It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: "The Untimely Death of Northgate Mall" by Evan J Peterson

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Margaret reads Gare an urban folk horror story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Calls on media. Book club, book club, book club, book club. I was late. I'm sorry. No, it's okay. I ruined it. Yeah it yeah no that's fine it will just you know you can only go forward can't edit so fix fix it in post yeah yeah totally

that's that's totally what'll happen absolutely this is the cool zone media book club your once a week fiction thing about cool zone media fiction once a week i read you a story i'm margaret killjoy with me today playing the role of you is garrison hello i'm you that's amazing yeah you really are kind of you know the um the every them you know like everyone can uh you know, the every them, you know, like everyone can. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I can slot into any place.

Much like how the every man character of Mickey Mouse, who has just entered the public domain. That's right. But only the one from 1928. Yeah. It's okay. I think that was when he was more the every them. No, he was a lot cooler. Like if you actually watch the steamboat well i shouldn't say cooler because i know i've never seen this like really bad but if you watch the steamboat willie cartoon it's just him like abusing animals

for like 10 minutes but but he's i don't know mickey mouse is so sanitized now and to watch just like the actual insanity of that, of that original, uh, cartoon is, is, is a kind of jarring compared to the current brand image of Mickey Mouse, but he's just instead just goes around like torturing animals and people.

Yeah. But you know, that's like standard cartoon fair. It's not, it's not like actual animal abuse. It's like, you know, they're cartoon animals.

Yeah. Come on, come on. Yeah. Yeah. I, I got really sad this morning i was thinking about i was reading something about how mickey mouse entered the public domain because that's what i do with my life and it was talking about how mickey mouse was like in some ways inspired by charlie chaplin's uh characters and then i was

thinking about how charlie chaplin was while not good on the feminism front uh was an anarchist and then i'm like oh i didn't know that yeah he got like fucking kicked out of the country over it and shit during the red scare um yeah he was up front he identified as an anarchist uh again it doesn't mean that he didn't um whatever i don't know my notes in front of me i'm not trying to like specifically lionize or talk here we go margaret's canceling charlie chapman that's the first one ever who's who's ever looked at charlie chapman's life and been like huh there's a there's a few discrepancies here well okay but the thing that actually happened is i sort of like defend it because i'm like people are like oh charlie chapman fuck that guy and i'm like it was kind of interesting politically identifies an anarchist he he wrote this thing about how animals shouldn't be in cages and it just didn't

anyway that's not what we're going to talk about today because today we're going to read a story about a mall i love i love malls i really like folk horror it's like my favorite genre of horror and i really like the idea that folk horror can happen in urban environments because it's usually just like there's bad things in the woods, which is like true. That's like why we live here. But cities are bad things, too. No, like suburban folk horror has been kind of a rising genre as of late, especially when we have like urban decay, malls being a really prime example of these things that used to be places but are no longer actually like real places yeah um and that is just rife territory for for uh the the intrepid folk horror author well then today's intrepid folk horror

author who's usually more of a body horror author i don't know how he's gonna feel about me calling him a folk horror author um because he's a smarter he's going to feel about me calling him a folk horror author because he's smarter about horror than I am, is Evan J. Peterson. And I'm going to read you a bio for Evan J. Peterson. He's an author and a game writer. His latest book is Metaflesh, Poems and the Voices of the Monster. And recent work includes Dragstar, published by Choice of Games, which is the world's first drag performance RPG, as well as The Road to Innsmouth, Arkham Horror. Evan's writing appears in Weird Tales, Pseudopod, Nightmare, Queers Destroy Horror, Boing Boing, and Best Gay Stories. Evan's serial novel, Better Living Through Alchemy, will be published in 2024, which is this year,

by Broken Eye Books, websites evanjpeterson.com, where you can go to learn more. This story is called The Untimely Death of Northgate Mall. Even the gumball machines were empty. Someone already pulled out the mall's directory maps, leaving behind blank white portals to some shopping limbo. Kyle paced the midway of the dying mall and surveyed the damage.

