A Visceral Debut Collection
The Curse Is Not Written in Stone. It Is Written in the Flesh.
Folklore and Flesh is a masterwork of dread operating at the convergence of two primal anxieties: the terror of the isolated environment and the fear of the body betraying itself. This is Folk Body Horror: a fusion of ancient cultural dread and grotesque physical transformation.
In this collection of dark stories and poetry, the boundary between myth and matter collapses. The tales explore the uncanny territory where ancestral lore ceases to be a cautionary story and becomes a biological instruction manual for corruption.
The Conflict: Tradition as Contagion
The stories in Folklore and Flesh are centered on the cost of belonging and the penalty for breaking sacred laws. The collection’s overarching threat is the chilling idea that tradition is a transmissible affliction—a curse woven into the very DNA of a place and its people.
“Folklore has always warned us about the costs of breaking taboos. I wanted to ask: what if that cost wasn’t just death but becoming something horrifyingly new?” says author Willy Martinez.
The terror is absolute: the curse for defying a taboo is not death, but a slow, agonizing process of becoming a creature you no longer recognize.
The Landscape: Characters are isolated in shadowed, rural, and digital spaces—from a haunted grove demanding living memories (The Whispering Bone Orchard) to a lonely beekeeper merging with his swarm (Echoes of the Apiary). These environments actively refuse to obey human rules.
The Body: The transformation is visceral and internal. A beauty influencer’s viral serum unlocks something monstrous in her dental structure (Digital Fangs); a grieving survivor accepts a second, monstrous mouth as a vessel of vengeance (The Ashes of Nagasaki).
The myth is the mechanism; the trauma is physical.
Sample Chapter: “Digital Fangs” – Folklore and Flesh
A beauty influencer’s viral tooth-whitening serum unlocks something monstrous in her followers—and in herself.
“Rows of teeth arched high and deep, forming a cathedral vault behind her skull—long, naked gums gleaming wetly beneath layers of enamel. It wasn’t just her face she saw; it was something ancient, hungry, and patient, waiting just behind her skin. She pressed her tongue to her teeth, feeling them shift and bristle, the tingling intensifying until it threatened to spill from her jaw in a torrent of ivory.”
Dark Fiction & Poetry by Willy Martinez
The collection’s overarching threat is the idea that tradition is not merely a custom, but a transmissible affliction—a contagion woven into the very fabric of the landscape. Characters are isolated in shadowed places where the natural world refuses to obey human rules. Here, ancient rituals are the mechanism of painful, unavoidable physical change. The curse for breaking a taboo is not death but a slow, excruciating process of becoming a creature you no longer recognize.
“This collection dissects how cultural isolation and ancestral secrets literally rewrite the biological codes of the human form, from the rural shrines of the Bone Orchard to the digital feed of a beauty influencer’s viral decay. The terror is biological; the threat is internal.”
What Readers are Saying
Exceptional!
“A dark, haunting blend of folklore and body horror. Each story is sharp, atmospheric, and unforgettable. Martinez delivers tension, originality, and imagery that stays with you long after you finish.”
Highly recommend!
“A haunting and poetic dive into body horror and ancestral myth that lingers like a fever dream.”
Five stars!
“Folklore and Flesh is a chilling blend of myth and modern horror. W. J. Martinez delivers stories that crawl under the skin, haunted forests, digital nightmares, and body-twisting transformations that linger long after you’re done reading. Gripping, eerie, and beautifully unsettling, this collection is perfect for anyone who loves folklore with a razor edge.”
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Inside the Folklore and Flesh Collection – Overview
The Whispering Bone Orchard
A grieving mother seeks solace from a shaman in a haunted grove, only to become a living archive for the village’s buried memories.
“Something inside her fractures—the familiar borders of body and spirit cracking, splintering—until she is not merely a mourner, but a conduit for every tale the orchard hoards. She sways, bends, her silhouette twisted by the shifting light, and feels the orchard’s agitation: roots stirring, yearning to surface, to spill their secrets.”
