I am Scott Savino. This is my confession.
I am a teller of stories, a weaver of worlds where horror, dark fantasy, the uncanny, science fiction, and the bizarre are all engaged in a polyamorous entanglement-–-lovers intertwined in an orgy that once beheld can only be described with phrases such as “profoundly unsettling,” or “exceedingly strange.”
My work strides the murky boundaries between nightmare and reality, between the grotesque and the beautiful, between humor and unease that finds its way beneath your skin: seeping deep into you to nestle itself inside somewhere, somewhere near your heart. I have always believed that horror should do more than simply frighten-–-it should haunt and disturb. It should stay with you, whispering in your ear long after the final word is spoken.
Much of what I write is concerned with identity, transformation, and the things that lurk just beyond the veil of ordinary. I have always been drawn to the uncanny; the idea that what we know of the world is fragile and thin-–-that reality is a house with too many locked doors, and sometimes, something knocks from the other side of one that wasn’t there the day before. Being a gay writer means I have often found myself standing at the threshold of things, looking in from the outside, but it also means that I write from a place of defiance. Horror belongs to all of us, and I intend to carve out space for those voices that have been kept to the shadows for too long.
My work has found its way into dark corners of the internet, whispered through speakers and earphones by those who tell stories well-––The NoSleep Podcast, Creepy, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, and the voices of narrators like MrCreepypasta, Dr. Creepen, and Otis Jiry, to name a few. My words have been bound in books and anthologies, over 22 of my short stories finding homes in 18 collections published by those who saw something in them-–-found the words I’d written to be things worth keeping.
My catalog is over 100 stories long, and still, the hunger does not fade. There is always something left to be said. Something clawing at the edges of thought, demanding to be given form. Sometimes something deeply frightening, sometimes something laughable, but always something profoundly weird put into words strangely spoken. My stories are not just about fear, but about loss, empathy, and the inescapable strangeness of being alive at all. They are invitations-–-to step outside yourself, to feel something new, to glimpse the things that linger at the periphery or edges of our ability to understand them.
Perhaps you have heard other things about me?
You may have heard that I have recently begun my own cult gathering of completely normal people, a group known only as the Voidspire Consortium. That I have taken the title of Hierophant and now lead my followers-–-stable, rational individuals, all of them-–-down the path toward ultimate destruction happiness, joy, and self-realization.
All of these are baseless rumors and completely untrue.
We do not abide by the ancient text known as the Esoteric Doctrine of Penumbra. The existence of this supposed ancient text penned in the 14th century by Friar Gregorius Vaunt has never been proven to actually exist. We therefore have not read it. Ever. We do not indoctrinate ourselves to such a text which supposedly may exist probably, nor do we spend our waking hours neither speaking in endless homilies of the dangers we are charged with keeping at bay, making sacrificial offerings to ensure your safety-–-the continued existence of humanity-–-nor the singing of forgotten prayers in lost and ancient tongues. There is no Great Serpent, Varoth, and it does not slither unseen, coiled and endlessly dreaming thanks to and because of our devotions as its servants, ensuring it remains unawake and dormant-–-the exact way it has remained for centuries beneath the restless, shifting sands of Florida’s gulf coast. Should you ever hear whispers saying otherwise, should a voice find its way into your ear murmuring tales of strange gatherings beneath flickering gaslights in underground sacrificial chambers, of robed figures and voices raised in wordless song, of something shifting, just beneath the surface of things…
Know that these are vicious, slanderous lies and we are simply the victims of defamation-–-and because all of this is profoundly untrue, no, you may not join us. Please: should such disgusting and heretical utterances ever reach you, I urge you: report them immediately to the proper authorities and do it quickly, before it is too late.
If a being such as Varoth ever did exist, know this: it is important that it does not ever become upset with us, lest we unintentionally become the unwitting conductors leading an untrained orchestra in the opening overtures ushering in our own unstoppable apocalypse.
By the way, I can be contacted via email at scott@scottsavino.com or by reaching out to me on my various social media platforms: