It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy, by Hailey Piper

Episode Date: October 12, 2025

Margaret reads you a story about werewolves, polyamory, and cycles of trauma.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper.

Listen to season four of Snafoo with Ed Helm. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? Listen to heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B.

My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This shit was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coalzo Media.

But club, club, club. Book club, book club. Hello, and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading, because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and it's Spooky Month. Or, as you might say, spooky month, but you extend out the O's a lot. Like, spooky, but then it just sounds like I'm saying Cookie Crisp, which I'm not. But it's still spooky month, and so we're doing horror, which is a word.

that I'm going to pronounce that way until I die. And this week, I am reading a short story by Haley Piper called Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy. It's a short story about, well, there's werewolves in it. You probably figured that part out. And there's polyamory and there's cycles of trauma. But by and large, it's a story about story, but not in an annoying way.

It's about tropes and genre convention because it's from a 2022 collection called It Was All a Dream, an anthology of bad horror tropes done right, which was edited by Brandon Applegate. And it's a short story collection that has a bunch of good stories in it that are just like, well,

they kind of do what they say on the cover. It's an anthology of bad horror tropes done right. And so they just like are consciously playing with tropes. And I don't know. I have complicated. feelings about tropes and writing to tropes and subverting tropes and things like that in fiction. And I think that this is a story that does it well. And I like the conscious subversion of tropes. But I also, I sometimes get annoyed. Okay, this is like really not about this story at all.

I actually just like really like this story. But in general, I was once on this panel at this reading and they asked all of the authors on the panel like what we liked about tropes and writing to tropes and things like that. And everyone was like, oh, you know, tropes are these, like, interesting tools and storytelling techniques.

And, you know, they help understand the reader's expectations and stuff. And I was kind of the sole one who was like, I kind of hate tropes. I kind of hate, like, over-analyzing whether or not

I'm playing into tropes or not playing into tropes. But that's because I am fundamentally oppositional. And when you're going to do it, you should do it like this. Hollywood, Werewolf, Conspiracy By Haley Piper Selina sits crammed into the cabin's bedroom corner, a hammer in one hand and her inherited silver amulet in the other.

She flattens the amulet down and bangs it with a hammer, desperate to pound murder into its shape. The cabin's dusty floor makes a poor blacksmith sandbowl, and her grandmother's heirloom makes a poor bullet, But together, they might become a weapon of a sort, and maybe then, tonight's horror show, and finally end. Silver is silver, Selena whispers through sweat and panic. The hammer strikes again. Has to work.

Silver is silver. All this whispering and striking might draw unwanted attention, were it not for the storm of growling and screaming in the cabin's living room. Selina keeps at it. If she's not ready for Frankie when he finishes with Marvin, there'll be no hiding her sour scent from what he's become.

Silver is silver. The amulet dents with enough of a slant to make a kind of silver shiv, and that should be enough to drive it through werewolf flesh. It has to be. Selina creeps toward the bedroom door and glimpses a blood-bathed living room.

smashed furniture litters the floor decorated by purple innards their shadows dance away from the fireplace beside the toppled sofa lies a carved idol of teeth and wood the one frankie pulled from an old oaks hollow this afternoon some trapper or woodland witch must have said it there a century or so ago but there's no book to explain the rest only the senses upon seeing what came next Once upon a time Frankie was a clean-shaven guy of skin and bones but now he's a thunder cloud of shaggy hair wicked claws and gleaming teeth

he clutches Marvin's torso between wolf and jaws and shakes him limp no different than a hound might shake a rabbit boneless except a hound could never have been one of the three boyfriends Selena drew to the cabin

They were hers and each other's, here for a precious weekend of polyamorous hiking and cozying up by the fire and fucking the life out of each other, as Ted put it. He couldn't have known he'd be the first to die. Frankie thrashes his head to one side. Muscles go taut down his lupine neck and his teeth unlatch from a still human torso.

Marvin's body smashes through the, the picture window and into the moon soaked outdoors. The woods are strangely quiet, as if every creature that crawls, walks, and climbs can tell the wolf is awake tonight. They're stuck with Selena and the kind of movie Ted might have dragged her to back in civilization. One she'd love to walk out on, except the tickets are purchased, the popcorn is buttered, and Hollywood's already trapped her in the dark. She'll have to see the horror show through to the end. She charges into the living room while Wolf Frankie's back is turned. Had she known what the sudden shaggy patch on his arm meant earlier in the evening,

she might have fled with Ted and Marvin then. But it's too late for them, and it's too late for Frankie. His sharp ear twitches at the pounding footsteps, and murder crosses his wolfish eyes. A better prepared werewolf would have launched him off the toppled sofa and torn Salina's head clear off her shoulders in a crimson geyser. But he isn't prepared, and Selena launches herself first, and her omulet turned shiv drives into the back of his neck.

