Gravid Secrets of the Old Ones

Lovecraft pastiche about puberty

This is the thread for discussing Gravid Secrets of the Old Ones, a short story available for free if you subscribe to my Substack. It is a Lovecraftian pastiche about the body horror that is puberty.

The inspiration for Gravid Secrets of the Old Ones was this short film:

When I finished watching the film, I said to myself, “okay, that was fine, but if you really want sex education as Lovecraftian horror, it should be about a girl. The female reproductive system is so much worse.”

H. P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite writers—as well as, of course, one I have a complicated relationship with—so I enjoyed writing a pastiche of him. I spent a lot of the writing process with several thesaurus tabs open: “depraved,” “ooze,” “engorged,” “urge.”¹

A recurring theme in Lovecraft is betrayal by your own body, the dark secrets that lurk not in the stars but within your very cells. Most famously, this theme occurs in The Shadow Over Innsmouth; most shamefully, in his miscegenation horror stories Medusa’s Coil and Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn. Many critics have speculated Lovecraft’s interest in this theme relates to his own family history of mental illness and his fear that he himself might go mad.

For many people, the experience of being a woman or assigned female at birth involves a similar feeling that your body is not really on your side. The embarrassment of red-stained pants when your period comes early. The sense of helplessness as boys you used to be able to easily beat suddenly become stronger than you. Growing breasts, and suddenly having to deal with all the social meanings attached to the two balls of fat projecting from your torso. If you’re transfeminine, the slow transformation as your previously androgynous body becomes more and more male. The fear of unwanted pregnancy. The, well, horrific changes made to your body during pregnancy and in the postpartum period. Even the shock of suddenly wanting sex, an activity which previously seemed incomprehensible and kinda gross.

So in this story I wanted to address those themes more explicitly. I also wanted an excuse to call a penis an athame. I hope both goals were met.

Thanks to Lindsey for cheering on this story from its beginning, to Ishaan for revision suggestions, and to Leyland for thinking of the title.

1. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out a good way to work in “cyclopean,” “gambrel,” or “tentacle.”