At least it still smelled like a mall, pretzels and bleach and books, while strains of blondie and other pop standards still echoed down the promenade. The wrecking ball had already knocked the teeth out of Macy's. The American flag still waved in pride against the backdrop of the crumbling facade. Shopping cathedrals all over the nation were dying out. Maybe Northgate Mall, now toothless and increasingly vacant, had already died of hunger. The Northgate Mall was actually the first fully indoor shopping center in the nation, a decision made thanks to Seattle's rainy weather. And that's not even the most interesting thing about it. The Northgate Mall started with 18 stores in April of 1950. Only in your state.com slash Washington. Kyle tightened the laces of his mask. Ben had sewn

it by hand for him, and it looked like a surgeon's mask, the kind that ties in the back. It even felt a little fetishy, especially when he wore it with nitrile gloves to venture out into the public. No more Ben thoughts, he told himself. Others plotted along the mall in their own masks. Kyle used to walk up and down through the crowds, elbow to elbow, with whatever viruses strangers carried, unconcerned if they coughed or sneezed. Some parents still let their children cavort in the play area, masked or not. Kyle heard a rustle and a shriek behind him. His stomach lurched. He expected to see a bleeding child, some accident of negligence. But it was just a seagull, rifling through the trash. The gulls in the neighborhood were bolder lately. They flew right into the mall and stole

the trash, if trash could be considered stolen. Some crazy rich people probably thought so, the same crazy rich people who wanted to knock Seattle flat and build a thousand skyscrapers on its broken ribs. The seagulls just fulfilled their niche and scavenged the mall's carcass. In his sleeveless Dawn of the Dead t-shirt, Kyle leaned against an empty kiosk and wondered if seagulls could become undead if they preyed on zombies. He thanked God, or whoever was responsible, that it was just COVID happening outside and not a zombie apocalypse. Would people still be screaming about their freedom if it was zombies instead? Probably. He imagined mall shamblers

wearing don't tread on me ball caps reflexively trying to shoot each other with empty guns. Jesus fucking Christ, it was too real. Graham Jr. planned Northgate as a one-stop shop for all the suburban America family's needs. That, weirdly enough, included a hospital. Northgate General was operational in the 1950s, but defunct by the 1990s. Being born in a mall is peak Americana. Natalie Graham, The Stranger, 10-24-2018 Kyle worked his first job in a mall, Spencer Gifts. His second job, too, Walden Books. He had his first big crush on a boy who worked at Hot Topic.

He had his first kiss with a boy, a different boy, in a food court, both of their mouths sweet with junk food. During this August heat wave, Kyle walked the mall for the refuge of air conditioning. He couldn't afford an apartment with AC, but even on its deathbed, the mall cranked it. It was also supposed to distract him from the breakup, but that strategy failed spectacularly. The mall squatted only two blocks from Kyle's apartment. He and Ben bought one another presents here.

They people-watched and made fun of strangers here. In the lusty early days of dating, they even had a quickie in one of the single-occupant bathrooms. Memories infested the place, and the fact that most of those memories were happy only made it worse. It's worth noting that Washington might be the only state to have a mall that has an entire terrorists and serial killers section on its Wikipedia page, onlyinyourstate.com slash Washington. And do you know who else has terrorists and serial killers woven throughout?

I mean, our actual show, more so terrorists and serial killers. That's true. That's true. We're doing the only crime, the only crime, the true crime wrong, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But I'm also suspecting that there will probably be advertisements for something serial killer related since you are listening to a podcast.

So enjoy that. Yeah. And I hope it's for another podcast and not an ad to become one. Like a cop ad. Here's the ads. Go. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone.

But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend

and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. And we're back. He stopped

to stare at the bare baseball cap display rack in the window of Champs, the translucent plastic domes looking like a swarm of jellyfish without the hats to engulf them. This was the spot where the relationship had finally begun to rot at the core. They were browsing sneakers when Kyle asked if they should move in together. They'd been dating over a year and it made sense. Living alone in Seattle came with a steep rent. year and it made sense. Living alone in Seattle came with a steep rent. Ben froze and Kyle could actually see Ben disassociate, his eyes fixing into the middle distance. Christ, it wasn't a

marriage proposal. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for. Then the pandemic hit and dust to dust. He heard the gall scream again, plucking him out of his memories, and now there were two of them. They flapped around rooting in the trash, spreading it everywhere. A gray-haired woman from the still-standing jewelry store ran at them with a broom, yelling in what sounded like Spanish, but the gulls didn't retreat. They lunged and screamed, spreading their wings to intimidate her, and it worked. She backed right off. Seagulls won, mall lady, zero. The thought made him laugh for the first time in two weeks. Kyle stopped for a pretzel covered in cinnamon sugar and two sides of icing. The pimply underage

