Blurb：
A chilling coming-of-age horror story where Sadie Hollis learns the brutal philosophy of her father, Jedediah Hollis: "The sweetest meat is carved from the deepest terror." Set in the isolated, grim town of Black Briar Hollow, this narrative explores how terror becomes a tool for survival. Witness Sadie's harrowing journey as the arrival of the clean, unnatural Mr. Frye shatters her world, leading to the brutal assault of her mother, Marlena, and Jed's savage retaliation. This is a story of dark legacies, unforgiving violence, and the grim lessons taught within the rotting walls of the Hollis home. Discover why The Stillborn Feast is a whispered delicacy and how fear tenderizes everything in its path.Content：
§PROLOGUEMy father taught me that the sweetest meat is carved from the deepest terror.
He told me this on my seventh birthday, not with a cake and candles, but with a pregnant ewe tied to the fence post behind our rotting barn.
Its eyes were wide, milky with fear, reflecting the bruised twilight sky of Black Briar Hollow.
Jedediah Hollis, my father, knelt beside me in the mud, the smell of cheap whiskey and blood clinging to him like a second skin.
He held his meat cleaver, the one with the dark-stained wooden handle, but he wasn’t looking at the sheep.
He was looking at me.
“You see, Sadie,” he rasped, his voice a gravel road. “An animal that dies easy, its meat is tough. Full of fight. But one that dies in pure, soul-shattering fright…”
He grinned, a broken constellation of yellowed teeth.
“...its muscles turn to jelly. The fear tenderizes it from the inside out. Makes it melt in your mouth.”
He called it The Stillborn Feast.
A delicacy whispered about in the darkest corners of the Hollow, a dish he was famous for.
I didn’t understand then.
I just saw the ewe’s swollen belly, the frantic rise and fall of its sides.
And I felt the cold dread that was the true seasoning of every meal in our house.
My father taught me many things.
But the most important lesson I ever learned was this: terror is a tool.
And I was a very good student.
§01
The new teacher, Mr. Frye, was as out of place in Black Briar Hollow as a diamond in a coal mine.
He was clean.
That was the first thing you noticed.
His shirts were pressed, his face was smooth, and he didn’t have the permanent layer of grime under his fingernails that marked the rest of the men in town.
The women of the Hollow, the ones who gathered at the town’s single dusty grocery store, didn't trust him.
“Ain’t natural,” they’d mutter over bags of flour and withered potatoes. “A man that pretty, he’s either a fool or a predator.”
I found their judgment strange. Mr. Frye had a nose and two eyes, just like everyone else. What made him unnatural?
Then, one afternoon, Mr. Frye decided to prove them right.
He chose my mother, Marlena, to be his proof.
He caught her by the old cornfield behind our property, where the stalks stood like skeletal sentinels.
I saw it from my bedroom window.
He dragged her into the rustling maze, his clean hand clamped over her mouth.
When she stumbled out later, the pretty, unnatural man was gone.
My mother’s hair was a wild nest.
Her face was a roadmap of tears.
And a dark stain, the color of a dying rose, was spreading down the thigh of her worn jeans.
§02
When Jed found out, his neck swelled with a rage that seemed to suck the air out of our small, suffocating house.
But he didn't go after Mr. Frye.
He went after my mother.
He hit her so hard she flew across the kitchen, crashing into the flimsy table where we ate our silent, fearful meals.
I screamed and threw myself over her body, a useless shield. "Dad, don't! It wasn't her fault! Mr. Frye forced her!"
A boot slammed into my back, stealing my breath. "Out of all the women in this damn town, why her?" he roared, his voice thick with whiskey. "She must've given him a look. A sign."
He yanked me up by the collar and tossed me aside like a bundle of rags.
Then he turned back to my mother, and the real storm began.
He used his fists, his boots, the heavy buckle of his belt.
Her screams started as shrieks, then faded to whimpers, and finally, to nothing at all.
When he was done, he dragged her out of the house by one leg, her body leaving a pathetic trail in the dirt.
He hauled her towards Gallows Hill, the place where the Hollow dumped its unwanted things.
Spring had barely touched the mountains, and the nights were still cold enough to kill.
If she stayed out there, in her thin clothes... she would die.
I tried to plead with him, my words choked with sobs. He slapped me, a sharp crack that echoed in the sudden silence.
"Useless," he spat, his breath a foul cloud. "She’s tainted goods. I’ll get you a new mom. A clean one."
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