Episode 2: All Liberation is Loneliness

I first became aware of Tananarive Due through the documentary Horror Noire: A Black History of Horror. A daughter of Civil Rights activists, Due grew up in Florida and now teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. Much of her fiction explores the feelings of erasure and invisibility innate to Black experience. She’s twice been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, is a recipient of the NAACP Image Award, and her collection Ghost Summer won the British Fantasy Award in 2016.

Tonight’s story, The Lake, is as deceptively deep as its titular setting. A shallow wade through the text tells of a primordial homecoming not unlike the one described in Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. But as we sink into murkier depths of its meaning, far more disturbing possibilities rise toward the surface.

Are the events of the story meant to be taken literally? Is Abbie’s transformation into the Other as calm and unvarnished as the narrator describes? Or is the true monster simply revealing itself? The reader is given all the clues they require, but the story is creepier for its lack of a definitive answer.

The Lake was originally published as a free story in 2011.

Hosted by The Fundertaker

Music by Gothic Husband

41 minutes