pretzel girls behind the counter flirted with him, and he flirted back using every charming trick he knew to get a discount. The smell of hot dough and sugar filled his nostrils. He sat on a bench, undoing the top laces of the mask and letting it fall against the hollow at the base of his throat. Next to the pretzel stand was a cavern formerly occupied by Spencer Gifts. Not the one he'd worked for, but they were all the same inside. Someone from the corporate office had already removed the exterior signs, but Kyle knew the spot. He went in once a year or so for the nostalgia, to remember what it was like making a shitty mall wage and cleaning up after customers

that broke more than they bought. Back when he worked there, there were blatantly homophobic and transphobic items. Kick me stickers that said gay pride meant for covert placement on someone's back. A real laugh riot. Now, the store sold t-shirts with the painted faces of famous drag queens and posters of yaoi boys. Please cut that. Is it yaoi? Is that how you pronounce that? I kind of want you to just leave this in in the fact that i don't know how to pronounce

this that you don't know how to pronounce okay but am i right am i right huh you are right yeah all right fine you can leave it in also i like that you went to me for expertise on how to you're my gen z friend do you you? You know all the stuff? Uh-huh, yeah. Well, I know my way around some yaoi. Well, which is good, because the store sold T-shirts with the painted faces of famous drag queens and posters of yaoi boys kissing and holding hands, a word I totally knew how to pronounce the first time.

It was disorienting. But that was the first real test of acceptance in capitalism. Did it cost more to persecute marginalized people, or to assimilate them? Queer was cool now, and it sold a lot of merchandise, but it couldn't sell enough to save a dying mall. Black tarps blocked the glass

storefront. Kyle could see a bit inside through the door, and of course it was dark, abandoned, but the door was slightly open. Kyle entered the cave, forgetting to retie his face mask to his head. He poked around in the dim light, hidden from outside view. Lots of empty, cheap shelving, but maybe he'd find something fun. His shoe bumped something large but lightweight on the ground. Kyle stooped and found it was a Halloween mask. The store must have begun stocking for the season after all, even though someone in the chain of management knew it was pointless. Maybe it was a vain attempt to resuscitate business, a kind of sympathetic

magic of supply and consumption. Or maybe no one really knew what else to do. Kyle certainly didn't. really knew what else to do. Kyle certainly didn't. Criminal incidents. In 1973, the serial killer Ted Bundy reportedly apprehended a purse snatcher late at night in the Northgate Mall parking lot a few weeks before his first documented murder. Many of his subsequent victims

were approached in parking lots. On September 12, 1983, Tracy Ann Winston was abducted from Northgate Mall and murdered by Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. The following year, on April 23, 1984, a seven-man force of the order attacked an armored car at the mall after first staging a diversionary bombing. Wikipedia.org slash wiki Northgate underscore mall underscore Seattle. Kyle pulled his phone out to inspect the mask by the LED light. It wasn't a horror mask. It was a stylized bird head, gray and white, not made of rubber or plastic, but what felt like real wood.

A lightweight fiber, like bamboo. It looked handmade and meticulously crafted. Not the kind of licensed pop bullshit the store usually stocked. He didn't recognize whatever character the mask represented. Something from a video game? Might be a pigeon? He heard the faint scream of the gulls again. That's what the mask was. A seagull. The whole coincidence of it was unsettling. mask was. A seagull. The whole coincidence of it was unsettling. Would anyone be a seagull for Halloween? Maybe it was part of a Hitchcock birds theme? Kyle checked the mask for a price tag, an SKU, something that would indicate whether it was inventory. There were no stamps, labels,

or stickers. Maybe it really was handmade, which meant it didn't belong in here. He could almost hear Sweet Ben daring him, put it on. What's the worst that could happen? Superstition got the better of him and he didn't try it on. Instead, curiosity and boredom pressed him further toward the mall's inner workings. He navigated the dark sales floor, pussyfooting his way to the doorway of the back room. He smelled it before he walked through. That dumpster smell, not quite nauseous but getting there, a salty sweet smell of recent garbage and cigarette butts. The break room was completely black. No good light reached from the mall promenade and no light came in from the door on the far side of the space. The other door would lead to the mall's labyrinthine bowels, the passages that joined the

break rooms of every store, the kitchen of every food vendor, to loading docks and disposal bins. Kyle fumbled with his phone in the mask, and in a moment of failed instinct, he held tight to the mask and dropped the phone. The clack of it against the floor echoed in a way that sounded wrong, like the room was far bigger than it should be. The light of the phone screen blinked out. He crouched to pick it up, patted around for it, and felt something slice his finger. The icy zing of it frightened him more than it hurt. He brought it to his mouth and almost sucked the wound before he stopped himself. Fucking idiot, he thought. This is how you get staff.

