About Unspeakable Horror 3: Dark Rainbow Rising:
Like the final girl in a slasher film, the LGBTQIA community knows first-hand what it’s like to fight for its survival. Beaten and bloodied after an extended chase scene through modern-day politics and the courts, we think we’ve triumphed and conquered our oppressors. We breathe a little easier knowing our rainbow is ascending in the distance. But—like the indestructible slasher villain—our enemies rise up again and again, as if on a looping third-act jump scare. It’s a seemingly never-ending return to battle as the pendulum of progress swings back.
In this third volume of the award-winning anthology series, the darkest minds from both the LGBT+ and horror literary communities join forces to bring readers an all-new collection of terrifying tales from that line on the horizon where the dark rainbow rises.
Stories by Chad Helder, Hailey Piper, Mathew L. Reyes, A.P. Thayer, J. Daniel Stone, Yah Yah Scholfield, Oliver Nash, Holly Lyn Walrath, Paul Tremblay, Carmilla Voiez, James Cato, Lucy A. Snyder, Maxwell I. Gold, Zachary Rosenberg, Matthew Blain-Hartung, Maryse Meijer, Vincent Kovar, CG Inglis, Craig Laurance Gidney, Dan Coxon, Kaitlin Tremblay, Michael Thomas Ford, Craig Brownlie, Amanda M. Blake, Sara Tantlinger, and Eric LaRocca. Edited by Vince A. Liaguno.
Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.
Excerpt:
Introduction:
It Follows
Vince A. Liaguno
As I sit and pen this introduction to the third volume in the Unspeakable Horror anthology series on a sunny, post-snowfall day here in the mitten-shaped state of Michigan, I marvel at how my procrastination in writing this has been good providence. Not good in the conventional meaning of the word, but good in a manner that’s advantageous to the larger point I hope to make—both in this preface and with the anthology as a whole.
When I decided to embark upon the third Unspeakable Horror, the concept was decidedly more thematically dense than its two predecessors—the effects of the proverbial closet in From the Shadows of the Closet and the dangers of desire run riot in Abominations of Desire. I saw Dark Rainbow Rising, in its infancy as an idea, as being about political and cultural pendulums and how they swing back when pushed to an extreme—or perceived extreme—with even greater force. I saw the collection exploring this idea of how the LGBTQIA community, in light of its political and cultural gains, had to brace itself for the inevitable backlash.
That idea—of being in a suspended state of anticipatory apprehension, of always having to look over one’s shoulder for what’s next—reminded me of an indie horror film called It Follows that was shot in and around Detroit in late 2013 and conceived by a native Michigander named David Robert Mitchell. The premise of the film, which is essentially a fever dream committed to celluloid, is that a supernatural curse is passed on through sex. The recipient is subsequently and forever stalked by grotesque personifications of said curse until they either pass it along themselves to someone else through sexual intercourse or it catches and kills them. I remember seeing the film in early spring of 2015 and its vivid images of Maika Monroe constantly looking over her shoulder, knowing with certainty that something was following her. Something malevolent that needed to be dodged at all costs lest it destroy her.
This idea of sidestepping a continuous and looming threat stuck with me, and as I crafted the submission guidelines for Dark Rainbow Rising, the cause-and-effect relationship between gains and backlash within the LGBTQIA community came into sharper focus. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark 5-4 decision handed down in Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, the LGBTQIA community has been enjoying unprecedented political and cultural visibility and societal parity. But for many—especially those among us old enough to remember the ebbs and flows of other civil rights movements in this country—there was always a darkening on the horizon just beyond the expanding colors of those bright rainbows.
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About Vince A. Liaguno:
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