Hungry Business: A Short Story
by Maria DeBlassie
GENRE: Gothic, Horror (Cozy)
BLURB:
From the multi-award-winning author of Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings comes a cozy Gothic short story about searching for soul, meaning, love in a world that's forgotten the power of everyday conjuring.
Looking for love can be deadly…
You know how it goes. You go out, hoping to meet someone. You wade through your fair share of brainless automatons, lifeless bodies, and ravenous undead good at passing as human.
The more you go out, the less hope you feel and the colder your body gets. But you keep at it. All you need is one beating heart to match your own before yours stops pumping altogether. How hard can it be to find one living, breathing human in a city full of bodies?
Dating.
It’s hungry business.
CW: Assault
Excerpt:
At home, you take a bath as hot as you can stand and read an old bodice ripper until the warmth returns to your veins, and the flames of hope have been fanned enough that you can crawl into your flannel jammies and be grateful you are still alive. The light in your apartment slowly seeps into your chest, and you settle into your perch on the window.
You inspect the damage to your pinky finger as you wait for the cat to appear. The bath stopped the spread of the decay but the tip is gray and blue. There is puss where your fingernail should have been. You smother it in aloe vera, grated ginger, and bandages, hoping it will be enough to bring life back into your appendage. You don’t really know how to treat something like this. You sigh and lean back against the window frame. Your orange tabby cat has made its appearance—yours, yes, thought you know you shouldn’t feel so possessive about a creature you only know from a distance. It’s just nice to know it’s there.
Here’s the thing you love about the cat across the way: It’s proof that there are other beating hearts out there. Cats won’t settle where Hungries live. Perhaps their feline instincts tell them they’re easy prey for the things that are never satiated. That’s why you never see alley cats in the humanless neighborhoods. In fact, it was their strange mass exodus from certain parts of the city that first alerted officials to the virus now plaguing them. And this cat—bright orange like a flame with a soft, full belly—seems happy enough in its home. You wonder what kind of human it belongs to.
Interview with Maria DeBlassie
What was the hardest scene from your book to write?
The hardest scenes for me to write in Hungry Business would be the horrible dates! Everyone’s had them—those dates that leave you feeling hopeless or uninspired or fearful that you’ll never find love. It’s an ugly, hard feeling, but one that was important to write about. Sometimes the best thing we can is get real about what’s not working in our lives so we can make room for hope and growth.
Why did you choose to write in your particular field or genre?
I love writing cozy Gothic stories—a little creepy, a little chilling, but a whole lot hopeful. The Gothic genre is all about facing the darkness so that we can find the light.
If you write in more than one genre, how do you balance them?
I write inspirational non-fiction, cozy Gothic stories, urban fantasy, and romance. I find they all nourish one another. My non-fiction books on everyday magic help me craft the enchanting worlds in my fiction and my genre stories guide me deeper into everyday conjuring in my life beyond the written word.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
This short story just bubbled out of me one summer weekend. It had been an idea I’d been marinating on for a while, then one day, I remember waking up from a nap in which I’d had an epic dream about it. I sat down and wrote the story and didn’t stop until it was done. It took me most of the weekend to get the first draft down. I’d never had a story pour out of me like that. It was magic!
What book that you have read has most influenced your life?
That’s a hard one! There are so many. What can say is that genre fiction, particularly Gothic and urban fantasy, really helped me find myself at a time when I felt like it was a struggle to hear my inner voice. Stories about magic and the unseen world taught me that there’s more to life that what we can readily see with the naked eye.
Tell us a little about yourself? Perhaps something not many people know?
This is kind of an open secret at this point, but I’m a bruja. I believe in everyday magic, the power of the universe, the seen and the unseen, and the daily spells we cast without thinking—the wishes, thoughts, and actions we cast out into the world to bear fruit. When we’re more intentional about this energy, we can direct it towards hope and healing. I also hoard way too many mason jars, have my own witchy herb garden, deal the tarot, and know that storytelling is one of the deepest forms of magic.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Maria DeBlassie, Ph.D. is a native New Mexican mestiza blogger, award-winning writer, and award-winning educator living in the Land of Enchantment. Her first book, Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings (Moon Books 2018), and her ongoing blog, Enchantment Learning & Living are about everyday magic, ordinary gothic, and the life of a kitchen witch. When she is not practicing her own brand of brujeria, she’s reading, teaching, and writing about bodice rippers and things that go bump in the night. She is forever looking for magic in her life and somehow always finding more than she thought was there. Find out more about Maria and conjuring everyday magic at www.mariadeblassie.com.
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