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For He Can Creep

For He Can Creep

A Tor. com Original
Short StoriesDark Fantasy
Pages
32
Published
2019
Language
English

Synopsis

For He Can Creep reimagines the real historical poet Christopher Smart, committed to St. Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in the 1700s while believing he's been chosen by God to write a poem that will bring about a divine reckoning. Years before, Smart struck a bargain with Satan, and now the devil has come to collect: a poem of Smart's that could instead bring about the apocalypse. Standing between the asylum and the end of the world is Jeoffry, Smart's cat, drawing on the real poem Smart wrote in his cat's honor to tell a story of small, fierce loyalty against cosmic stakes.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

DarkWhimsicalAtmospheric

Genres

Short Stories Dark Fantasy Historical Fiction

About the author

S
Siobhan Carroll

Siobhan Carroll, born in Vancouver in 1980, is a Canadian writer and professor of English at the University of Delaware, where she has taught since 2008 after earning her PhD at Indiana University Bloomington. She specializes in British literature of 1750-1850 and environmental humanities. Her nonfiction study An Empire of Air and Water: Uncolonizable Space in the British Imagination, 1750-1850 examines how the era imagined the poles, oceans, and atmosphere as spaces resistant to imperial contro...

Characters

JeoffryProtagonist

Christopher Smart's cat, who narrates the story and fights to protect his master from a demonic bargain.

Christopher SmartSupporting

A real historical poet committed to an asylum, convinced of a divine mission and bound by an old bargain with the devil.

All characters in For He Can Creep
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