Can We Look Directly at It for a Second?

When the world is ending, what does it mean to be enough? In a half-drowned future, transfemme writer Sam retreats to the Catskills to grieve and await the apocalypse-only to be drawn into a violent, surreal struggle for survival. Mutant bees, parasitic ticks, and partiers who won't stop dancing collide with Sam's body-horror quest for gender affirmation and meaning. Cursory jokes and queer-theory spirals mix with blood, sex, and algae, as Sam confronts toxic love, climate collapse, and their own anxious creative drive. Raw, unflinching, and defiantly strange, this short novella evokes Burroughs, Brite, and Felker-Martin-warning us not to wait too long to become ourselves.