{"id":169,"date":"2025-09-06T17:14:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T17:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/?p=169"},"modified":"2025-09-06T17:24:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T17:24:57","slug":"this-is-my-body-a-horror-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/?p=169","title":{"rendered":"This is My Body: a horror story"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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As a kid, I never had a moment where I thought God was listening. The concept seemed flawed straight away, and my little six-year-old brain was ready to poke holes.<\/p>

I had a hard time with the fact that people seriously believed in some Invisible Old Man in the clouds, presumably bearded, who just spys on people all day and guilts them if they don’t abide by his rules.<\/p>

If I were God, I\u2019d certainly find something more entertaining to do.<\/p>

Still, I was mystified by the lengths people would go for this Invisible Old Man. The devotion, the fear, the righteous anger. The strange division between the various subsets of churches who all, apparently, thought they were the only ones really<\/em> getting it right.<\/p>

Catholicism especially fascinated me. There were so many rules! Strange clothes! Songs I didn\u2019t know the words to! Every time I had to attend a first communion or a funeral mass, I felt like I was observing the most mysterious ritual.<\/p>

People go into a cupboard, and confess their secrets to a stranger. People eat stale crackers and call it a blessing. Of course, as an unbaptized child I was a stranger in a foreign land.<\/p>

Myself, I didn\u2019t pray, I wished on stars. I plucked petals, and broke twigs. I made promises to trees and dirt and called it magic. I just couldn\u2019t comprehend trying to strangle the concept of \u2018God\u2019 into a single entity.<\/p>

I prefer the vast unknowable universe.<\/p>

It makes me feel insignificant enough.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But I digress.<\/p>

Just yesterday, This is My Body<\/em> was published by the wonderful folks at ExPat Press<\/a>.<\/p>

You can read the full story here: This is My Body<\/a><\/p>

Every time someone says something kind about this story, I don\u2019t know what to do with myself. It\u2019s a hard thing to be proud of, knowing how some people feel about the subject matter. I suppose I expect the response to be angry, and when it isn\u2019t, I\u2019m a bit lost.<\/p>

Though I didn\u2019t write this to be controversial. Spoiler alert; the story isn\u2019t about Catholicism, or even God, really.<\/p>

If you want to know how this story came about you can check out my previous post about it here: My Byronic Horror Weekend<\/a><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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One last fun update, I have decided to attend StokerCon 2026 – though I have no idea what to expect. Now that I\u2019ve published my first horror story, I can at least enjoy being among my fellow HWA members without feeling like a total fraud. I’m excited to meet all the wonderful horror folks!<\/p>

From somewhere in querying limbo–SMH<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"StokerCon\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a kid, I never had a moment where I thought God was listening. The concept seemed flawed straight away, and my little six-year-old brain was ready to poke holes. I had a hard time with the fact that people seriously believed in some Invisible Old Man in the clouds, presumably bearded, who just spys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,19,16],"tags":[34,56,55,44,54,43,42,53,52],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements-updates","category-poetry-short-fiction","category-publishing-journey","tag-author-updates","tag-expat-press","tag-horror-writers-association","tag-horror-writing","tag-hwa","tag-religious-horror","tag-short-fiction","tag-stokercon","tag-stokercon2026","post-preview"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samanthahund.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}