Thanks be to her grandmother. Wolf Frankie deflates with a thinning whine. His limbs thrash and slop, his snout flattens against his face, and his shaggy hair rise, in a dying colony of wolf and worms. A warm breath seeps from his shrinking form, and the silver shiv clatters beside him, blade caked and dark blood. It's over.

Frankie is himself. And yet, he'll never be himself again. He's instead gone from wolf Frankie to corpse Frankie. And sure, as Ted and Marvin are gone, so is he. No more of his once ceaseless curiosity. What started this trouble in the first place? No more of Ted's crude jokes, despite his being so shy in the bedroom.

No more of Marvin's sweet songs when they all piled together. They had this final evening curled up by the fireplace, and then hell found them. Selina wipes frantic hands down her face. Too many tears, and she won't be able to drive Ted's truck out of here. and she needs to put miles between herself in this cabin, these bodies, these woods. She crosses the living room and grasps the front doorknob. A thick gurgle fills the room,

like wolf's breath bubbling up a dead throat. Selina twists too fast on her heel, shooting a painful tremor across one knee and glances at Frankie. Her silver shiv lies gleaming in the fireplace's flicker. She snatches it up and aim, at the corpse, which will surely pounce at any moment. Frankie's face remains still. No animal hair, no claws.

No stretching skull drags his nose and mouth into a fresh snout. He's dead. It's over. Or is it? Selina eyes her shiv. She stabbed a werewolf with silver. That should be enough. Hollywood's fostered the popular belief that only a silver bullet can kill a

werewolf, but people must have been killing the damn thing since before bullets were invented, right? Silver is silver, Selena whispers. But if silver kills a werewolf, is that enough to keep it dead? She's only watched a handful of werewolf movies and zero sequels, but since when could movies help anyone? Best to be sure, she crouches down and jabs the shiv into Frankie's side. Every part of her tenses for his reaction,

the sudden end of movie scare just before the credits slam at the screen like a speeding car full of suicidal crash test dummies. But Frankie doesn't flinch when Selena twists the shiv, or when she sticks his chest, or when she jacks the shiv across his neck in a makeshift zipper line. He's dead for certain. She leaves him again,

shiv in one hand, both wrists blocking her ears. She won't hear a sound until the cabin's front door thwax its doorframe, bounces out, and settles again behind her. But do you know what sound you will hear again, and again, and again and again and again and again, unless you have cooler zone media, or you hit the forward 15 second button, I guess. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons.

Wait, stop? What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow.

Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna. I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich.

So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff, They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. And a hundred and one year old woman fall in love again.

And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super true. charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye.

Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day.

I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. How do you think you're misunderstood? I'm not this evil, mean person that people think that I am. I'm too compassionate. I have sympathy for that fuck my man. Put so much heart and soul into your work. What's the hardest part for you to take that criticism? This shit was not given to me.

I worked my ass off for me. Even when I was a stripper, I'm going to be the best pole dancer. in here. When was the moment you felt I did it? I still, to this day, don't feel comfortable. I fight every day to keep this level of success because people want to take it from you so bad. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. And we're back. The night rushes in. as she crosses the porch, where a moonlit puddle might be the beginning of Ted's blood trail to the shed. Its edges skewed by Frankie's palm prints. Beneath the picture window, glass glitters across a dark pile. Marvin, lying in mid-fallen leaves. Selina listens for woodland creatures to bring their comforting nocturnal chorus to the scene, of skittering mice through ferns and insects calling through the trees.

An owl warbles out an uncertain hoot, and a fox cries in the underbrush. The prey are quiet while the predators sing of their moment. Selina hurries to Ted's truck and slides inside. Back in the land of movies, this is when she finds no keys and realizes Ted must have kept them in his pocket. Despite her telling him,

there's nobody in the woods to steal his damn truck. She'll have to follow his blood trail to the shed And that's when Wolf Frankie Alive again will crash through the door Thought it was over, didn't she? Except The keys sit in the cup holder Between the front seats

Right where she told Ted to put them this afternoon She snatches them up and sits behind the wheel Time to kiss key to ignition Let the engine growl through the woods And get the hell back to civilization It really is over now. Or is it? That wolfish gurgling rises again.

