It’s late October and in my estimation it’s the best time of year. It’s time to enjoy the simple things, heated beverages, apples; embrace your basic bitch self and go for pumpkin-spiced everything! Candles, drinks, snacks, shirts, underwear – the more pumpkins the better! Tis the time of year to marvel at colors, to wonder at the lives of our ancestors, and to be thankful for modernity. It’s the time when you slap your forehead and go ‘whoa, where did the summer go!’

This is the time of year to break out your sweaters, to enjoy a blustery, wet day only made better by the fact that you end that day by going home. Homes are cozier this time of year. Sitting on the couch all but requires a blanket to snuggle into.

And what better activity to do while you’re snuggled up than read a spooky book or some stories. Spooky, not horrifying. So no news, no updates on the spray tanned colostomy bag inhabiting the Oval Office. Just some good old fashioned scary stories to make you happy that you live indoors and your life is largely void of witches and zombies. So, what to read?

John Langan should be on that list. The book of stories The Wide Carnivorous Sky has some seriously scary tales. The title story among them. This book includes a zombie-esque retelling of Our Town and Mother of Stone, a Headless Horseman tale that you will think about for years (as I have). His novel The Fisherman is cosmically terrifying. You will never look at the woods nor the ocean’s horizon the same way again. His take on the wendigo will make you never trust another human being again – especially one who says they’re hungry.  

Mexican author Mariana Enriquez is another scary tale writer who should be on your October list. I have read some random stories, but her collection Things We Lost in the Fire is very worthwhile. Based in Buenos Aires, a lot of her stories are claustrophobic with elements that are not even the main concern. Soldiers, police officers, rundown cities inhabit her stories like spiders and sea serpents. Her stories are clouded with a sense of unease and doom; it’s as if even if the story works out in some way (they don’t) things still won’t be right. Get it.

After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones should be on your list. Warning: once you get started with Graham Jones, you won’t stop. After The People Lights, get into his Indian Lake trilogy and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. Lonegan’s Luck is maybe the greatest zombie story I’ve ever read.

If you like horror short stories, add anything edited by Ellen Datlow to your October list. There are so many ‘best horror’ collections out there, but by far the most solid and convincing are ones edited by Ellen Datlow. If I ever meet her, I am going to thank her for the most enjoyable 6,000 hours of my life.

This is the time of year to enjoy spooking yourself out. These are some that have given me the shivers, the spooks, the creeps, and good case of the look over my shoulders (into the wall behind me, because you are never safe when it comes to scary stories). Feel free to read these. I’d love some feedback if you’re game and if you’d like to leave your own spooky story recommendations in the comments, I would be so appreciative that I wouldn’t even sell you out to a wendigo. Unless it was you or me, in which case, sayonara!

It’s a Friday afternoon and I’m reading on my couch. I’ve come across a random account of a clash between some cowboys and a band of Cheyenne in 1865. Its matter-of-fact descriptions of ambush and violence are so terrifying that even now – on a couch in a locked flat in a European capital 160 years later – I still feel edgy and cast looks behind me into my recently painted wall.  

I hear the telltale signs of Burke getting the dog ready for a walk. But today she has big plans (oh, it’s not Indian ambush big, but big for 21^st century Prague). She is bringing the dog out and heading to a café to read some study materials for a course she’s doing. I admire it; and that is where my emotional involvement in this action ends, because I don’t have to go anywhere and I don’t have to do anything. She steps out with the dog and I snuggle into the couch and read about other people’s misery. Bliss.

This bliss ends about three minutes later when I hear the door unlock and Burke enter the apartment. The dog’s little shih tzu feet tip-tap the floor. Something has happened. I sit up.

“She shit all over herself,” says Burke, answering the question that my silence has asked.

“Oh man.”

A birthday only tends to come around once a year or so. Twice, perhaps, depending on your spiritual bend. More, I suppose, if you’re a grifter who travels a lot or who has a several separate groups of friends who never talk to each other directly. It’s not a bad idea if you want to score on gifts or free drinks, but this level of lying in permanence would drive me to drink – and not in a healthy way.

In the ** years I have spent on the planet as a cognizant human being, I have noticed that people deal with their birthdays in very different ways. There are those who jealously guard the occasion as if it’s a deposit of gold or the location of a store in Prague that has good peanut butter. To address these guys’ birthdays is seen as an insult of high magnitude. Others come in the opposite with a lot of look at me look at me look at me. One girl on Facebook put out a reminder a week before: You guys, it’s my birthday week!

To be honest, this sort of crave for attention draw raises both of my eyebrows. But I lower them quickly. When it comes to your birthday – the one day a year where you are special – then all is game and no holds shall be barred.

I tend to keep my birthdays lowkey. I’d say I don’t like a lot of fanfare, but the truth is, I have trouble remembering names and, should I partake in the whiskey too much, events or ways home. A small shindig means fewer people to apologize to the next day for social faux-pas – if it’s even necessary. This is what I like: a few people who know what they are getting into, who are old enough not to care, who will drink as much as me, and just as likely forget what it is I might be apologizing for. These are my people.

No, if I have a birthday tendency, it’s the self-allowance. It’s the ‘go ahead! It’s your birthday!’  attitude. When I was younger and had more time, better balance, fewer responsibilities, and no ability for good judgment, this attitude would be applied to drinking. Start at noon? Why not! And so days started earlier and ended later. (read: I also had stamina). For a decade or two, my birthdays ended the following morning and often with a double-stacked hangover. Given the right circumstances, it started up again for day two. And in something like a deranged Easter celebration, it might even creep into day three. Why not? It’s my birthday. (i.e. was / three days ago).

This is no longer the case. Sure, there’s a bit of partying and tippling. But it’s mostly contained to a night with friends and the next morning is usually filled with ibuprofen and liquid IV and lots of television. No, now my relaxed birthday attitude is applied to food, relaxation, and the ability to completely avoid the world. You want another chocolate? Sure you can! It’s your birthday! Have three! Read that book. OK! Hey, what’s three chocolates without a fourth!? Maybe I’ll order food to go with my book. This is great. My phone’s ringing. Oh well, I’m reading.

It was glorious.

Were my 25-year-old-self to witness my spectacular birthday plans, he would cry. He would also be drunk, so crying would come easier to him. What a loser, he might exclaim. Then he’d go for a three-day bender that would mess his head up for a month.

Oh, I know it’s an old story: person grows up. But it’s one that feels quite nice to the grown-up. There’s a quiet joy in knowing deep within yourself that you derive joy from simpler things than you used to. While I was younger, a night had to be filled with excitement and people. I was out so often that my apartment forgot what I looked like. Nowadays, excitement is cleaning the flat before bed, resting on the couch after a long day of work and feeling content. It may sound boring – and maybe it is – but it’s absolutely perfect. Especially if you can eat naughty food along with this perfection.