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Let Me In: Welcoming a Definition of ‘Vampire’

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(Fat Dracula) By Cody Wagner                   The imagination of humans always has someone, or something to fill in the empty darkness when fear takes hold. At first thought, the first creature thought of in said darkness is perhaps one of the more popular and most revisited monsters in history, the vampire. It’s a creature that has plagued our nightmares for hundreds of years as the fear of a bloodsucker attacking us made us think twice on just who we invite inside. A vampire, in terms of folklore, is a reanimated corpse that awakens at night to feed on the blood of a victim through sucking its blood through its pointed fangs to either feed or to produce more vampires.                   Defining precisely what makes a vampire is an interesting on as one must be specific. If one describes a predator who feeds off another organism, then a parasite would come to mind. While a vampire has a (typically hematophagous) parasitic bond with its victims, vampirism differs in the way that t
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“The Shining’s Overlook Hotel & The Overlooked Brilliance of Doctor Sleep”

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By Cody Wagner                   There’s a certain fascination when it comes to horror and why we are attracted toward it, particularly in film and literature. We’re either repulsed or gravitate to it in childhood. It all depends on what was the story to christen oneself in a baptism of fear, and how. Never being the same for better or worse. One of the films that was a gateway drug into the horror genre for me was Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). I was a young kid when I first saw it. Way too young. My mom’s a huge horror buff and had so many movies lying around, either from Blockbuster or perhaps burning onto a blank DVD through means (but you didn’t hear that from me). It felt like a fever dream of an angry father trying to kill his wife and child with an axe while the viewer feels more claustrophobic and feeling like one would go insane the more one stays in the Overlook hotel as the film went on. It was hypnotic in a way, and I was intrigued in horror and character studi
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THE DEATH THROE COLLECTIVE (Full Book)

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It’s that time of year again where I compile another book together. This time it’s a collection of short stories! I find myself getting more comfortable with longer pieces. This is that result. Don’t be surprised next year if I churn up a novella. Wouldn’t that be something? I won’t get ahead of myself, though. I am, however, got three or so more short stories cooking at the moment. Might just have another collection out then! Until then, enjoy The Death Throe Collective !    “Who Watches Over the Flies?” I’m flying over my body as my second life begins with staring back at my old body. It’s strange in that I don’t quite remember leaving it. Usually in the stories, or whatever, you just kinda go… upwards. Ascending up to the Great Beyond, you get one last look at yourself before the paramedics dramatically try and resuscitate you. Not with me. When I come to, I see myself in the early stages of decomposition. It isn’t a mess, nor a horrific splatterfest or anything. No, just me plopped
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