He realized that his cotton mask wasn't tied in place, but he left it for now. He thought of the film Demoni, with the woman cutting herself on a prop mask and becoming possessed by a demon. Italian horror was weird like that. All the elements were here for a real giallo clusterfuck. The ma mall, the mask, the wound. Kyle wiped whatever blood leaked from his finger onto his jeans. Hopefully it was just a superficial wound, but right now, it's stung like hell. When the late celebrity chef, Anthony Bourdain, came to Seattle in 2017, he also asked me about serial killers.

What was it about the Northwest and serial killers, Bourdain asked. I joked that it is an easy place to hide the bodies. Newt Berger, Seattle Magazine, March 2019. And, you know, I already did the serial killer cut to add things. You already did the serial killer bit. Yeah, fuck. Well. Wow.

We're just bitless like a screwdriver that you've lost the parts for. Here's the ads. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job

is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every

single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting 8, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going

on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. And we're back. He didn't know whether to grope for his phone again and risk another cut or just grab the mask and feel his way back to the door. Fuck it. It was about time to get a new phone anyway. He could erase the data remotely. Kyle found

the door, pushed through, and it spilled him out into... not the store. He'd found the wrong door. And now he was in the mall's inner maze, but worried he'd expect brassy, moth-splattered fluorescent lighting. The hall glowed red. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the walls and floor glistened and seemed to ripple. It was humid in there too, with a thick smell of dumpsters and animal shit that made him gag. He almost fainted, grabbing the wall for support, and his hand clutched the slick, warm flesh of it. That pushed him over the edge, and he spewed onto the floor. New sounds came then, and he spit and cleared his mouth. Rustling wings, a dozen seagulls careened around a corner, diving into his pool of vomit and consuming it. He retched again, but nothing

came up. Some of the gulls looked at him and screamed, real bird screams, not some synthesizer growl to match the peeled reality of this nowhere place. Kyle knew, in some deep genetic memory, that he was in animal space now, bloody and hungry. He'd fallen from the apex of the food chain and was somewhere outside his world and inside a primordial space beneath it. It was not a world made for him. The gulls cried again, some hopping toward him. He backed away, but they popped forward and raised their wings, threatening him. God, they were so much bigger up close. A couple of them lunged toward him, and in a ducking instinct, he pulled the bird mask onto his head to protect his bare face. Sound stopped. It was perfectly dark inside the mask and cool, not hot and steamy and filthy like the passageway. If that grotesque hallway existed under his

reality, the inside of the mask was another layer down. You've come back, said the voice inside the mask. I've been waiting. It was a feminine voice, ageless, deep, and velvety. Was it outside or inside his skull? Who are you, Kyle asked of the vast and empty space inside the mask. You already know. You know me in your bones. He was helpless, a small and flightless creature that didn't know how to communicate without words. Perhaps, whatever this entity was, it knew he needed words to understand. I am the Northern Gate, the crossroads of land and hunger,

a mother whose milk is snow and whose womb is burial clay. You a goddess, like a Duwamish goddess? Where is here? Where are we? In me. Kyle took time to consider what that could mean. Did she eat him? Or was he in her womb? took time to consider what that could mean. Did she eat him? Or was he in her womb? Or could both be true, as primordial magic could fuse life and death into the same experience? He had the sense that he should be terrified, but all that he felt were warmth and wonder. The darkness surrounding him was still perfect, no threat of galls or stink of carrion. I will feed you, Kyle. I will protect you. I will burn away your pain and grow fruit

from the ashes. But you must also feed me. Little white stars opened in the darkness like holes punched through canvas. They twinkled and pulsed, growing larger, and he saw that they weren't stars at all. They were birds, flying towards him from every direction. You must sacrifice the things that stand between us. Kyle swallowed and tried to remove the mask, but he wasn't wearing a mask and he didn't have hands. He was just a bird, a little white and gray bird in a hungry black void. Now, my warm-blooded thing, said the mother's voice, bring me nourishment.

When he awoke, the mask was gone. The two pretzel girls in their purple uniforms and visors crouched over him. You okay? One asked. I think maybe you fainted. Which store do you work at? He sat up. Everything looked normal on the inside hallway, even the pool of vomit next to him. Sat up, everything looked normal on the inside hallway, even the pool of vomit next to him. I'm fine, he said and tried to stand. Whoa, dude, the other girl said. You're bleeding. He looked at his fingers.

The cut still bled, but it looked worse than it felt. We have a first aid kit at the pretzel stand. I can bandage you, but you should, like, go to the hospital, I think. Get a tennis shot or something. Can you get a ride, the second girl asked. You probably shouldn't drive. Kyle laughed. The girls laughed too, but nervously. I'm going to be fine, he told them. Mother will take care of me. With his other hand, he reached for his phone and found it back in his pocket. When it was out, he saw the screen had indeed cracked, but was still usable.

Can I just stay here after you bandage me up? I'll call someone to come get me. The girls looked at each other. Okay, one said. Your mom, right? You sure you're okay? He smiled. I'm better than okay.

One girl left to get the first aid kit while the other held him up. A seagull hopped into view from around the corner. Ugh, the girl said. They've been getting in here every day lately. Fucking garbage eagles. Kyle laughed again. They were here before we were. They have the right to clean our bones. The pretzel girl got up and left without a word. She looked back at him once and sped up. The gall stared at him, daring him to do something. Sound Transit is currently burrowing toward Northgate at a not-fast-enough pace. By 2021, the light rail will have a stop up there. A complete redevelopment of the area around the station, including changes to the mall, is underway.

Natalie Graham, The Stranger, 10-24-2018 He texted Ben. He knew Ben would come, even after everything. I'll be right there, Ben texted back. Stay safe. Kyle knew what to do. First, he would take care

of this little distraction. Then, he'd make sure the mother was fed. Dun, dun, dun. That's the end of the story. Classic Pacific Northwest liminal folk horror. Yeah. I'm into it. You know, it probably says stuff about capitalism and consumerism

and gentrification and malls and stuff you know that happened to a friend of mine once yeah got gentrified or became a seagull uh well closer to the second one i don't think it was quite a seagull but if you if you if you disassociate in a an abandoned mall too much that will definitely happen to you yeah that actually makes a lot of sense i like it because like i like things that um break the divide between like city and not city and just sort of admit that it's all wilderness even if it's like wilderness of yeah our own making and then decay and stuff you know there's a few things that kind of straddle that line really good where you get like this intense, like industrialization, this very like heavily like,

like urban environment. It interacts in like a magical realism way, the same way that like walking through like a forest at night does. Yeah. And they kind of, they cross into this very similar, uh, plane.

And I mean, a lot of stuff specifically set in the Pacific Northwest gets into that. Um, and it's, it's a really, it's a really fun space to explore. That makes sense to me. I wonder whether, and I'm just completely conjecturing, I've spent a fair amount of time in the Pacific Northwest, because like the climate of the Pacific Northwest

is a very present character in your life when you live there, you know? Like, I wonder if it's like, since that climate stays with you, whether you're like in the city or not in the city, like it is still raining you know like yeah it's the sky is still gray no matter where yeah no matter where you go yeah um i i don't know i mean i think this also could just play into fiction inspiring other fiction i mean i feel like in in many ways we have like twin peaks as uh as a thing that definitely it did not start this trend but it's definitely one of the hallmarks of this trend

that other other people have definitely yeah continued to kind of play from it's it's like it's like a starting point that that is where we still see a lot of culture that is in this genre yeah kind of play off of that idea yeah i don't know it's certainly a fun space and the past really since the pandemic which makes it makes sense why the story is set in the pandemic we've seen a lot more liminal horror yeah people got to like experience the whole world like that for a while yeah and many places haven't like come back like malls aren't really things anymore in a lot of in a lot of cases they're not coming back i had i aren't really things anymore in a lot of cases. What? They're not coming back? I don't know. I'm not sure.

We've been advertising that people invest in mall coin, though. No, there's one mall specifically in Portland, the Lloyd Center Mall, which is just my favorite place to go if I want to enjoy some dead mall vibes, because it is eerie in there.

