Marie Croke

This story, man.

See, I grew up in a bayside community in Maryland. A little bay. Not the big Chesapeake. But even little bays feel huge when you’re little yourself.

We’d throw crab cages off the end of the dock and see bobbing milk jugs along the edges of the bay that marked where others had done the same. Old Bay is a staple where I’m from, practically an appetizer. Blue crabs adorn art pieces, sports team jerseys, and fill plenty of bellies, some people using crabbing to offset grocery costs.

Thing is though, I’m not a fan of crab. Not a fan of Old Bay, and the joke that I’m not Marylander enough to be a Marylander occurred more than a few times in my youth. I would crack crab legs open for my younger siblings, but I would never eat it myself.

So I thought, why not use that difference in me, play with the crabs who aren’t too fond of this fondness that Marylanders have for them.

I set this story in a bayside community, with a young girl investigating strange occurrences, partially to tap into my own history, partially to capture that sense of feeling off in one’s own skin, in one’s own home.

And then things turned creepy quite quickly.

You can find this issue with my story, “How Many Crab Pots Does it Take to Destroy a Neighborhood?,  on Amazon or on Perpetual Motion Publishing’s site.