one. A shadow that doesn’t match. A silence that feels alive. That is the thread that runs through DEAD AIR as well
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