On Sept. 6, 2019, online horror magazine Haunted MTL released a brand new short story by Isaac Thorne title “Dead Rights.” The nearly 3,000-word tale begins with two dead individuals rising from their slabs in a university laboratory. Will, a medical student, is the only living person in their vicinity at the time, and boy does he get an earful.
“My tongue was planted firmly in my cheek when I wrote this one,” Isaac explains. “I don’t want to say too much about what it’s about. Readers can and will decide that for themselves. All I will say is that we live in an era of awakenings. Some of us are striding toward consciousness. Some of us are being dragged kicking and screaming into the new dawn, desperate to remain asleep.”
Unlike his previous short stories, which were released by Isaac himself as singles in ebook format, he opted to shop this one around.
“It’s quite a bit shorter than most of my other stories,” he explains. “Because of that, I didn’t feel right about releasing it as its own ebook single. Also, it came along way too late and is too different from my other stories to have been included in my Road Kills collection. I felt like this one would be most at home in a magazine format publication.”
Isaac admits that the submission process felt somewhat alien to him after having produced all his work through Lost Hollow Books for the past five years.
“It was kind of bizarre to be submitting again,” he explains. “All I can say is that I’m thankful for Submittable. It makes the process much less complicated than it used to be back when I mailed printed manuscripts, or even when I used the self-made submission forms of older online magazines. This isn’t a plug, but if I decide to submit work anywhere in the future, it’s probably going to be to a publication that uses Submittable.”
“Dead Rights” is available now in the Originals section on Haunted MTL.
