May 13, 2025, 9:30am
According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the third year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free* to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend:
Sam Rebelein, “We Never Went Away, We Just Hid Better”
I love hearing short stories read aloud, particularly spooky ones. Something about the Are You Afraid of the Dark? campfire-story thing has always resonated with me, from my younger days well into my adult life. So I was particularly jazzed when Sam Rebelein read this story aloud at the inaugural installment of the monthly reading series I started at Rough Draft in Kingston—not least of all because it isn’t collected in his new book, so it felt like a real thrilling only-here, only-now kind of moment.
Lucky for all of you, the story is available online and it is guaranteed to put a shiver down your spine. Sam poses a very good question here—why are we so freaked out by the Uncanny Valley?—and gets at an answer by way of a classic bad-date story, perfectly built to snap closed like a beautiful trap.
The story begins:
You know about the uncanny valley?” he asks.
It’s one of those questions where your answer doesn’t matter, he’s going to explain it to you anyway. He’s already mansplained a number of things to you tonight, including the end of Inception, which is the reddest of flags, as far as things men can mansplain go. But he did make a good case for how Leonardo was in a dream the entire time, and it actually did make you want to rewatch the movie for the first time since 2010, in spite of yourself.
Still, there’s another, more confident you out there somewhere. She went home alone after this Hinge date. She got a Sprite and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Funyuns from the bodega, and she’s watching You at home at this very moment. She already has her bra off and she’s taken a way-too-big hit off her pen. It’s not too late to be her, you know. The bodega is open 24/7.
Read it here.
*If you hit a paywall, we recommend trying with a different/private/incognito browser (but listen, you didn’t hear it from us).