GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: MIDNIGHT MASS
Once a month, every adult in town would vanish after dark. The children stayed home—locked in, lights out. Told not to peek, that we should be asleep by then anyway, and if we weren’t, all manner of monsters lurked about at night looking for disobedient children to chase.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: SEE EMILY PLAY
This is a warning. If you hear kids calling outside your window after 2AM—don’t go. Don’t answer. And whatever you do, don’t say your name.
There’s something wrong with my street, and it starts after midnight. You’ll hear laughter—children playing. Sometimes tag, sometimes jump rope, sometimes just… calling.
But we all know better. You don’t open the window. You don’t peek through the blinds. You never go outside.
I told Emily this, but she didn’t believe me. She thought it was just some dumb story I made up to scare her.
She doesn’t think that anymore.
Because she’s gone.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
Raymond Kessler’s father was, quite literally, a trust fund. Groomed into a vapid vessel devoid of empathy, Raymond pissed away his inheritance on the finest drugs, the loudest cars, and the trendiest clothes. He replenished his fortune by gutting pensions through the family business and selling conspiracy supplements to men who hated their wives. He believed aliens were real, we live in a simulation, and women were mostly decorative buckets for his sperm.
So when a shadow dealer in Morocco offered him a strange object—carved from jet-black meteorite, with spindled horns and a vaguely feminine shape—he wired $4.5 million instantly.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE HOLE
I still dream about the fire. The way the flames clawed at the old barn, the smell of burning wood and something worse. The way my little brother screamed for me to save him.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: ROOTS
My uncle Jonas was a recluse. I thought he was interesting, but nobody else in my family could stand him—especially my mom, his baby sister. She blamed Vietnam. It wrecked him, stole the big goofy brother she once loved, and replaced him with an imposter dredged from the putrid mud of a battlefield. When the war ended, Uncle Jonas moved in with my grandma and never left. After she died in the late ’90s, when I was just a kid, he and my mom fought bitterly. She wanted to sell the house, but he refused. Being the oldest, he had just as much claim to it as she did, and he dug his heels in.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE HUDSON ABDUCTION
The river was calm, moonlight shimmering on its dark surface as Jake cast his line. Beside him, Ryan cracked open a beer. "Perfect night," he murmured.
Then, the sky split open.
An eerie orange light descended, wrapping around them. Their limbs went stiff. They could think—they could scream in their minds—but their bodies refused to move.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL:THE GIFT
Emily’s phone buzzed—Jill. Her cousin’s name glowed on the screen like a ghost from the past. They hadn’t spoken in five years. The message was simple: I’ve been thinking about you. I miss you so much. I’m back in New York. Join me this weekend in Woodstock. It will change your life.