Selina flinches against the steering wheel, and the truck shouts out a honk. How could Frankie have snuck into the car with her? Can werewolves teleport? She's never heard of a movie where it happens, but again, movies never help anyone. There might be a Hollywood werewolf conspiracy, A bunch of werewolf actors and werewolf technicians at the beck and call of

werewolf directors and werewolf producers using their art to deceive the public on what this breed of undead can really do. Or, Selina might be paranoid. When she glances over her seat, she finds no torn claws, loose teeth, not even a tuft of shaggy hair, only the expected plastic water bottle and half-devoured bag of chips. She can drive away and be done with all of this. But the nightmare isn't done with her, is it? What if Frankie's still alive?

She leaves the truck and creeps back into the cabin where Frankie used to lie, where she won't find him. There will be blood and hair, but no dead boyfriend. Ted and Marvin aside, and when she turns around, she'll find Wolf has filled her world. Except none of this happens. Frankie lies in a pool of blood, some mix of his and Marvin's.

It's over. It really is. Isn't it? Selina needs to be sure. She marches outside, tries her best not to glance at Marvin's glass-littered body. Ted's blood trail shining with moonlight, failing at both,

and hauls up the wood-cutting axe from the stump by the porch. Isn't this in line with the old ways? Woodcutter versus wolf? Ax against Beast? She can't trust any Hollywood movie, but fairy tales have been told across eons to caution everyone who hears them. A fairy tale won't lead her astray. It instead leads her back to the living room,

where she raises the axe, lowers it by inches, raises it again, then squeezes her eyes shut and heaves it down. Flesh snaps and bones crack. And corpse Frankie loses an arm. No sign of wolf in him, but she can't stop yet. Three limbs and a head to go. The work is exhausting. Rise, chop, sweat, chop, cry, scream, cry, vomit, chop,

and so on. A clock waves its hands in slow circles, begging for her attention, but it can't tell her anything she doesn't already know. Time is another predator in the night, the only one guaranteed to catch its prey in the end. She should have escaped by now. She will escape, right?

It's over, and she should go, if there's anywhere left to run to. She's been coming and going from this gore-soaked living room for as much time as passed earlier in this nightmare between Frankie finding the tooth and wood idol and his moonlit transformation. In those hours, the rest of the universe might have collapsed into a black hole

and the only surviving bits of matter and life are right here at this cabin in these woods. One last movie in the world filled with werewolves. But maybe Selena doesn't have to wait for some pre-credit stinger. Maybe whether the horror is over or not has nothing to do with letting fate crash to its final conclusion. Maybe it has everything to do with choosing the best time

to walk out of the theater. Selina returns to the porch and her now blistered hands drop the axe. Time to decide where the lights go up. The sun will only rise if she leaves this place. A gurgling wolf cough drags her stomping back into the cabin. What now? she shrieks. What the hell do you want?

What will it take to make you stop? I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I really am, but I can't change it now. I can't. Only the soft crackle of the fireplace answers her. The wolf noises must. be her imagination, some post-traumatic stress symptom. Can it be post-traumatic when the trauma still in progress? Mid-trauma then, but just as insiduous as PTSD. Wolf Frankie is dead,

but now his wolf stalked Selena's mind, where he'll grunt and growl and howl to the end of her days. She reaches his chopped up body, a visual promise that he's dead. She'll let her hands play, in the strewn tendons and scrape the chopped bone if that's what it takes. Anything to make her mind understand it's over. But do you know what else will follow you around forever? Wait, the ads don't follow you, they just follow me. Well, I mean, the products and services are a cheerful companion these days. But anyway, here they are.

Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests.

The great Paul Shear made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcasts we were doing. Nick Kroll.

I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snap-Foo with Ed Helms on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people

and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn, or any of that other stuff.

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

a hundred and one year old woman, fall in love again. And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super-church. charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye.

Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day.

I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. How do you think you're misunderstood? I'm not this evil, mean person that people think that I am. I'm too compassionate. I have sympathy for that fuck my man. Put so much heart and soul into your work.

What's the hardest part for you to take that criticism? This shit was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Even when I was a stripper, I'm gonna be the best pole dancer. in here. When was the moment you felt I did it? I still, to this day, don't feel comfortable.

