We’re delighted to chat today with Vanessa Fogg, author of “That Small, Hard Thing on the Back of Your Neck” in The Future Fire #71.
TFF: What does “That Small, Hard Thing on the Back of Your Neck” mean to you?
Art © 2024 Ellis Bray
Vanessa Fogg: To me, this story is about the masks/skins that we all wear. The ways we pretend to better fit in, to get along, for status and popularity and ease of living and maybe even (for some people) sheer survival. And it’s also about the psychic costs of living that way.
TFF: What are you working on next?
VF: I admit that I’ve been blocked for a few months now. But I’m trying to write a short (and maybe satirical?) horror piece now, and I’m excited about some earlier stories I wrote that should be coming out in 2025 or so—including a tale about a Faerie prince touring our modern world and going viral on social media, a story about the search for immortality (based on Chinese myths and legends), and what I think of as a little weird horror piece where a Eurydice-figure talks her lover into the Land of the Dead.
Extract:
You are thirteen and in the shower when you find it. A hard, dangly little thing, like a tag, stuck to the back of your neck. It’s stuck just where your neck bones merge into your back, between your shoulders. Reflexively, you try to brush it away, swat it off, as you would to a bug. It stays stuck. Hot water sluices over you, and the thing is slick and hard to grasp, but you manage. The thing feels like metal. It’s small and rectangular, and there’s a little round opening at the top, where the tip of your finger fits.
Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at http://press.futurefire.net/2024/10/new-issue-202471.html.
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