I don’t know Matt Henshaw all too well, so am sad to report I can’t accompany this piece with one of my sincere, heartfelt compliments. What I can say is that Matthew was quick to respond when I said I wanted a couple more pieces before we open to unsolicited subs and gave me something that is definitely in the spirit of Bizarro. This one is as weird as I like it, and I’m proud to present it. Let’s get better acquainted with Matt Henshaw together.
Trail by Matt Henshaw
Hello, I’m trying to reach Robert? Robert, this message is for you, listen well, and follow my directions to the letter.
Drive three hours south to the Gurkly Preserve. Leave at 5AM, no later. When you arrive, there will be a few vehicles in the lot, but you will not encounter those morning hikers. A boardwalk heads the trail, boards weathered and beaten by years of the elements. The early morning star shines through the leaves, dappling the path with shifting shadows. Mind your step on leaves slick with dew. After a few minutes, you will find yourself under a canopy of oak, elder, and pine. Their branches groan as a wind blows through, and they may sound like voices. Turn left on the path, where you will pass a stone covered with moss. Take a bit of the moss under your tongue, and keep walking. Eventually, you will come to a tree upon which will be carved the following:
An Exhortation to Change by Frater Pyotr X. Oatstaff
Do you hear it brothers and sisters? I say, do you hear IT brothers? Do you HEAR it, sisters? That high-pitched tremble is the sound of angel’s wings a’flappin’ – a BUZZ that is the VOICE of change that is coming! Oh, how the times will be changing, on the music of those wings! Sing a song of change and cleansing! For we can’t build on the moldering old-no! The old model is so last century, so last millennium! The old order, so rank and decaying, that is not for the Ordo Templi Diptera! We are vanguard and we look towards the future! A buzzing future illuminated by our iridescent bodies reflecting off a golden green sun! The waiting shall soon bloom into a glorious flower of the future that we shall suckle at. Drinking deep the delirious delights that await us in the new dawn! Industrious, we acolytes and disciples, we salvage from the wreckage of the past that which can be used to glorify and sanctify our illustrious order. The waiting is the soil, the rot, the excrement – ah, how my stomach roils hungrily to think of that redolent stench! – but what grows from that cultural compost!! The pedals heavy with scent, transmogrified from the foul to the fecund. The sensual folds and feel under my fingertips, my footfalls, how the stem bends just so, just so! I can hardly stand it, the future SO CLOSE AT HAND! I rub my hands together in excited and nervous anticipation, for I have SEEN it! The vision revealed stunned me to tears of reverie and awe! It WILL come to pass! For all of us acolytes, disciples, all of our congregation! Even those which passed before us, THEY WILL RETURN, YES! From their shining alabaster bones, we will build an altar! From their putrid flesh, a new host consecrated! From death, they shall change again into something, if not alive, then certainly not dead – no! Death will have no meaning anymore, for it will just be another signpost on our journey to the future! To change! Change. Is. GOOD. Repeat it brothers and sisters – CHANGE IS GOOD. Glory be!
Do not delay my family, for the hour is nigh, the fat and lazy sun of the old ways is inching inexorably towards the horizon, shadows growing long and hungrier for the new order. Under cover of the night, dark our chapel perilous, we begin to assemble, to gather, to construct a suitable nest to lay our eggs, to cover and protect them, so they will meet the new day ready to hatch, to breathe deep the heavy air, and to work to bring about the change that is past term, and which is ready to burst like a ripe sore.
Be jolly in your work, and remember the larvae and the maggots, mentor them in your work, so that their work may be just as valuable to the cause!
And when this work is done, when our new cathedrals and temples to Rex Vola’s glory are erected, dawn’s light will shine down on our merry coven, and the buzzing will lead us in hymns of thanksgiving and celebration!! All hail! Hail, Rev Vola! Hajulellah! Nema! Hail Diptera!
Matt Henshaw (he/him) lives in Central IL with his wife and cat. Matt is the creator of Olde Wyathscope’s Quarterly Concern, a weird horror almanac, with help from visionary creative Mat Fitzsimmons. He conceived and co-edited The Nafallen University 2022-2023 Course Catalog, released by Madness Heart Press. He has had stories published in a number of anthologies. He is also the creator and performer of The Get Out of Jail Free Radio Hour, which aired on WEFT 90.1 in Champaign, IL, from October 2024-January 2025, and is being released monthly as a podcast. His latest collections of short fiction and poetry are Black Ribbon and Other Perturbed Textiles and Tattered Yellow Knots and Other Significant Variances. Matt is also a musician with several releases on Bandcamp under the Pentameth Demon handle, as well as contributions to other various compilations. More info on Matt’s creative output can be found at http://linktr.ee/mhenshaw.
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