[ Please read the instructions before commenting! ] 

I am the Nixie Son, That Ain’t Right. I’m immortal, more or less. I can get killed, and I can definitely get captured, but I won’t age, and I won’t die from the curse of mortality alone.

In my human form, I’m five foot eight, which was average at best even in the 1780s, when I first left my herd to travel the fairy realms and from there to the human world—in the times we could manage it when the barriers thinned, before the gates broke them together. That height’s still average now. I have thick blueish-green hair to my mid-back, which I usually wear gathered up in a loose half-pony. My eyes are gold, but they absorb browns easily. Yeah, most people think they’re brown. I have an equine nose because of course I fucking do, and a soft mouth that can look sarcastic, or extremely warm. It always looks sensual. Yes, even in my horse form, it looks sensual. Emotions and attitudes are rarely reflected in my entire expression, because I have a tendency to look strained and sarcastic when put on the spot. I—

“Okay, Star,” Dr. Winslow said, her mouth tight and her brows drawn down. She drummed her nails against her notepad, which she’d stopped taking notes on about two sentences into Star’s speech. “I’ve also read that book. Maybe the most honest part about that whole speech is that you’d memorized the opening well enough to riff on it.”

Star pulled one of those strained, sarcastic faces that he’d just lampshaded. “A weirdly accurate book for one written a good decade before humans even knew vampires were real. And… yeah, maybe. I don’t relate to that fucker, though,” he added hurriedly.

“You are a supernatural being in a rock band.”

“Celtic rock. And I’m just the bassist. Lestat would never,” Star said airily. “But I don’t see how it matters. You say my history as a fairy is probably the origin of the problems I’m having now out in the human world. Are you sure you aren’t just curious?”

Dr. Winslow tsked slightly, which was a habit of hers whenever Star tried a blatant redirect. “We’re all built off our past,” she said. “Do you think that your feelings of being adrift, bored, lacking purpose has nothing to do with yours?” She flipped her notes back a few pages. Star wished she wouldn’t. “You’re a race horse. You’re in a band. You read books to talk about at book club, and run tabletop games for your group of friends. But you’re the one who pointed out that everything you do is for someone else. You don’t feel like any of these hobbies are about an inherent interest that you have, right?”

“I still like them,” Star protested, as if he hadn’t been the one to bring the problem up originally. As if he hadn’t been the one to seek therapy (at Dom’s suggestion, admittedly). He knew he should be cooperating. He didn’t like feeling this way. But therapy was like being saddled up. Impossible not to inhale as deeply as he could to try to keep the girth from tightening. 

“So we need to find what’s blocking that sense of—” Her timer beeped, and she sighed. “That sense of being able to do things for yourself. Of course we need to get into your past. I was hoping you’d give me some things to think about so we could discuss them at our next meeting.”

It’s not like Star wanted a rider to fall, even if they were on a saddle rather than stuck directly to his back. It was just impulse, instinct. That fear of being controlled so fully. “I’ll try to find a way to put it into words for next meeting, then.”

“Your own words, this time?”

“Sure, maybe,” Star said, reluctant to commit. “But I think that means our time is up?”

“If I didn’t have another client right after you…” Dr. Winslow shook her head. “Your insurance went through already, so you can just head on out. I’ll see you soon.”

Star hopped up, stretching. He was fully dressed, out of respect for the good doctor, and the clothes already felt like they were rubbing him raw. He was not a being designed to wear clothes. “I’ll see you soon, Dr. W.”

He headed out in a bit of a hurry, trying to shake the uneasy sense of being known, closing the door behind him a little too hard. His therapist’s office was in an old building on a street just at the edge of the Valley—far enough away from the center of the valley and the gate to the other world that the magic energies weren’t too thick to be comfortable for a human like herself to spend a lot of time in, but close enough that she was able to specialize in Otherworldly creatures: vampires, lycanthropes, and witches mostly, but she’d said he wasn’t her first fairy, either. 

Star began to walk downhill out of habit, heading back into the comforting aura of the Valley even as he hauled out his own cell phone to turn the ringer back on. 

