“I Cut Off a Monster’s Arm. AITA?”

Look, it’s bad enough that my wife gets cat-called in the street and flashed on the train. There’s a lot of sickos out there who get their jollies by harassing women, and usually I try to shut them down without escalating it to a fight.

For a while now I’ve had a vague notion of doing a big set of flash stories about yōkai — that being the broad term for a wide range of supernatural creatures in Japanese folklore. (Unsurprisingly, that notion was born while I was working on my Legend of the Five Rings novels, which feature a ton of yōkai.) I doubt I’ll ever do the full thing, but in the meanwhile, this story joins “In the Paradise of the Pure Land” as representatives of the concept!

Because John Joseph Adams appears to like my weird-format flash (if I may be permitted to generalize from the twin data points of this story and “Guidelines for Using the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library”), I have sold this piece to Lightspeed! I will update here when it comes out.