My short story, "The Cure," is now available at Interfictions

I am very pleased to announce that my short story, “The Cure,” is now available to read for free online at Interfictions. I wrote “The Cure” last summer while I was researching hysteria ((For a still ongoing secret project!)), which was once believed to be a medical condition that afflicted women, but has since been discounted as basically sexist poppycock. However, so many physicians attempted to fix hysteria that many treatments were devised, some involving plunging women into freezing baths or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, treating them with vibrators. (There is a great movie about this starring Maggie Gyllenhaal called, fittingly, Hysteria.)

My story, “The Cure,” is about one possible cure for hysteria. It was inspired by the quote that opens the story — a quote from a real physician describing hysteria:

“A hysterical girl is a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

(Sidenote: The quote above is from Holmes Sr., a physician. His son, Holmes Jr., became a justice of the United States Supreme Court.)

“The Cure” is different from the other short stories I’ve written because it’s my first story to be published as adult fiction! It’s kind of a hybrid between horror, fantasy, and historical fiction, which is why I’m so pleased that I could submit it to Interfictions, an online literary journal that is precisely for stories that cross genre.

It’s a pretty short short story, so rather than say more about it, I will just point you to this link so you can read “The Cure” for yourself. I hope you enjoy it!