GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: BROTHER
He was seventeen when the call came.
They said it was a miracle—finally a matching donor, with a perfect heart. My parents cried tears of joy. I just stared at the carpet. I didn’t know what to feel. My big brother Danny had been sick for most of my life. Dilated cardiomyopathy, they called it. His heart was too weak, too big and just not good at being a heart. For years, I watched him fade—pale, tired, sometimes blue-lipped and wheezing after walking upstairs. But then came the transplant and then came the change.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: POLLY MILLER ROAD
If you grew up in upstate New York, you’ve probably heard some version of the Polly Miller story. Witch. Murdered lover. Cursed swamp. The older kids always dared each other to go out there, to Polly Miller Road, after dark. I used to think it was all bullshit. Just local legend. But in the summer of 1999, I found out it wasn’t. Polly’s real—and she’s been waiting.
All we wanted was to run—me and Jess, two girls who’d gotten too deep in Carter’s bullshit. Swayed by the money, the free drugs, and that so-called safe compound tucked deep off Vickerman Hill. We had it made, but the cost was our souls, and that was too steep for me.