D. Matthew Urban

@breathinghead

weird fiction person • TX → NY • stories here and there • SHAKY PICTURES OF VANISHED FACES out now from Cursed Morsels Press! • he/him

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D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· 28d

Almost forgot to wish everyone a happy Bastille Day! Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira, / L'égalité partout régnera

A 1793 etching entitled Hell Broke Loose, or, The Murder of Louis. It shows Louis XVI being executed by guillotine on a scaffold surrounded by soldiers while devils fly around playing drums and horns and singing the Revolutionary anthem "Ça Ira."

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Jun 12

An edited version of the "two cakes" meme. In the first panel, Prometheus contemplates two plates, one with a small liver and one with a large liver; he says, "aw man yesterday's liver is way better than today's." In the second panel, the eagle approaches the same two plates with a knife and fork, saying "HOLY SHIT! TWO LIVERS!"

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Jun 2

East River

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· May 23

Highly choice epigraphs for this story in Ananda Lima’s excellent Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil

Epigraphs of “Tropicália” by Ananda Lima:

“I’m only interested in what is not
mine.” - Oswald de Andrade, The Cannibalist Manifesto, 1928

“Fred, what we want is, I think, what everyone wants, and what you and your viewers have—civilization … We want to be civilized.” - Brain Gremlin, Gremlins II: The New Batch, 1990

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· May 20

Happy World Bee Day (art by Kathy Lam aka Dawning Crow)

A circular drawing of a fuzzy bee with a white cat clinging to its back

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· May 15

Spotted in the window of Dog Eared Books in San Francisco: a copy of The Nightmare Box signed by @cynthiasaysboo.bsky.social! Excellent collection, recommended to horror readers in the Bay Area and beyond

A copy of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories by Cynthia Gómez in a bookstore window, with a label that says “Signed by the author!”

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· May 11

merfolk on the beach at Drakes Bay

a beach strewn with molting elephant seals, waves breaking to the left, rocky and grassy slopes in the background

an elephant seal lying in the sand with its back to the camera, more seals lounging in the background

an elephant seal relaxing near the water, frothy waves and a wading seagull farther back

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· May 5

Cat outside our Airbnb giving me The Stare

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· May 2

Excellent book btw, recommended to enjoyers of literary eeriness and quiet oceanic dread/awe

Book cover of Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro, translated from the French by Eve Hill-Agnus. The cover image shows a cutaway view of the ocean from surface to floor, a container ship on the surface dwarfed by blue depths

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Apr 9

cherry blossoms in peak bloom at Branch Brook Park, Newark

White cherry blossoms on dark branches against a blue sky

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Apr 1

Happy April Fool’s Day from the April fool herself

A tabby cat sticking her head out from under the flap of a cardboard box lying on its side

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Mar 22

Birthday book haul acquired in a multi-store frenzy

A stack of paperbacks:
* Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
* Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette
* Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov
* The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay
* Human Sacrifices by María Fernanda Ampuero
* Panics by Barbara Molinard

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Mar 22

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Mar 18

gizmos and contraptions at the Calder Gardens in Philadelphia

a mobile of black sections connected by wires hanging from a white ceiling

a mobile of black and red sections hanging against an off-white wall

a vaguely insectile or clock-like assemblage of black and red sections hanging on an off-white wall

a construction of red, white and black spheres on a black frame standing in a concrete alcove

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Feb 28

Capture and Burning of Washington, D.C. in 1814 (wood engraving, 1876)

Wood engraving of the capture and burning of Washington, D.C. by the British in 1814. Soldiers gather in the foreground while a classical-style building burns in the background, clouds of smoke rolling through the sky.

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Dec 29

camouflage

a tabby cat, medium gray with dark gray stripes and hints of light brown, curled up on a white couch with a gray blanket and a beige blanket

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Dec 28

Have you considered that your kid may be some kind of vegetation deity?

painted interior of a 6th-century BCE Greek vase depicting the god Dionysus sailing through a sea full of dolphins on a ship with grape vines growing from the mast

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Dec 20

It’s true! Check out FCQ #8 for gnawing tales of weird and cosmic horror, plus cover art that will send a chill up your spine 🥶😱

Cover art for Fraidy Cat Quarterly Volume 8: Gnaw. Image of a snowy, shadowy forest, two eyes glowing from the darkness

Pages Found Under a Child’s Bed
D. Matthew Urban

Monday
It’s hard to write today. I found Daddy dead in the kitchen this morning. I feel all sick like my belly’s full of ice and worms. It feels like when I wake up at night and hear the folks moaning outside, only it’s even worse because Daddy always comes and yells hush out my window to make the folks go back under the lake where they came from, but he can’t come now.

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Dec 13

Before man was, SantaCon waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

Young people in Christmas/Santa-related garb walking down a street in the East Village

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 22

Spotted in Ridgewood on the way to the NYC Indie Horror Book Fair: a van full of skinned carcasses. Auspicious!

A white van parked at the curb of a city street. The van’s open back doors show a cargo space full of skinned animal carcasses, perhaps goats or sheep

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 17

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy. Guess I'm an anprim now. Could be worse!

A four-panel cartoon captioned "My plans for the next 6 months."
First panel. A woman in an office surrounded by ringing phones and work-related demands
Second panel. The woman putting on a bear suit
Third panel. The bear-suited woman walking through leafless woods toward a cave
Fourth panel. The bear-suited woman hibernating in the cave alongside two bears

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 16

Fry from Futurama brandishing a fistful of money, his expression one of grim determination

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 12

A good time was had by all

Five weird horror writers sitting in a row in the children’s section of a bookstore

Five weird horror writers facing an audience of spectators in the children’s section of a bookstore

Copies of Shaky Pictures of Vanished Faces by D. Matthew Urban and Root Rot by Saskia Nislow displayed on a table

Snacks consisting of chocolate pudding, crumbled cookies, gummy worms and Milanos, arranged to look like graves

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 9

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday! Come on down to Book Culture LIC for Indie Horror Night. A fun time for all, featuring readings, a discussion/Q&A and book signing. There may also be 🍪cookies🍪

Join us for Indie Horror Night, featuring D. Matthew Urban, OF Cieri, Saskia Nislow, LC von Hessen, and Sasha Ravitch! When: 7pm on Tuesday November 11. Where: Book Culture LIC, 26-09 Jackson Ave., Long Island City, NY 11101

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 8

If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it.

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 5

nachos of celebration

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Nov 5

Mamdani elected...Cheney dead...

Frame from The Simpsons S4E10: a newscaster reading from a stack of pages, "Coming up next, an hour-long episode of Mama's Family."

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Oct 13

Well, after three days of fun and games at VoidCon, it’s back to the grind of my real job: human pedestal

Selfie of me stooped forward looking into the camera while a tabby cat with alert expression and motion-blurred tail perches on my back

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Oct 12

Final celebrity sighting in Gettysburg: stopped to look at this memorial for two Marines who crashed their plane in 1922 during a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge(?!), and who should I meet but THE Cool Koala

A sign in Gettysburg, PA labeled “The Last Line-of-Duty Deaths on Gettysburg Battlefield,” commemorating two Marines who died in a plane crash during a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge in 1922. On the ground next to the sign lies a colorful object, which closer inspection proves to be none other than…

Cool Koala! A brown stuffed koala with a jaunty smile, four different-colored paws (blue, orange, purple and yellow), and the words “COOL Koala” written in a white patch on its chest

D. Matthew Urban@breathinghead· Oct 12

Welcome to GARA, human traveler. Would it please you to enjoy our recreation park?