There were two texts waiting — one from Dominic, his human jockey, asking if he wanted to get coffee and maybe to go for a run that afternoon, and one from Dandelion, his liege lord, boss, and the frontman of his band, asking if he wanted to hang out in the apartment and work on some lyrics… also that afternoon. Couldn’t do both, of course.

He rubbed a hand over his face and muttered into it. “I’m too popular. I’m hot stuff. I’m desperately in demand.” He wasn’t sure which he should go to—or if he should blow them both off. Dr. W would probably ask him what he wanted to do, which he didn’t know, and suggest he work on something fun for himself if he didn’t have a clear answer.

[It begins with a light, introductory segment!
Comment below with your suggestions for Star. 

For example, should Star:
> Agree to meet up with Dom this afternoon?
> Or make plans with Dandelion for this afternoon?
> Think about (something specific)
> Or plan to do something else: Go to the library?
Go see a play? Go to a movie? Go shop for (something)?
It’s yours to decide, just describe in the comments.]

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After a whole year off, we’re finally back — our (usually) yearly Halloween “Interactive” Fiction begins tomorrow! It’ll be spooky, queer, and a whole lot of fun!

How it works:

• On October 1, I’ll put up the first section of a story.
• By no later than 3 pm PST the next day, please leave a comment to the post with a suggestion to help the protagonist. Generally, this will be an action or something for them to consider.  (i.e. a post goes up on Oct 1 —> You have until 3 pm PST on Oct 2 to comment).  You can always just +1 other people’s ideas if you like what they’ve said!
• The next section of the story will get posted between approximately 4-8 pm PST on the next day.
• We repeat this every day through October! Please only leave suggestions on the most recent post — if we’ve already moved on, I won’t be able to fold the suggestion in.
• The story will climax on Halloween, and then I’ll put up a wrap-up post to chat about the story!

Aim suggestions at the protagonist — you can’t tell the villain to surrender, but you can tell the protagonist, “Beg the villain to surrender.” If suggestions contradict each other I’ll pick either the one most people have suggested or the one the character is most likely to do.

This game only works if people participate, so don’t be shy! That said, don’t feel that you have to comment or follow along every day: it’s OK to hop in and out as you like. If you don’t want to have to remember on your own to come back every day, you can put your email in to “Get Email Updates” in the page footer, and you’ll receive an email every time the blog is updated with a new post. (You can always unsubscribe if it ends up not working for you! I don’t update all that often outside of the Halloween event, so there won’t be any spam.)

For a visual idea of how this works, take a look through the Halloween IF archives.

This year’s story:

We’re doing a return to the Uncanny Valley, a setting we often use for our Halloween “Interactive” fiction! You do NOT have to have read any of the previous Uncanny Valley stories. It will be totally standalone (not a direct sequel to anything), and world information/etc will be given totally freely. Expect:

• Urban fantasy — fairies, vampires, were-dogs, demons, and witches!
• Lots of puns (for example, a witch’s bakery called “Loaf Portions”). 
• Our world, but that got introduced to magic in the 90s.
• Some spookiness.

The protagonist of our story will be my first truly nonhuman protag for one of these: a handsome singing shapeshifting brook horse named Star (short for “Son, That Ain’t Right”). Star appeared very briefly in a previous Uncanny Valley story as a tertiary character but, again, you do NOT have to have read that. There’s nothing from it that I’m gonna assume a reader knows. But if you did: get hype, weird horse-man is back.

If you DO want to take a look at the other Uncanny Valley stories, they’re these ones:

• • Uncanny Valley by Meredith Katz (2017)
  • A Little Night Magic by Meredith Katz (2019)
  • That Which Lingers by Aveline Reynard (2021)

KICKOFF COMMENTS

To get us kicked off, tell me a type of monster you’d really like to see appear. These should be suitable to an urban fantasy world (so not like, Cthulhu. That jerk always tries to take over any story he’s in) but other than that I just wanna hear about it! I will try to fold in any that you name (though any that would require a lot of research will likely be cameos as I won’t have the time to do the in-depth research required fyi).

The Fine Print
I reserve all rights to this work. If I eventually get this published in any form that requires me to take this version down, I will send copies of this online version, with comments left intact, to everyone who contributed suggestions, if I am reasonably able to get in contact with them.

> Go to Day 1