“It’s not the memories,” I explained. “Something is wrong with this house. It’s cursed or haunted or maybe something even worse than that. It killed Mom and Dad, and then it killed Mark.”

Alex Tucker’s slow-burn horror novella, Afraid to Feel is a fascinating plunge into emotional paralysis and the cost of silence. Told through the worn-out perspective of Cory Gardner, a tired father and withdrawn husband, the story reveals what happens when a man raised to suppress every emotion finally opens his mouth. In therapy, Cory reveals a belief that his world is artificial, that he lives inside a simulation. This fractured view of reality leaves him detached from his wife, his children, and from life itself.

Tucker, an HWA writer known for his atmospheric short fiction, delivers a novel steeped in tension and dread. Cory’s memories bleed into the present. His childhood secrets do more than haunt. They infect.