I fight every day to keep this level of success because people want to take it from you so bad. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Because Frankie, He isn't chopped up anymore.

Sticky puddles coat the wood where Selena heaved the axe down on his limbs and axe-driven grooves mar the floorboards. But there are no loose tendons, muscles, bone. Frankie's torso is whole, his head attached, as if striking him over and over with the axe were as fictitious as a scene seen in any movie. Silver is silver,

battles in Selena's mouth with, What the fuck? And all she can get out is, silver is fucked. Must a silver bullet really finish the job? Nothing else will work? What did people do in olden times when a werewolf came stalking their villages?

Ask it nicely to leave? Sacrifice their children to sate its appetite? Or as modernity tainted myth and twisted folklore with new ideas, with Hollywood's unhelpful movies erasing every ancient werewolf weakness now that everyone believes only a silver bullet can end the nightmare? Selina doesn't have a silver bullet.

She doesn't have a gun or a field guide to killing werewolves or much hope. But she believes Frankie's going to come back in all his wolfish glory. She believes only she can stop him. And she believes in spreading fire from the fireplace to the curtains and ferns.

She believes in burning this cabin to the fucking ground with Frankie inside. The insistent blaze fills the smashed picture window and front doorway as she stumbles back to the truck. Red light brushes tender fingers through the trees, a cautious twilight, wondering if the time has come for sunrise. Selina wants to tell the world, yes, go ahead and let the lights up. At last, it's really over. Or is it? There's that wolfish gurgle again, and this time it breaks into a howl.

Serena drives her hands against her ears. Can't be hearing this, refuses it. The fire roars too loud for her to block it out, and beyond its crackle, she hears another howl. What if the problem, isn't the wolf or the silver. Maybe the problem is her, and the trauma within. Or the idol Frankie found, or whether it infects people not by touch,

but by sitting in their presence, biding its time against silver, axes, and flame. Her problem might even be math, she realizes, as firelight and early morning luminescence reveal an absence in absence in the fallen leaves beneath the broken picture window. There's no dark lump where Marvin should lie. Only shattered glass. Selina throws herself into Ted's truck and twists the key in the ignition.

Movie logic says the engine won't start might even have been savage during Wolf Frankie's initial rampage. But movies are liars, so who's to say? Who can ever really know if the movie's over when you walk out of that dark room? Maybe when the projectors shut down and the staff leaves, the ghost of the movie keeps on playing, itself in undead presence prowled by secret werewolves.

The rear-view mirror spots the ongoing nightmare as Selena drives Ted's truck from the cabin, where three werewolves pour from behind the inferno. There's Frankie, his shaggy hair singed. There's Marvin, a dark lump now flowing, with muscle and claws. And between them skulks Ted. No more crude jokes,

only a cruel appetite between his mishmash of sharp teeth. One claw clutches that damn, tooth and wood idle. He saved it from the fire, his and Marvin's transformations, finishing out while they were dead or undead or somewhere in between.

That was never Frankie alone, gurgling and howling only a trio of werewolf still in the works and by Hollywood conspiracy or plain simple fact maybe only a silver bullet can really kill any of them

the idols made sure of it they cling together and howl a polyamorous pack mourning a lost member and then they chase the truck to make their unit whole tongues flop from jaws and saliva of flails and a face

and down necks. They're almost an excited smattering of suburban neighborhood dogs chasing a postal truck except this chase is for keeps. Selina floors the gas and Ted's truck rushes up the dirt road and through the woods.

Dark branches scrape with toothy sharpness at the windows, the roof, as if a wind full of wolves and circles the truck. But when Selena glances to the rearview mirror again, Only a cloud of dust follows her tires. No claws or hair or stretched out faces, no boyfriends turned wolves.

They're still alive back there, still werewolves. But whether or not the nightmare is over isn't about letting fate crash down on her. She has to choose a time for the show to end, a time to leave the theater, and let the werewolves play in their coils of ghost films. Only Selena can decide if there should be a lingering question mark or a bold and clear statement of the end. And she has decided, this is the finale, the road scrolling under the truck's hood like a column of end credits. No more horror show, no more nightmare, even as she scratches her arms where her fingernails snag on a strange new clump, shaggy hair. She promises herself, yes, it is over.

