It’s autumn, and all the dead girls are kneeling in the yard.

So begins the story of a group of horror movie ‘final girls’, trapped in a never-ending purgatory where they repeat their deaths again and again. Throughout the story the girls first try to survive, then turn on each other whilst a strange marble angel oversees the nightly carnage, forcing them to re-live their murders every night and repent their sins every day. A self-aware mix of postmodern commentary on slasher films, the limits of organised religion and a genuinely scary story in itself, ‘If We Survive the Night’ is like nothing I’ve read before or since.

first published by The Dark Magazine, March 2017 and available to read online here