This past Thanksgiving, I published a short story called Blood Frequency. It’s an LGBTQ YA horror scifi story that deals with family dynamics. I’ll include a blurb below, and then follow it up with an excerpt from the story.

Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments, and share this excerpt with someone you think might like it. If you like want to keep reading, you can pick up the ebook in several places (including libaries) — I’ll include links below the excerpt.

About Blood Frequency

Horror and humor collide as high schooler Mindy meets her father for the first time amidst an otherworldly encounter in rural Missouri. It’s blood ties, failures in communication, and the dangers of growing up gay in the 90s.

It’s 1997, and in the rural town of Rolla, Missouri, blood ties will be explored amidst the backdrop of an alien encounter. Mindy is a teenager who is just meeting her father, Leonard, for the first time. Meanwhile, her relationship with her mother is strained as she remains closeted about her homosexuality around her, but will meeting Leonard help bring family cohesion? Will Mindy be able to forgive Leonard for abandoning her before a creature from another world comes knocking on the back door?

Rated PG-13: This story contains some violence, some curse words, and homophobia.

Copyright notice

Copyright © 2025 by Nat Weaver.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) or used in the training of AI, for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. For permission requests, write to Nat Weaver, with subject “Blood Frequency” at the following email address: nat@weaver.wtf.

Blood Frequency (excerpt)

dedication

For Bobby.

one

Rolla, Missouri, Summer of 1997.

The police radio cracked and hissed as Phelps County Sheriff Bob Grey turned left off Highway 72 and onto State Route F at half past ten at night. He picked up his radio and pressed down the Push-To-Talk button and spoke into the receiver, “Dispatch, did you say something?”

“Negative.” A female voice said back.

“I’m heading out F to check on disturbance,” Bob said back, “I’ll radio in when I get there. Keep my coffee warm, Beth.”

Bob had been serving in uniform for the Phelps County Sheriff’s Office since he’d returned home from the Korean War. He was just a few years away from retirement and all the fishing he could manage at the Lake of the Ozarks with his wife, Mary. He scratched his white beard, shook his hair, and dandruff fell from his hair which had been receding since before it lost its color. A drizzle of rain started to tap on his windshield as he drove the rolling hills and curves of State Route F, located just outside of Rolla. He turned on his windshield wipers, and they made a dragging sound as there wasn’t enough rain to wet the windshield. He turned them off.

They had received a call from Mark Wheaten, a dairy farmer, reporting lights and something spherical hovering over his fields. He had said something about a large crashing sound, and then the lights were gone.

The radio screeched loud and long.

“Jeez Louise!” Bob yelled. He picked up the radio receiver and called back to Beth. “That you, Beth?” Crackling. “Beth?” More crackling came through the radio speaker along with strange tapping sounds that were rhythmic. “Beth, are you hearing these sounds?” The tapping sounds got louder and more pronounced and were joined by scratching sounds that caused Bob’s ears to vibrate and ring. It sounded as if Beth took her fingernails across the radio receiver.

He turned on his hazard lights and pulled off onto a side road in the dark. The rain picked up and was cascading over his windshield. All he could see was a blurry patch of road and ditch lit by his headlights.

“Can anyone read me on this darn thing?” Bob asked into the receiver.

The tapping sound slowly increased in volume and intensity, his ears ringing from the sounds bouncing around in his patrol car like tennis balls. In a moment of irritation from the painful noise, he slammed the receiver against the radio and a loud screech of feedback ripped through the blackness. He covered his ears and thrust his head back against the headrest.

That’s when he saw the blurry figure standing in the glow of the headlights.

two

The Next Morning.

Fucking Pamela.

Mindy’s mom could never know that was how she and her friends referred to her at school and online in their ICQ chats. Mindy had stopped calling her Mom when she was eleven. It was a small sign of rebellion she could show without fighting with her. She had never meant to keep it up, but she had been calling her Pamela to her face for three years. Pamela to her daughter and Fucking Pamela to her daughter’s friends. She could never know.

“This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, Pamela.” Mindy said as she fiddled with her headphones cord in the passenger seat of her mom’s Ford Escort. “And you’ve done some pretty dumb things.”

Pamela was driving with her hands tightly gripped at ten and two on the steering wheel. This was her way after a near accident when Mindy was just a toddler. Mindy couldn’t even remember the near death experience her mom claimed it was.

“It’s high time you met your father,” Pamela said. “Don’t you want to meet your father?”

“No.” Mindy said. “And let’s not pretend this is about me meeting my dad, it’s about you going to Vegas with your new husband, Dick.”

Pamela groaned. “Stop calling him Dick.”

“He said he prefers being called Dick.”

“I know that, Mindy,” Pamela took one hand off the wheel to point a finger in her face. “But I also know that you only call him that to be rude.” She remembered the steering wheel, her eyes popped open wide, and she grabbed two o’clock again. “This isn’t just about our honeymoon. You deserve to meet your father. I’m doing you a favor and this is how you thank me? You’re so ungrateful. And after all I’ve had to sacrifice for you. I was only eighteen—”

“Alright, alright!” Mindy cut her familiar tale of woe off. She turned her cassette tape over in her Walkman and hit play on it. She pulled the headphones over her ears and looked out the window at the trees whizzing by in a blur. She heard Pamela talking over her headphones, so she turned the volume up until the sounds of Everclear drowned out Fucking Pamela.

As they drove past County Road 4010, Mindy spotted Sheriff Grey’s patrol car parked on the side of the road next to an old two-story white house that she used to go to for piano lessons. Grey’s windshield was bashed in and there were numerous officers standing around the vehicle looking inside it. She thought it must have been an accident, but she didn’t see a second car.

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To continue reading Blood Frequency, you can buy the ebook directly from me or from Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play Books, and Kobo and Kobo Plus (free with subscription). You can also request it in your library’s app.