Definitely, forever, entirely over. Or is it? Dun-da-da-dun, the end of the story. Or is it the end of the story as written. But maybe the ghost of the story still lingers on. I like a good short story that could mean so many things, depending on what you're feeling when you read it. I mean, like this is and isn't a story about Polyan.

memory, right? Like, it happens to be that there's three boyfriends, right? And they all fuck each other a bunch. But that's all before the story even starts. But also there's this kind of like, I don't know, like leaving boyfriends behind and like this sense that like these men who have turned into monsters, which is a common but not always experience of people who date men or anyone, anyone is capable of being this way. You know, there's this like, oh, trying to leave them behind in your rearview mirror, but in a weird way, they're always coming after you. I mean, I think really it's a story about trauma and never being able to leave it. But I also like this stuff about how something has gone from folklore to Hollywood. And so it's actually kind of in a way talking about how something

has gone from folklore to trope. And kind of, in some ways, folklore is tropes, right? Because folklore is often sort of the same story told in different ways, passed on through various oral traditions through a game of telephone and people adding new things and what is that but trope but it's like less conscious and more earnest in a folklore context and yet it's become less so in the modern context and so that's what I was saying when I think a story that plays with trope consciously and not just like I'm subverting a trope but like addressing that in really interesting ways here's what Haley has to say about it at the back of the anthology for perspective's sake I would want to share that I love a trope. I've gone looking at character cliches and story, been there,

done that's, and I start laughing and getting excited because they're wonderful. You can make something incredible for most of them. They're so much fun. So I wanted to take that enthusiasm and confront a trope I'm not a fan of, the non-ending of the end, or is it? Often for me, it feels like a cheat or sequel baiting or a lack of perspective. But when I thought deeper about it, beyond the implicit jump scare, lies a nightmare of endlessness. Paranoia lingers, trauma sticks, and there's a sense of never really getting out of a bad situation. I wanted to tackle the horror of that non-ending

by stretching out the wound of that moment, poking around at how far it could go, and maybe how cruelly it could cut. And then Hazel, who helps me pick stories, said about this, I love how Haley uses a trope that I'm also often annoyed by to explore the viscerality of trauma.

I've heard, and I don't know if this is literally true, but it often feels that way, that the amygdala, where fear and trauma are processed, doesn't encode memories with time, so when you experience a memory, it's really easy to feel like it's happening right now, that you're still living in this story. And that's a horror story,

never being able to move on, still jumping at shadows, perpetually needing to stay on edge to keep yourself safe. This is Margaret again, in my perspective. I'm really drawn to the prose of this story very specifically. I was reading this essay, and I didn't write this into the script,

so I don't have it in front of me. I was reading this essay like a day or two ago, written by an author talking about how they don't love most prose and writing of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, with the exception of Ray Bradbury. And in that piece, they talk about how people kind of came along and added writing really beautiful prose to genre fiction at some point.

And this is, of course, an exaggeration on some level. But then that author, again, whose name I don't remember, who wrote this essay that I read a few days ago, goes in, like, list contemporary authors who do it really, really well, and specifically names Haley Piper. And having just read this story by Haley Piper,

it really stuck out to me. There's ways of doing prose that's beautiful without getting lost and, like, I'm just going to beautifully describe, all of these details of things and getting kind of purple. But instead, there's ways of doing beautiful prose that's moving the action along and ties into the plot. And that's what I think Haley is a master of.

These sentences that are like becoming beautiful by cutting out words and taking abnormal structure. But, yeah, if you want to know more about Haley, here's Haley's bio. Haley Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning, author of novels, short fiction, and nonfiction. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and lives with her wife in Maryland, where their paranormal research is classified. Her new novel is A Game in Yellow, and she has a short story collection out

called Teenage Girls Can Be Demons. You can find her at haileypiper.com. And Haley, I mean, it's in the title, but it's H-A-I-L-E-Y-P-I-E-R. and I'm Margaret Kiljoy and you can find me on the internet by looking up Margaret Kiljoy I'm on blue sky and Instagram I hate social media with a desperate passion but also recognize it's the waters in which we swim

and I have a substack martyrkilljoy.substack.com where I post my thoughts and I also have another podcast called cool people who did cool stuff and thanks for listening all the way to the end of the podcast because it is the end isn't it? No, it actually is the end. Okay, bye.

It could happen here is a production of CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources where it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey, it's Ed Helms host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode.

32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop, what? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Shearer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan, Klepper. Listen to season four of Snafu with Ed Helms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old. girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. How can a hundred and one year old woman fall in Love again. Listen to Heavyweight on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This shit was not given to me. I'll work my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast.