CZM Book Club: Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy, by Hailey Piper

Summary

It Could Happen Here—CZM Book Club: Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy by Hailey Piper

Host: Margaret Killjoy
Date: October 12, 2025

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Overview

This “Book Club” episode, hosted solo by Margaret Killjoy, dives into Hailey Piper’s horror short story “Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy.” The main focus is a detailed reading and analysis of the story, which centers on polyamorous relationships, cycles of trauma, and the cultural evolution of werewolf tropes—from folklore to Hollywood cliché. The episode serves as both a dramatic reading and a critical examination of how genre fiction can use, subvert, and interrogate the tropes it inherits.

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Key Discussion Points and Episode Flow

Introduction: The Book Club Premise & Spooky Month

• [02:26] Margaret introduces the podcast’s book club: “The only book club where you don't have to do the reading, because I do it for you.”
• Emphasizes “Spooky Month”—the show’s annual deep dive into horror.
• Brief intro for Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy:
  • A story of werewolves, polyamory, trauma cycles, and, above all, “story about story, but not in an annoying way.”
• Margaret reflects on her “complicated feelings about tropes,” setting the groundwork for how this story thoughtfully subverts them.

Reading: Hailey Piper’s “Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy”

• [04:31-25:00] Margaret performs an expressive, immersive reading of the short story, interspersed with commentary about tropes.

Plot Recap and Thematic Highlights:

Setup:

• Selina, secluded in a cabin, prepares a makeshift silver weapon in desperation as chaos unfolds in the living room.
• The group was supposed to have a cozy, polyamorous weekend. Instead, violence and transformation—sparked by the discovery of a mysterious, tooth-and-wood idol—shred their plans (and each other).

Key Scenes:

• Selina’s frantic crafting of a silver weapon, her whispered mantra:
  • “Silver is silver,” [05:55]
• The grotesque violence—Frankie, now a werewolf, turns on their partners one by one.
• Layered uncertainty about how to actually “kill” a werewolf, heavily influenced by popular movie lore.
  • “Hollywood's fostered the popular belief that only a silver bullet can kill a werewolf, but people must have been killing the damn things since before bullets were invented.” [08:55]

Subversion and Trauma:

• Selina’s actions are increasingly fueled by desperation to “make sure” the horror is over—stabbing, dismembering, burning.
• The horror lingers:
  • Wolfish noises and doubts persist, regardless of evidence. Is the threat gone, or is the trauma haunting her?
• The narrative viciously teases “the end” repeatedly:
  • “Or is it?” echoes after every attempted conclusion. [Various points—esp. 10:34, 17:54, 29:53]

Finale:

• Selina flees in Ted’s truck, chased by the resurrected, now-werewolf boyfriends—a literal pack.
• The ending questions if there ever is a true end to horror or “the story,” blurring lines between genre expectations, psychological scars, and open narrative wounds.

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Critical Analysis: Trope, Trauma & Folklore

Margaret’s Reflections

• [37:00] The story is “about trauma and never being able to leave it,” using werewolf transformations and repeated escape attempts as metaphors.
• The group’s polyamory isn’t just window dressing—it informs the sense of loss and lingering attachment:
  • “Leaving boyfriends behind and this sense that these men who have turned into monsters...there’s this, oh, trying to leave them behind in your rearview mirror, but in a weird way, they’re always coming after you.” [38:50]
• The cultural journey “from folklore to trope:”
  • “Folklore is often sort of the same story told in different ways...what is that but trope? But it’s like less conscious and more earnest in a folklore context. And yet it’s become less so in the modern context.” [39:40]
• The critique of Hollywood endings:
  • Margaret praises Piper’s approach of “stretching the wound of that moment” rather than simply sequel-baiting or delivering a jump scare.

Quotes from Hailey Piper (as read by Margaret)

• “I wanted to take that enthusiasm and confront a trope I’m not a fan of: the non-ending or is it?” [40:03]
• “I wanted to tackle the horror of that non-ending by stretching out the wound of that moment, poking around at how far it could go and maybe how cruelly it could cut.” [40:17]

Commentary from Hazel (CZM team)

• “I love how Hailey uses a trope that I’m also often annoyed by to explore the viscerality of trauma...the amygdala, where fear and trauma are processed, doesn’t encode memories with time. So...it’s really easy to feel like it’s happening right now, that you’re still living in this story. And that’s a horror story, never being able to move on, still jumping at shadows, perpetually needing to stay on edge to keep yourself safe.” [40:52]

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On Prose and Literary Craft

Margaret’s Appreciation for Piper’s Style

• [41:25] Notes the story’s “beautiful prose that’s moving the action along and ties into the plot,” not just decorative.
• Relates Piper to Ray Bradbury—praised for poetic language in genre fiction.
  • “Haley is a master of these sentences that are like becoming beautiful by cutting out words and taking abnormal structure.” [41:40]

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Hailey Piper Bio & Further Reading

Author Bio (as read by Margaret)

• [41:55] Piper is a Bram Stoker Award-winning writer, active member of the Horror Writers Association, lives in Maryland, and her latest works are highlighted.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Silver is silver.” [05:55, recurring trope]
• “Hollywood’s fostered the popular belief that only a silver bullet can kill a werewolf, but people must have been killing the damn things since before bullets were invented, right?” [08:55]
• “Time is another predator in the night. The only one guaranteed to catch its prey in the end.” [21:30]
• “Maybe whether the horror is over or not has nothing to do with letting fate crash to its final conclusion. Maybe it has everything to do with choosing the best time to walk out of the theater.” [23:25]
• “Even as she scratches her arms where her fingernails snag on a strange new clump of shaggy hair, she promises herself, yes, it is over. Definitely. Forever. Entirely over. Or is it—dun dun dun.” [31:48]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:26 — Intro to Spooky Month, the book, and the trope discourse
• 04:31–25:00 — Live reading of Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy (with minor commentary)
• 29:53 — The “ending” and story wrap, before critical commentary
• 37:00 — Margaret’s deep-dive on the story’s themes and broader significance
• 40:03 — Reading of Hailey Piper’s statement on horror tropes and non-endings
• 41:25 — Margaret’s admiration of Piper’s prose style
• 41:55 — Hailey Piper’s author bio and works

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Closing—Final Thoughts & Resource Mentions

• [End] Margaret directs listeners who want more Piper or more CZM content to the author and podcast websites, and thanks the audience for joining the “spooky” book club.

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Summary

This episode delivers an atmospheric, thought-provoking exploration of a dark, trope-savvy short story. Viewers come away with a rich experience of both the narrative and its deeper meanings—trauma, folklore, the trap of genre conventions, and questions about how stories (and horrors) truly end. Margaret’s candid criticism and enthusiasm for prose brings extra depth to the conversation, making this book club episode rewarding for listeners, whether or not they read the story on their own.

Transcript

[Margaret Killjoy]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu. Every single episode.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

You're like, wait, stop.

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Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app app podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

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America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

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Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

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[Ed Helms]

App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? It's snacks from the trap nerds and all October long, we're bringing you the Horror.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Boogity boogity boogity. We kicking off this month with some of my best horror games to keep you terrified.

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Then we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movies and figuring out why black people always die first.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And it's the Return Tony's horror show side Quests, written and narrated by yours truly.

[Ed Helms]

We'll also be doing a full episode reading with commentary and we'll cap it off with a horror movie Battle Royale. Open your free Aha. Radio app and search Trap Nerds podcast and listen now.

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Call Zone Media.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Book Club Book Club Book Club Book Club. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading, because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and it's Spooky Month. Or as you might say, Spooky month. But you extend out the O's a lot like Spoo Ky. But then it Just sounds like I'm saying cookie crisp, which I'm not. But it's still spooky month. And so we're doing horror, which is a word that I'm going to pronounce that way until I die. And this week, I am reading a short story by Hailey Piper called Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy. It's a short story about. Well, there's werewolves in it. You probably figured that part out. And there's polyamory and there's cycles of trauma, but by and large, it's a story about story, but not in an annoying way. It's about tropes and genre convention, because it's from a 2022 collection called it Was All a Dream, An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right, which was edited by Brandon Applegate. And it's a short story collection that has a bunch of good stories in it that are just like. Well, they kind of do what they say on the COVID It's An Anthology of bad horror Tropes Done Right. And so they just, like, are consciously playing with tropes. And I don't know. I have. I have complicated feelings about tropes and writing to tropes and subverting tropes and things like that in fiction. And I think that this is a story that does it well. And I like the conscious subversion of tropes, but I also. I sometimes get annoyed. Okay, this is, like, really not about this story at all. I actually just, like, really like this story. But in general, I was once on this panel at this reading, and they asked all of the authors on the panel what we liked about tropes and writing to tropes and things like that. And everyone was like, oh, tropes are these interesting tools and storytelling techniques, and they help understand the reader's expectations and stuff. And I was kind of the sole one who was like, I kind of hate tropes. I kind of hate overanalyzing whether or not I'm playing into tropes or not playing into tropes. But that's because I am fundamentally oppositional. And when you're gonna do it, you should do it like this. Hollywood Werewolf Conspiracy by Hailey Piper. Selina sits crammed into the cabin's bedroom corner, a hammer in one hand and her inherited silver amulet in the other. She flattens the amulet down and bangs it with a hammer, desperate to pound murder into its shape. The cabin's dusty floor makes a poor blacksmith's anvil, and her grandmother's heirloom makes a poor bullet. But together they might become a weapon of a sort. And maybe then tonight's horror show would finally end. Silver is silver. Selina whispers through sweat and panic. The hammer strikes again. Has to work. Silver is silver. All this whispering and striking might draw unwanted attention were it not for the storm of growling and screaming in the cabin's living room. Selina keeps at it. If she's not ready for Frankie when he finishes with Marvin, there'll be no hiding her sour scent from what he's become. Silver is silver. The amulet dents with enough of a slant to make a kind of silver shiv, and that should be enough to drive it through werewolf flesh. It has to be. Selina creeps toward the bedroom door and glimpses a blood bathed living room. Smashed furniture litters the floor, decorated by purple innards. Their shadows dance away from the fireplace. Beside the toppled sofa lies a carved idol of teeth and wood, the one Frankie pulled from an old oak's hollow this afternoon. Some trapper or woodland witch must have set it there a century or so ago, but there's no book to explain the rest, only the senses upon seeing what came next. Once upon a time, Frankie was a clean shaven guy of skin and bones, but now he's a thundercloud of shaggy hair, wicked claws and gleaming teeth. He clutches Marvin's torso between wolf and jaws and shakes him limp, no different than a hound might shake a rabbit boneless. Except a hound could never have been one of the three boyfriends Selina drew to the cabin. They were hers and each other's, here for a precious weekend of polyamorous hiking and cozying up by the fire and fucking the life out of each other, as Ted put it. He couldn't have known he'd be the first to die. Frankie thrashes his head to one side, muscles go taut down his lupine neck, and his teeth unlatch from a still human torso. Marvin's body smashes through the picture window and into the moon. Soaked outdoors, the woods are strangely quiet, as if every creature that crawls, walks and climbs can tell the wolf is awake. Tonight they're stuck with Selina in the kind of movie Ted might have dragged her to back in civilization, one she'd love to walk out on, except the tickets are purchased, the popcorn is buttered, and Hollywood's already trapped her in the dark. She'll have to see the horror show through to the end. She charges into the living room while Wolf Frankie's back is turned. Had she known what the sudden shaggy patch on his arm meant earlier in the evening. She might have fled with Ted and Marvin then, but it's too late for them and it's too late for Frankie. His sharp ear twitches at the pounding footsteps and murder crosses his wolfish eyes. A better prepared werewolf would have launched himself off the toppled sofa and torn Selina's head clear off her shoulders in a crimson geyser. But he isn't prepared, and Selina launches herself first, and her amulet turned shiv drives into the back of his neck. Thanks be to her grandmother. Wolf Frankie deflates with a thinning whine. His limbs thrash and slop, his snout flattens against his face, and his shaggy hair writhes in a dying colony of wolven worms. A warm breath seeps from his shrinking form and the silver shiv clatters beside him, blade caked in dark blood. It's over. Frankie is himself. And yet he'll never be himself again. He's instead gone from wolf Frankie to corpse Frankie. And sure as Ted and Marvin are gone, so is he. No more of his once ceaseless curiosity. What started this trouble in the first place? No more of Ted's crude jokes despite his being so shy in the bedroom. No more of Marvin's sweet songs when they all piled together. They had this final evening curled up by the fireplace, and then hell found them. Selina wipes frantic hands down her face. Too many tears and she won't be able to drive Ted's truck out of here. And she needs to put miles between herself and this cabin, these bodies, these woods. She crosses the living room and grasps the front doorknob. A thick gurgle fills the room like wolf's breath bubbling up a dead throat. Selina twists too fast on her heel, shooting a painful tremor across one knee, and glances at Frankie. Her silver shiv lies gleaming in the fireplace's flicker. She snatches it up and aims at the corpse, which will surely pounce at any moment. Frankie's face remains still. No animal hair, no claws, no stretching. Skull drags his nose and mouth into a fresh snout. He's dead. It's over. Or is it? Selina eyes her shiv. She stabbed a werewolf with silver. That should be enough. Hollywood's fostered the popular belief that only a silver bullet can kill a werewolf, but people must have been killing the damn thing since before bullets were invented, right? Silver is silver, selina whispers. But if silver kills a werewolf, is that enough to keep it dead? She's only watched a handful of werewolf movies and zero sequels, but since when could movies help anyone? Best to be sure. She crouches down and jabs the shiv into Frankie's side. Every part of her tenses for his reaction. The sudden end of Movie Scare just before the credits slam at the screen like a speeding car full of suicidal crash test dummies. But Frankie doesn't flinch when Selina twists the shiv, or when she sticks his chest, or when she jacks the shiv across his neck in a makeshift zipper line. He's dead for certain. She leaves him again, shiv in one hand, both wrists blocking her ears. She won't hear a sound until the cabin's front door thwacks. Its door frame bounces out and settles again behind her. But do you know what sound you will hear again and again and again and again and again? Unless you have Cooler zone media or you hit the forward 15 second button, I guess.

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[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu Every single episode.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

32 lost nuclear weapons you're like, wait, stop.

[iHeart Advertising/Promo Voice]

What?

[Ed Helms]

Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's going to be a whole lot of history, of a whole lot of funny and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh wow, Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.

[Margaret Killjoy]

What was that like for you to.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

Soft launch into the show?

[Ed Helms]

Sorry Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

[Ed Helms]

Nick Kroll I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Ed Helms]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

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My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer. And I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured.

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Gas on her.

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[Ed Helms]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season at first, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

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[Margaret Killjoy]

And we're back. The night rushes in as she crosses the porch, where a moonlit puddle might be the beginning of Ted's blood trail to the shed, its edges skewed by Frankie's paw prints. Beneath the picture window, glass glitters across a dark pile. Marvin lying amid fallen leaves. Selina listens for woodland creatures to bring their comforting nocturnal chorus to the scene of skittering mice through ferns and insects calling through the trees. An owl warbles out an uncertain hoot and a fox cries in the underbrush. The prey are quiet while the predators sing of their moment. Selina hurries to Ted's truck and slides inside. Back in the land of movies, this is when she finds no keys and realizes Ted must have kept them in his pocket despite her telling him there's nobody in the woods to steal his damn truck. She'll have to follow his blood trail to the shed. And that's when Wolf Frankie, alive again, will crash through the door. Thought it was over, didn't she? Except the keys sit in the cup holder between the front seats, right where she told Ted to put them this afternoon. She snatches them up and sits behind the wheel. Time to kiss key to ignition, let the engine growl through the woods and get the hell back to civilization. It really is over now. Or is it? That wolfish gurgling rises again. Selina flinches against the steering wheel and the truck shouts out a honking. How could Frankie have snuck into the car with her? Can werewolves teleport? She's never heard of a movie where it happens, but again, movies never help anyone. There might be a Hollywood werewolf conspiracy, a bunch of werewolf actors and werewolf technicians at the beck and call of werewolf directors and werewolf producers using their art to deceive the public on what this breed of undead can really do. Or Selina might be paranoid. When she glances over her seat, she finds no torn claws, loose teeth, not even a tuft of shaggy hair. Only the expected plastic water bottle and half devoured bag of chips. She can drive away and be done with all of this. But the nightmare isn't done with her, is it? What if Frankie's still alive? She leaves the truck and creeps back into the cabin where Frankie used to lie, where she won't find him. There will be blood and hair, but no dead boyfriend, Ted and Marvin aside. And when she turns around, she'll find wolf has filled her world. Except none of this happens. Frankie lies in a pool of blood, some mix of his and Marsh Marvin's. It's over. It really is, isn't it? Selina needs to be sure. She marches outside, tries her best not to glance at Marvin's glass littered body. Ted's blood trail shining with moonlight failing at both, and hauls up the wood cutting axe from the stump by the porch. Isn't this in line with the old ways? Woodcutter versus wolf, axe against beast? She can't trust any Hollywood movie, but fairy tales have been told across eons to caution everyone who hears them. A fairy tale won't lead her astray. It instead leads her back to the living room where she raises the axe, lowers it by inches, raises it again, then squeezes her eyes shut and heaves it down. Flesh snaps and bones crack and corpse. Frankie loses an arm. No sign of wolf in him, but she can't stop yet. Three limbs and a head to go. The work is exhausting. Rise, chop. Sweat, chop. Cry, scream, cry. Vomit, chop. And so on. A clock waves its hands in slow circles, begging for her attention. But it can't tell her anything she doesn't already know. Time is another predator in the night. The only one guaranteed to catch its prey in the end. She should have escaped by now. She will escape, right? It's over and she should go. If there's anywhere left to run to. She's been coming and going from this gore soaked living room for as much time as passed earlier in this nightmare between Frankie finding the tooth and wood idol and his moonlit transformation. In those hours, the rest of the universe might have collapsed into a black hole. And the only surviving bits of matter and life are right here at this cabin in these woods. One last movie in the world filled with werewolves. But maybe Selina doesn't have to wait for some pre credits stinger. Maybe whether the horror is over or not has nothing to do with letting fate crash to its final conclusion. Maybe it has everything to do with choosing the best time to walk out of the theater. Selina returns to the porch and her now blistered hands drop the axe. Time to decide where the lights go up. The sun will only rise if she leaves this place. A gurgling wolf cough drags her stomping back into the cabin. What now? She shrieks. What the hell do you want? What will it take to make you stop? I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I really am. But I can't change it now. I can't. Only the soft crackle of the fireplace answers her. The wolf noises must be her imagination. Some post traumatic stress symptom. Can it be post traumatic when the trauma's still in progress. Mid trauma then, but just as insidious as ptsd wolf Frankie is dead. But now his wolf stalks Selina's mind where he'll grunt and and growl and howl to the end of her days. She reaches his chopped up body. A visual promise that he's dead. She'll let her hands play in the strewn tendons and scrape the chopped bone if that's what it takes. Anything to make her mind understand. It's over. But do you know what else will follow you around forever? Wait, the ads don't follow you. They just follow me. Well, I mean the products and services are a cheerful companion these days, but anyway, here they are.

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[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. And on our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu Every single episode.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

32 lost nuclear weapons you're like, wait, stop.

[Annabe Sofa Advertiser]

What?

[Ed Helms]

Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player who still wore knee pads. Yes, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh wow, Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.

[Margaret Killjoy]

What was that like for you to.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

Soft launch into the show?

[Ed Helms]

Sorry Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I forgot whose podcast we were doing.

[Ed Helms]

Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it Goes listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Ed Helms]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Margaret Killjoy]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said.

[iHeart Advertising/Promo Voice]

They literally made me say that I.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured.

[iHeart Advertising/Promo Voice]

Gas on her.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

From Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Ed Helms]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[iHeart Advertising/Promo Voice]

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[Margaret Killjoy]

And we're back because Frankie isn't chopped up anymore. Sticky puddles coat the wood where Selina heaved the axe down on his limbs and ax driven grooves mar the floorboards, but there are no loose tendons, muscles, bone. Frankie's torso is whole, his head attached, as if striking him over and over with the axe were as fictitious as a scene seen in any movie. Silver Is Silver battles in Selina's mouth with what the fuck? And all she can get out is Silver is fucked. Must a silver bullet really finish the job? Nothing else will work. What did people do in olden times when a werewolf came stalking their villages? Ask it nicely to leave, sacrifice their children to sate its appetite? Or has modernity tainted myth and twisted folklore with new ideas? With Hollywood's unhelpful movies, erasing every ancient werewolf weakness, now that everyone believes only a silver bullet can end the nightmare? Selina doesn't have a silver bullet. She doesn't have a gun or a field guide to killing werewolves or much hope. But she believes Frankie's going to come back in all his wolfish glory. She believes only she can stop him. And she believes in spreading fire from the fireplace to the curtains and furniture before she heads out the door. She believes in burning this cabin to the fucking ground with Frankie inside. The insistent blaze fills the smashed picture window and front doorway as she stumbles back to the truck. Red light brushes tender fingers through the trees. A cautious twilight wondering if the time has come for sunrise. Selina wants to tell the world, yes, go ahead and let the lights up. At last it's really over. Or is it? There's that wolfish gurgle again, and this time it breaks into a howl. Serena drives her hands against her. Her ears can't be hearing this, refuses it. The fire roars too loud for her to block it out. And beyond its crackle, she hears another howl. What if the problem isn't the wolf or the silver? Maybe the problem is her and the trauma within. Or the idol Frankie found. Or whether it infects people not by touch but but by sitting in their presence, biding its time against silver axes and flame. Her problem might even be math, she realizes, as firelight and early morning luminescence reveal an absence in the fallen leaves beneath the broken picture window. There's no dark lump where Marvin should lie, only shattered glass. Selina throws herself into Ted's truck and twists the key in the ignition. Movie logic says the engine won't start. Might even have been savaged during Wolf Frankie's initial rampage. But movies are liars, so who's to say? Who can ever really know if the Movie's over when you walk out of that dark room. Maybe when the projectors shut down and the staff leaves. The ghost of the movie keeps on playing itself. An undead presence prowled by secret werewolves. The rear view mirror spots the ongoing nightmare as Selina drives Ted's truck from the cabin where three werewolves pour from behind the inferno. There's Frankie, his shaggy hair singed. There's Marvin, a dark lump now flowing with more muscle and claws. And between them skulks Ted. No more crude jokes, only a cruel appetite between his mishmash of sharp teeth. One claw clutches that damn tooth and wood idol. He's saved it from the fire, his and Marvin's transformations finishing out while they were dead or undead or somewhere in between. That was never Frankie alone, gurgling and howling. Only a trio of werewolves still in the works. And by Hollywood conspiracy or plain simple fact, maybe only a silver bullet can really kill any of them. The idols made sure of it. They cling together in howl, a polyamorous pack mourning a lost member. And then they chased the truck to make their unit whole. Tongues flop from jaws and saliva flails into faces and down necks. They're almost an excited smattering of suburban neighborhood dogs chasing a postal truck. Except this chase is for keeps. Selina floors the gas and Ted's truck rushes up the dirt road and through the woods. Dark, dark branches scrape with toothy sharpness at the windows, the roof, as if a wind full of wolves encircles the truck. But when Selina glances to the rearview mirror again, only a cloud of dust follows her tires. No claws or hair or stretched out faces. No boyfriends turned wolves. They're still alive back there. Still werewolves. But whether or not the nightmare is over isn't about letting fate crash down on her. She has to choose a time for the show to end, a time to leave the theater and let the werewolves play in their coils of ghost films. Only Selina can decide if there should be a lingering question mark or a bold and clear statement of the end. And she has decided. This is the finale, the road scrolling under the truck's hood like a column of end credits. No more horror show. No more nightmare. Even as she scratches her arms where her fingernails snag on a strange new clump of shaggy hair, she promises herself, yes, it is over. Definitely. Forever. Entirely over. Or is it dun dun dun, the end of the story? Or is it the end of the story? It is the end of the story as written. But maybe the ghost of the story still lingers On I like a good short story that could mean so many things, depending on what you're feeling when you read it. I mean, like this