It's really, really fun. But no, we've had this massive explosion of liminal horror. Liminal spaces were popular for so long. We get this brought into things like the back rooms. Lots of young writers who are writing what used to be fanfic and is now just kind of, it's more just like internet fiction. I guess. Yeah. Like creepypasta, I guess, is kind of what it's in the vein of, I suppose.

But we're getting a lot of people kind of got indoctrinated into writing in that space. So we just see a whole bunch of stuff coming out of that. And it's been fun to see because there is some good stuff. Like anything that gets too popular, too mainstream, it gets filled with a lot of, a lot of more like filler type stuff that just maybe isn't super unique. Uh,

but there is some really special stuff mixed in there too. Yeah. And I, you know, it's like when I first started in book club, I figured we'd be doing almost entirely science fiction, right. Or like climate fiction, you know? Sure. Sure. and then i've been thinking a lot about how like some of this type stuff is also representative of where we are like genre that is like fantasy or horror has things that are supernatural in it is like also a way of describing where we are as society it's like not just imagining scientific futures that allows that, you know, like. Yeah. I mean, and magical thinking has exploded like across everyone.

I mean, like even just on something like TikTok, where you have a whole bunch of young people getting surrounded by different types of magical thinking. Yeah. For better or for worse, often for worse in many cases. The splintering of reality is not something to celebrate. It's something to notice. Sure. But I think with that, I think that sort of magical realism reaction to just the increasing

unreality of everyday life is a super understandable reaction. I play with that reaction quite often for my work and a lot of my hobbies and interests. It's kind of exploring that more fluid space. But no, I think magical realism and that this sort of in-between genre, it's not quite sci-fi, it's not quite fantasy, it's not quite

horror either. I really like it when there's just this little bit in the middle where it's just weird shit this there's kind of this little little bit in the middle where it's just weird shit like it's just like it's just kind of it's just seagull stories i mean come on the high strangeness the the high weirdness yeah genre i think like another great example that kind of blends this like mystery of the forest with like the the unreality of urban living um is the tv show atlanta which specifically was riffing off of Twin Peaks as

well. But there's so many great bits where people are getting lost in forests while also getting lost in high rises or getting lost in underground parking lots. And it's the same thing. And both explore very similar ideas. I mean, I'm very happy to see more stuff in the genre because it does feel kind of indicative of where we are in some degree because we're stuck between the neoliberal death spiral and whatever is going to happen next but we're not quite in either space

anymore like we're not in the 90s we're not in the peak of neoliberalism but we're not living in the post apocalypse right we're living in this weird in between era right the right the non post apocalypse yeah and you're like maybe this is in-between era. The non-post-apocalypse. Yeah. And you're like, maybe this is just it.

Maybe it's just going to be this forever, which it won't be because there will always be new things. But it definitely has this very strongly liminal vibe. It's a fun space to explore. Well, if, dear reader, you want to explore more of it, I've read a bunch of other of Evan's stories, and they are genuinely really creepy and weird and interesting. And I haven't read it yet because it's not out yet. But to plug here at the end of it, Evan's new novel, Better Living Through Alchemy,

is going to be coming out this year in 2024. And people can follow him on Instagram at evan.j.peterson or go to his website which i probably already said at the top but it's you can probably google it no one's going to type in the url anyway people are going to type in evan peterson author website that's what i would do you got anything to plug you do a podcast that people are already listening to the feed of but maybe they're not sure we have a we have some fun stuff for rick and appen here planned in the new year we have a a week long's worth of episodes about different aspects of the daily wire including a dissection of their new uh anti-trans basketball quote-unquote comedy movie uh which i i have seen it oh i'm jealous um wait so it margaret you're not it's barely even worth the hate watch it's it's it's simply not a good piece

of media yeah but we will we will include a dissection of that within our our weeks of of daily wire themed episodes. Also, I'll be heading to what I would say is the capital of artificial unreality, Las Vegas, to report from the Consumer Electronics Showcase

in the new year as well. Very exciting stuff. Excellent. People can check that out on It Could Happen Here, which might be the feed you're listening to this on, or you could be listening to it on the Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff feed because this show is on both. And if you listened on

the It Could Happen Here feed, maybe you'd like my history podcast, which is called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. And if the other way around, then the other way... I'll see you all next week.

Bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

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