Occupied / Vacant

Dragana Drakulić is going to shut an operation down. In the world of scummy, sleazy motels, actions have consequences- that's usually how people end up there in the first place. If you can drown out the dripping ceiling, the knocking radiator, and the squeaking of mice, you might hear a racing heart kept beating only by a thirst for revenge! Dragana is pissed at some hootin' and hollerin' scuzz enthusiasts; to her their continued casual judgment is a stain on humanity as unspeakable as some of the ones you might find on these never-washed mattresses. Matthew Atkinson brings you a grimy, sweaty, vicious SHORT STORY from his collection, Final First. "Occupied / Vacant" will check into the biggest room in your mind and not leave till everything rots. FINAL FIRST, the debut short story collection from Matthew Atkinson, will take you across several different genres where you'll laugh, shudder, get shot, play some super high-stakes children's games, and get beaten senseless! FINAL FIRST offers slow-burning dramas either horror-adjacent (where cosmic mystery meets family drama in "Shard") or not (lighthearted adulting non-epic "Eggs in Stainless Steel") or WTF (the spiritual whiplash of "Glue for the Goose"). FINAL FIRST will stab you over and over with the emotional pain of growing up (the bitter epistolary grief of "Spread"; the game in "Actuarial Life Table" that gets too real) or the physical pain (the senseless and patently adolescent mayhem of "Fifteen Minutes Later"). FINAL FIRST will unnerve you with realism (the sleazy hotel hostage situation of "Occupied / Vacant"), definite un-realism (the bad dream and beyond of "Hypnopomp"), an uncertain amount of realism (the world-changing kickball game of "Atrous Orb", the aftermath of a horrible event that might come up in a later collection (the Bechdel test-acing "The Q-Word") Although a number of these stories prominently feature children... warning: not for kids! Arguably not for adults! Just like life itself. There's no kiss or kill like the first... let this collection be your FINAL FIRST.