is and isn't a story about polyamory, right? Like it happens to be that there's three boyfriends, right? And they all fuck each other a bunch, but that's all before the story even starts. But also there's this kind of, I don't know, leaving boyfriends behind and this sense that these men who have turned into monsters, which is a common but not always experience of people who date men or anyone, anyone who's capable of being this way. There's this, oh, trying to leave them behind in your rearview mirror, but in a weird way, they're always coming after you. I mean, I think really it's a story about trauma and never being able to leave it. But I also like the stuff about how something has gone from folklore to Hollywood. And so it's actually kind of, in a way, talking about how something has gone from folklore to trope. And kind of, in some ways, folklore is tropes, right? Because folklore is often sort of the same story told in different ways, passed on through various oral traditions, through a game of telephone and people adding new things and. And what is that but trope? But it's like less conscious and more earnest in a folklore context. And yet it's become less so in the modern context. And so that's what I was saying when I think a story that plays with trope consciously and not just like I'm subverting a trope, but like addressing that in really interesting ways. Here's what Halley has to say about it at the back of the anthology. For perspective's sake, I want to share that I love a trope. I've gone looking at character cliches and story, been there, done thats. And I start laughing and getting excited because they're wonderful. You can make something incredible from most of them. They're so much fun. So I wanted to take that enthusiasm and confront a trope. I'm not a fan of the non ending of the end, or is it? Often for me it feels like a cheat or sequel baiting or a lack of perspective. But when I thought deeper about it, beyond the implicit jump scare lies a nightmare of endlessness, paranoia lingers, trauma sticks, and there's a sense of never really getting out of a bad situation. I wanted to tackle the horror of that non ending by stretching out the wound of that moment, poking around at how far it could go and maybe how cruelly it could cut. And then Hazel, who helps me pick stories, said about this. I love how Haley uses a trope that I'm also often annoyed by to explore the viscerality of trauma I've heard. And I don't know if this is literally true, but it often feels that way. That the amygdala, where fear and trauma are processed, doesn't encode memories with time. So when you experience a memory, it's really easy to feel like it's happening right now, that you're still living in this story. And that's a horror story, never being able to move on, still jumping at shadows, perpetually needing to stay on edge to keep yourself safe. This is Margaret Again, my perspective again. I'm really drawn to the prose of this story. Very specifically, I was reading this essay and I didn't write this into the script, so I don't have it in front of me. I was reading this essay like a day or two ago, written by an author talking about how they don't love most prose and writing of the golden age of science fiction, with the exception of Ray Bradbury. And in that piece they talk about how people kind of came along and added writing really beautiful prose to genre fiction at some point. And this is of course, an exaggeration on some level. But then that author, again, whose name I don't remember, who wrote this essay that I read a few days ago, goes and like, lists contemporary authors who do it really, really well and specifically names Haley Piper. And having just read this story by Hailey Piper, it really stuck out to me. There's ways of doing prose that's beautiful without getting lost in like I'm just going to beautifully describe all of these details of things and getting kind of purple. But instead there's ways of doing beautiful prose that's moving the action along and ties into the plot. And that's what I think. Haley is a master of these sentences that are like becoming beautiful by cutting out words and taking abnormal structure. But yeah, if you want to know more about Hayley, here's Haley's bio. Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award winning author of novels, short fiction and nonfiction. She is an active member of the Horror Writers association and lives with her wife in Maryland where their paranormal research is classified. Her new novel is A Game in Yellow and she has a short story collection out called Teenage Girls Can Be Demons. You can find [e-mail] and Haley, I mean, it's in the title, but it's H A I L E Y-P I P E R.com and I'm Margaret Killjoy and you can find me on the Internet by looking up Margaret Giljoy. I'm on Blue sky and Instagram. I hate social media with a desperate passion, but also recognize it's the waters in which we swim. And I have a substack, martyrkilljoy.substack.com where I post my thoughts. And I also have another podcast called Cool People who Did Cool Stuff. And thanks for listening all the way to the end of the podcast because it is the end, isn't it? No, it actually is the end. Okay, bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

