This week’s Member Pick is “House Heart,” a short story by Amelia Gray, the author of the novel Threats and short story collections Museum of the Weird and AM/PM. “House Heart” was published in the December 2012 issue of Tin House—here’s more from Tin House assistant editor Emma Komlos-Hrobsky:
In Amelia Gray’s ‘House Heart,’ a couple entraps a young woman in their ventilation system in a game equal parts erotic and perverse. ‘We all had our individual function,’ says Gray’s narrator, ‘and hers was to be the life of the house.’ Gray’s own writing does similar eerie work in animating uncomfortable, secret, interior spaces. Something strange and dark and distinctly human moves just beneath the cool deadpan of her authorial voice. I love this story for its wryness and subtlety, but most especially for its willingness to take me where I don’t want to go.
Support Longreads—and get more stories like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.
Illustration by Kjell Reigstad
Get the Longreads Weekly Email