Murmur: Collected Horror

By Natasha Sinclair

This short story collection pays homage to favourite speculative horror tropes with music inspiration, interwoven with themes of humanity and struggles with morality. This playful mix-tape of horror includes highly sexualised bloodlust on the goth club scene, a grim-dark creature feature, tales of loss of control, revenge, metamorphosis and punk teens stumbling into trouble in the woods.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clan Witch
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201852375

Natasha Sinclair

From the heart of Scotland, Natasha finds inspiration to write in just about everything -- from the maddeningly mundane to the utterly horrific. With stories that provoke deep emotional reactions in readers or a twist of a viewpoint that stirs fresh thought.Natasha doesn't subscribe to boxing art off into a single genre or indeed anything in life -- art should be unapologetic in its freedom. Her own writing spans genres including - speculative, horror, psychological and erotica.She has independently published work, compiled and edited collections, and has contributed to several anthologies. Natasha supports other creatives by way of proofreading, editing, and creating promotional material via her Word Refinery services, linked on her site, ClanWitch.comOut-with writing and editing, she's an avid gig-goer, reader, vegan, home educating, nature-loving, adopter of wonky animals.

Book preview

MURMUR

Collected Horror

NATASHA SINCLAIR

© 2021 Natasha Sinclair

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof including all images, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author and publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Any unauthorised use will constitute as an infringement of copyright.

Contact: http://clanwitch.com

[e-mail]

Contents are works of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First published 2021

Cover updated 2022

Cover art by Natasha Sinclair

Other formats available.

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Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Steerage Rats

Underworld Donation

Don’t Rock the Boat

The Wrapping

Sacrifice

Neighbours

The Night is Mine

Phantasmagoria

Moonshine Cinnamon

What Did You Think?

About the Author

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Trigger Warning:

This book contains dark themes that some readers may find upsetting/triggering. These include (but are not limited to) depictions of abuse (including sexual), and graphic violence.

Foreword

Natasha Sinclair and I met a long time ago. Neither of us were writers at the time, or at least I know I wasn’t. Natasha may have been writing but I don’t remember if she was. As I get older, my memory slips, and it must be twenty years since we first crossed paths. We were both early on in our work life at that stage and were working in a call centre selling one thing or other. As we began chatting, it turned out we were both avid readers and both enjoyed the horror genre.

Natasha is one of those people you see and assume she is likely a fan of the genre. Dark eye makeup, mainly black clothes, dark hair. Some may say a goth look but with Natasha, there is more to it than that. She owns it. It’s not an outfit to impress or to fit in. It’s her own style that suits her perfectly. She is a modern-day Lily Munster or Morticia Addams. She is the new Mistress of Darkness. If Natasha didn’t end up writing horror, I’m sure she would have ended up working in the horror industry in one way or other. It seemed to call to her.

Back then, we would swap stories about which authors we were reading and what books we were picking up, and even attempted to join a horror reading group — that was a bust. Mainly sci-fi fans showed up and no one really wanted to read horror, so we never went back.

We lost touch after that company we worked for went into administration and never seen each other or spoke for a long time. I was off social media for years. When I ended up back on Facebook, I began my own writing career, and through time, Natasha and I crossed paths again. This time we were both writing and subbing to some of the same horror anthologies. One thing led to another, and we began reading each other’s work, and before long, I was asking her to send me something to include in my own anthologies. A few months after that, I asked Natasha to join me as my editor. Needless to say, I enjoy Natasha’s work immensely. As time moves on, we are both forging our own paths, but they have inevitably become intertwined.

It’s easy to say Natasha lives and breathes horror. We both do. We spend our time swapping stories, reading the same submissions, picking up books by the same authors and sharing tables of contents in many books. I know how much time Natasha spends living in the horror world and with her family to look after on top of it; further testament to the passion she truly has for the genre and industry. She is, without a doubt, one of the best female voices in horror fiction that is writing today. She is early in her career, but as the years pass by, you will hear her name more and more. I only hope that you enjoy her words as much as I have.

—Kevin J. Kennedy (15/06/2021)

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to express thanks to my long-suffering partner and children for putting up with my, admittedly, occasional eccentric ramblings, which sometimes lead to complete stories as opposed to scraps all over the place. And the internalisations of many, many more of these, that leave a gaping chasm all around. His patience at my (sometimes outward) unrelenting questioning of just about everything is appreciated beyond words.

Thanks to the friends and family who have taken precious time to read and share my work and lent a critical eye now and then.

Also, those readers and publishers; from drabbles, poems, short stories and even my memoir – thank you to everyone who has invested some valuable time in my stories and welcomed my work into their TOCs — sincerely thank you for accepting my words into your pages!

Introduction

Indie short story collections are ten a penny, aren’t they? Especially these days with the accessibility of reach to small press publishers and, of course, the prevalence of self-publishing.

I wrote a piece touching on publishing routes shared on Clan Witch & Word Refinery. It’s an area I’ve thought about a lot recently whereby I hadn’t really before. There is stigma amongst readers, writers and publishers alike around which channel to take one’s work. It all comes down to mass validation to various degrees. This is not exclusive to the publishing world. Of course, judgments touch every artform, every industry, just about every aspect of the choices we as individual humans make in our lives. If one was to get wrapped up in what others thought, we would do nothing. If I didn’t worry about that, I may have started my publishing journey much younger than I am now. Needless to say, a sense of ‘fearlessness’ of sorts can take time to manifest, and I reached a point, raising children where I had no choice but to lead by example. Someone is always going to snark or ridicule — it should never cause you to repress what you really want to do in life. I want my children to embrace all parts of themselves, their dreams, their stories and not be oppressed by the judgment of family or strangers. Life is for living; stories are for sharing. Time is a slippery little devil, few of us know for sure when ours will stop.

Ten a penny these collections may be, but that does not diminish the stories that can be found within the pages of such a book, and often the inspiration behind those can be greater.

I’ve compiled this dark fiction collection with a few previously published and a couple never before. Each story is followed by a brief comment on how it came to be.

I hope you find at least one (hopefully more) to entertain you. Thank you for picking up a copy!

Natasha )O(

The whole punk ethic was do-it-yourself, and I’ve always been very literal, especially as a kid. When they said that anybody can do this, I was like, ‘Ok, that’s me.’

—Michael Stipe

Steerage Rats

The city of Glasgow was dying. History will glamorise an era of great depression because it was one soaked in recreational alcohol, hints of sexual liberation