Virtual, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

You can find sources for It Could Happen here updated [e-mail] sources.

[Margaret Killjoy]

Thanks for listening.

[Ed Helms]

Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snafu Every single episode.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

32 lost nuclear weapons.

[Margaret Killjoy]

You're like, wait, stop.

[iHeart Advertising/Promo Voice]

What?

[Ed Helms]

Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky was went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Ed Helms]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Narrator/Storyteller (Graves County and other podcast promos)]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Margaret Killjoy]

There's a vile sickness in Amstown. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. From iheart podcasts and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. This is Heaven Town, a new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater audio universe starring Jewel State and Ray Wise. Listen to Havoc town on the iHeartRadio.

[Ed Helms]

App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? It's snacks from the trap nerds. All October long, we're bringing you the horror.

[iHeart Advertising/Promo Voice]

Boogity boogity boogity.

[Margaret Killjoy]

We're kicking off this month with some of my best horror games to keep you terrified.

[Ed Helms]

Then we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween and figuring out why black people always die first.

[Margaret Killjoy]

And it's the return of Tony's Horror show side Quest, written and narrated by yours truly.

[Ed Helms]

We'll also be doing a full episode reading with commentary, and we'll cap it off with a horror movie battle royale. Open your free iHeartRadio app and search Trap Nerds podcast and listen. Now.

[Margaret Killjoy]

This is an iHeart podcast.