My short horror story, Toxoplasmosis, has just been published in Grim & Gilded’s sixteenth issue! After writing this piece in a frenzy during Spooktober (for those who don’t observe, take my pity), I realized that it was worth leaving the confines of my documents folder. It deserved a dark and mysterious home. Grim & Gilded Literary Journal accepted it lovingly, cradling this strange package amongst the works of some amazing writers and artists. I’m truly honored.

Grim & Gilded believes that the very act of art itself is magic – to lay words upon the page is to weave a spell into the fabric of the universe, a manifestation of an idea from nothing more than the spirit and the bones. We aim to protect this magic and to promote its emergence into the collective being by publishing and uplifting both new and established writers. By carving out a small, precise space for these words to land, G&G hopes to engage the reader in such a way that they are impacted – and indeed changed – by the incantation upon the page.

Grim & Gilded Mission Statement

I love magic, especially magic created by words. Toxoplasmosis may sit a little farther towards the horror end of the magic pool, however. It’s a fast-paced piece inspired by Lovecraft and True Detective, taking place over the course of one day as the protagonist, delivery man Jack Montgomery, discovers that his missing cat and the old couple who took it in may be hiding something.

I didn’t come up with the story on my own. My partner is a Narrative Designer for video games and knows a helluvah lot more about worldbuilding, plot progression, pacing, and the “logistics” of storytelling than I do. His insight has humbled me quite a few times. I tend to write with my gut, letting characters weave the plot, but with a Narrative Designer on hand, I’ve been able to create AND finish stories much smoother and faster.

While staying with my partner’s grandparents in the Czech countryside this summer, we would take our two cats for an evening walk through the back garden so they could stretch their legs and chase moths. It was a gorgeous location with glowing sunsets, a thick cornfield outside the fence, and spruce and pine painting the hillocks a deep viridian.

Sometimes we could hear the distant grunts of boars, who made their nests in the corn. The moans of the deer made my heart skip, since they produced sounds that reminded me of YouTube videos I’d seen of “cryptids”. Bats would soar overhead and the rustles of unseen creatures would echo from the bushes and trees. The cornfield itself was awash with mystery — I envisioned the aliens from Signs slinking amidst the stalks and watching as Frumpkin jerked me around the yard.

It was during one of our evening walks that my partner and I devised a creepy story idea. As we wound around the cherry tree and currant bushes, we called out different settings, different antagonists, and different plot twists to each other. We landed on an idea involving cats. There’s something inherently otherworldly about cats — the way they move (which is particularly evident when they’re in large groups), their random behaviors, and their large, penetrating eyes. The meme of cats staring into space while contacting “the Mothership” is popular for a reason.

Toxoplasmosis came together stone by stone, under the orange and purple skies of Moravia. But it wasn’t until we’d settled into our new apartment in Berlin and the leaves turned and the wind grew chill that I had the mind to sit down and bang this thing out. I hadn’t written a short story since college. Not a complete one, anyway. So stress levels were high.

Somehow, through sheer will or the blessings of some deity (Thoth, perhaps?), I was able to focus for an entire week on writing the story. I don’t know how. My attention span is awful and my anxiety urges me to self-soothe by jumping between different dopamine-delivering activities, so this was nothing short of a miracle.

I sat in bed and wrote for hours on end for a full week until the story was finished. I was dang near channeling the fictional Jack Montgomery from the depths of my memories as a small-town resident in Tennessee. Visions of dirt-ridden pickup trucks, vine-drenched woods, blistering summers, and dilapidated trailers flooded in. Not all of it made an appearance in the story, but it sure did help me create the *vibe*.

Afterward, my partner gave me some notes and I made a few edits. Then I formatted the manuscript, sent it off to The Dark Magazine . . . aaaaaand got a form rejection four hours later!

A little peeved, I sat on the story for a while and did a bit more research about which journals I would submit to. Then I found Grim & Gilded on a site listing calls for submissions.

Founded in 2021 by writer and editor Carter Brighton, Grim & Gilded is a fledgling online journal, but a beautiful and formidable one. Besides loving its moody, gothic aesthetic, going through past issues really solidified my choice to submit. The Girl Composed of Soil by Bethy Wernert (Issue Three) and Sold by Linda Laderman (Issue Eleven) are pieces that left a big impression on me. It seemed like a great home for my story.

There’s even a Grim & Gilded podcast, hosted by Carter, where selected pieces from the journal are read aloud.

Interested in submitting to G&G yourself? They accept unsolicited submissions year-round of flash fiction, poetry, and short stories. Horror, fantasy, high-fantasy, magical realism, science fiction, urban fantasy, and much more. Check out all their guidelines here.

Let me know what you think of Toxoplasmosis! (Cat-parents beware: you may never look at your little lovebugs the same way again…)