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MSTB Ate My Friend: An Aldrich Horror Novella
A UCI physics student infected by a cosmic parasite gets hungry.
MSTB ATE MY FRIEND: An Aldrich Horror.
A sapphic dark academia cosmic parasite horror comedy novella, 11k words.
HELEN HERNANDEZ. An undergraduate physics student set for grad school- until her friend, Emmy Yuasa, goes missing. Dragged away by the eldritch horror beneath Aldrich. Zot, zot, zot. The strings are starving.
"
I sat alone in Aldrich Park. Griffiths Electrodynamics in one hand. A cryptozoologist's Field Guide to Cryptids in the other. Black painted nails and a big bottle of alcohol between my knees. Laughing to myself in the shade of a billowy tree as mud mucked my slacks...
"
"
The answer was obvious. Trivial even. This was something different. Something inconceivable. Something confined to the grounds of the University of California, Irvine. And to stop it I had to kill the thing inside the walls of MSTB.
"
Content warnings include swearing, alcohol, death, violence, blood, gore, body horror, psychological horror, cannibalism, cults, and parasitic infection.
MSTB ATE MY FRIEND: An Aldrich Horror.
A sapphic dark academia cosmic parasite horror comedy novella, 11k words.
HELEN HERNANDEZ. An undergraduate physics student set for grad school- until her friend, Emmy Yuasa, goes missing. Dragged away by the eldritch horror beneath Aldrich. Zot, zot, zot. The strings are starving.
"
I sat alone in Aldrich Park. Griffiths Electrodynamics in one hand. A cryptozoologist's Field Guide to Cryptids in the other. Black painted nails and a big bottle of alcohol between my knees. Laughing to myself in the shade of a billowy tree as mud mucked my slacks...
"
"
The answer was obvious. Trivial even. This was something different. Something inconceivable. Something confined to the grounds of the University of California, Irvine. And to stop it I had to kill the thing inside the walls of MSTB.
"
Content warnings include swearing, alcohol, death, violence, blood, gore, body horror, psychological horror, cannibalism, cults, and parasitic infection.
91 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 29, 2025
9 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 1, 2025
(review previously posted on Tumblr)
Helen Hernandez and Emmy Yuasa are two average students at UCI (University of Irvine, in California), until the day a writhing mass of giant strings explode through the floor and drag Emmy away, like some kind of demonic entity reaching out from hell to claim a soul of the damned. No one believes Helen when she says what happens, and things only escalate from there when Emmy suddenly returns, incredibly different and seeming to have an intense craving for human flesh. Helen has to race against time to kill the mysterious interdimensional being that possessed Emmy...before it overwhelms her first.
This was a pleasantly short novella, easy to finish in one sitting, but honestly, I wished it was longer. I wanted more of Emmy, Helen, and the strange parallel world they inhabit, and I mean that as a serious compliment. Helen's voice is distinct and full of lovely lines that convey the depths of her growing romantic love for Emmy, and the way that she thought and talked definitely felt natural (given the circumstances). It's hard to make a character sound like they could be a regular person, but MTSB Ate My Friend pulled it off (again, I mean that as a compliment). The setting also felt relatively natural- I've never been to UCI, but I think this work really conveyed the energy of the place (well, the parts about the campus and not the parts about the interdimensional entity). There was a nice balance between horror and slice-of-life moments.
Overall, I recommend MTSB Ate My Friend for anybody with a connection to UCI, anyone who wants a fun story about college students in general, and fans of sapphic romance with plenty of monsters involved.
Helen Hernandez and Emmy Yuasa are two average students at UCI (University of Irvine, in California), until the day a writhing mass of giant strings explode through the floor and drag Emmy away, like some kind of demonic entity reaching out from hell to claim a soul of the damned. No one believes Helen when she says what happens, and things only escalate from there when Emmy suddenly returns, incredibly different and seeming to have an intense craving for human flesh. Helen has to race against time to kill the mysterious interdimensional being that possessed Emmy...before it overwhelms her first.
This was a pleasantly short novella, easy to finish in one sitting, but honestly, I wished it was longer. I wanted more of Emmy, Helen, and the strange parallel world they inhabit, and I mean that as a serious compliment. Helen's voice is distinct and full of lovely lines that convey the depths of her growing romantic love for Emmy, and the way that she thought and talked definitely felt natural (given the circumstances). It's hard to make a character sound like they could be a regular person, but MTSB Ate My Friend pulled it off (again, I mean that as a compliment). The setting also felt relatively natural- I've never been to UCI, but I think this work really conveyed the energy of the place (well, the parts about the campus and not the parts about the interdimensional entity). There was a nice balance between horror and slice-of-life moments.
Overall, I recommend MTSB Ate My Friend for anybody with a connection to UCI, anyone who wants a fun story about college students in general, and fans of sapphic romance with plenty of monsters involved.
Displaying 1 of 1 review