Ghost Bread

by Camilla Grudova

When you believe a better life waits for you beyond death, the perfect place to die is a difficult thing to find.

Content warning: this story contains self-harm and disordered eating.

Run time: 23 minutes

"Ghost Bread" is one of 27 short horror stories in Nightfire's audio anthology.

Come Join Us by the Fire Season 2 is the second installment of Nightfire's audio-only horror anthology, featuring a wide collection of short stories from emerging voices in the horror genre as well as longtime fan favorites. The collection showcases the breadth of talent writing in the horror genre today, with contributions from a wide range of genre luminaries including Laird Barron, Indrapramit Das, Shaun Hamill, Daniel M. Lavery, Matthew Lyons, T. Kingfisher, Seanan McGuire, Nibedita Sen, and Nightfire’s own Cassandra Khaw and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

The full Table of Contents is as follows:
Cassandra Khaw- "Some Breakable Things"
Sarah Langan- "The Changeling"
Shaun Hamill- "Music of the Abyss"
Caitlín R. Kiernan- "Standing Water"
Tade Thompson- "Bone"
T. Kingfisher- "Origin Story"
Silvia Moreno-Garcia- "The Sound of Footsteps"
Laird Barron- "Jōren Falls"
Damien Angelica Walters- "Tooth, Tongue, and Claw"
Sunny Moraine- "If Living is Seeing I'm Holding My Breath"
Matthew Lyons- "Blood Daughter"
Jessica Guess- "Mama Tulu"
Daniel M. Lavery- "Prodigal Son"
Seanan McGuire- "Emergency Landing"
Indrapramit Das - "You Will Survive This Night"
‘Pemi Aguda- "Things Boys Do"
Kelly Link- "The Specialist's Hat"
Clay McLeod Chapman- "The Fireplace"
Nibedita Sen- "Pigeons"
Camilla Grudova- "Ghost Bread"
Catherynne M. Valente- "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles"
Brian Evenson- "The Cabin"
Maria Dahvana Headley- "The Krakatoan"
Craig Laurance Gidney- "Spyder Threads"
Mariana Enriquez- "Things We Lost in the Fire"
Gabino Iglesias- "The Song of the Lady Rose"
Nick Antosca- "The Quiet Boy"

Genres: Horror, Audiobook

1 pages, Audiobook

Published October 15, 2020

About the author

Camilla Grudova lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She holds a degree in art history and German from McGill University, Montreal. Her fiction has appeared in the White Review and Granta.

Grudova originally posted stories on her Tumblr blog before being spotted by an editor from The White Review.

Her story, "Waxy" (Granta 136), was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for short fiction and won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novelette.

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

People in the country of M are so repressed, they often try to commit suicide. If they survive their attempt, the government makes their life a living, suffering hell. But if they succeed, then their family is punished. So there is a business of getting people out on visas so they can go to a new country, and instead end their life there. The story follows one such young woman, the care with which she goes about ensuring that her ghost will have everything she could possibly need when she finally ends it. I found it a very interesting, methodical take on this sort of…suicide tourism, and the underlying political and social repressions that drove the people of the country to do it. Definitely provides food for thought.

[Ary Rosario · Rating 1 out of 5]

Literally just listened to this to get to 55 books.

[Cristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story so much. I listened to it again immediately after my first listen. It's a tale of a town which people are committing suicide and if they fail their life is hell. If they succeeded their family's life is hell. Also discussion of how after you die, you're still hungry for food: disordered eating topic.

[Hannah Rokhsaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was everything it said it was. A haunting short story. I enjoyed it!

[lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5! definitely an interesting idea and actually really appreciated that the book had warnings, so i’m rounding it up to 3 for goodreads! just thought the substance was lacking a bit, with being such a short tale it is definitely hard to flesh out a lot of ideas that they were going for, but still rather interesting!

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is not a lot to this story, except the telling of the feelings of how it is to waste away from a disorder of any kind. You can easily replace the eating disorder in this book with any disorder and it would essentially tell the same story. Yes, I say that as someone who does suffer from quite a few disorders.

[Lu Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one was NOT my cup of tea. I almost lost my appetite listening to this short story on my way home from work!

[Maggie W · Rating 2 out of 5]

An odd book. I'm not sure I completely understand it.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark, atmospheric, unsettling. Though less is often more, and this story works just fine at its current length, there's enough conceptual material here to fill a short novel. There is a fair bit of body horror here; even though I'm a big baby when it comes to that, this was within my limit.