A True Story of Cosmic Horror

Let me tell you a true story of cosmic horror.

It’s a story from my childhood.

I used to be so afraid of lightning storms. A long time ago now, I lived in Illinois, in a small town—I’ve basically always lived in small towns—and the weather in that state can be extreme. It’s got tornados, yes, and I have some memorable moments hiding from those—but that’s not what I mean. Illinois doesn’t mess around.

The summers aren’t as hot as Florida, where I currently live, but they certainly weren’t pleasant. Springtime brought rain that would last for hours. The wind during fall was enough to make you step backward. And the winters…there’s a reason Chicago is famous for its winters. To my now Florida-acclimated self, the idea of the outside being that cold is truly scary.

But what scared me was the lightning storms. The sound of them. The wind. Loud noises didn’t usually scare me. But the thunder did. I would try to sleep, try to rest, but each and every thunderclap would keep me awake. The usual childhood fears often didn’t find me, but the storm was real. I’d seen the damage storms can do. I can’t recall now, but I have to imagine I even feared that the house’s walls would not hold back the storm. That the world, at least where I was, was ending.

If you’ve read my first book, Nothing Will Be Left, the idea of something in the sky destroying things might sound familiar. The very first part—and still one of my favorite things I’ve written—of the book is about an event where hands from the sky take thirteen people. I gave it the name Murder Sky.

One of the things I’ve always liked about exploring cosmic horror—and science fiction, too—is the idea of scale. Going back to my time in Illinois, I would marvel at the scale of a city. Skyscrapers are impressive, yeah, but it was thinking of each of those massive buildings being full of people that really got the mind going. Being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic is unpleasant—to put it mildly—but even seeing that sea of cars hinted at how many people there were. Even to this day, I get a sort of existential vertigo when I consider that things are happening everywhere at all times. The stores are open all day, the restaurant makes hundreds of orders, and cars are constantly carting people to more locations than I can know, visit, or understand.

It’s honestly kind of shocking it took me until my late twenties to really start writing cosmic horror, given all this. Sure, I haven’t been scared of lightning storms in a long time. Sometimes the arcing lighting is amazing, and the rain helps clear away the heat. I think I like storms now. But the sky is a different matter. I think about the night sky and the space between planets and it does, in a way, still scare me.

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