The Drone’s Metamorphosis
A frontline drone operator awakens to find his mind trapped inside the machine he once controlled—caught between humanity and cold, mechanical detachment.
“I was motivated with an immediate determination to end this mechanical cycle, and I steered my drone towards the ‘borg.’ It seemed to sense me and slowly turned in my direction with its red eyes glowing with a cold, mechanical light, inviting me to finish what I had set out to accomplish.”
Echoes of the Apiary
A beekeeper’s loneliness draws him deeper into the hive’s collective mind, blurring the line between man and swarm as his world unravels.
“Santiago was beyond her now, a myth woven into the land—a guardian of the hives, his spirit humming in the petals, the honey, the seasons’ turn. Villagers murmured of a presence at dusk, a silhouette fading into the hum, ensuring the fields flourished. His story became a fireside legend, a testament to love’s fracture and nature’s embrace, a ritual of transcendence etched in the golden hum of the bees.”
Dark Vintage
A lonely botanist’s night at a rural winery turns into a grotesque feast, where the line between predator and prey is as thin as a wineglass stem.
“The tall kid takes the balled-up fist, grabbing it from the arm with both of his own arms and brings it closer to his face. Opening up his mouth widely, his small sharp canine teeth are on display as he surrounds the fat boy’s fist with his mouth. With swift action, he chomps down onto the boy’s hand like it’s a ham sandwich, piercing the flesh and tasting his blood.”
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The Siguanaba
Ancient Central American folklore comes alive as a conquistador’s quest for gold leads him into the underworld—and face-to-face with a shape-shifting legend.
“Violently halting her movement, she spits back, “What?”
“Yes! Sing me the song that God sang to you when you were cast out of Heaven, you devil!”
At this point, she had no choice but to comply. Every vessel in her body resonated with this command and tune. What one would expect to be dreadful and searing to the ears, was in fact the opposite.”
Cused Collection
In the marble tomb of forgotten empires, two archaeologists risk everything to steal relics that promise to rewrite human history—only to awaken a nightmare older than civilization itself.
“The elongated skull people swarmed the man, binding him to the stone slab with ropes that bit into his flesh. A shaman emerged from the crowd, his form stooped yet commanding, his elongated skull adorned with jagged scars and feathers that shimmered like oil slicks. His face painted with small clusters of galaxies makes it hard to focus on any one detail of his face. In his hands, he carried a gruesome array of tools: obsidian blades, wooden paddles stained with old blood, and bindings woven from sinew.”
Digital Fangs
A beauty influencer’s viral tooth-whitening serum unlocks something monstrous in her followers—and in herself.
“Rows of teeth arched high and deep, forming a cathedral vault behind her skull—long, naked gums gleaming wetly beneath layers of enamel. It wasn’t just her face she saw; it was something ancient, hungry, and patient, waiting just behind her skin. She pressed her tongue to her teeth, feeling them shift and bristle, the tingling intensifying until it threatened to spill from her jaw in a torrent of ivory.”
Clay and Memory
A grieving widower turns to an AI therapist and a mysterious “quantum clay” ritual, only to find his memories—and his identity—slipping away.
“The merchant leaned in, their augmented face flickering with static. “Only if you give it sorrow. Only if you ask it to remember what you cannot bear to forget. Payment?”
I handed over the encrypted credits, feeling the chill as the merchant’s fingers grazed mine. “A relic of hope in a city where grief is just another protocol running in the background,” the merchant murmured, sealing the clay in shimmering polymer. “May you find what you seek—or be willing to let it go.”
My hands shook as I cradled the package to my chest, the merchant’s gaze lingering on me until I disappeared back into the neon-soaked circuit, clay pulsing with possibility and dread.”
The Ashes of Nagasaki: A Futakuchi-onna’s Lament
In the ruins of Nagasaki, Hana Takahashi trades her grief for monstrous power, becoming a vessel of vengeance whose second mouth hungers for justice and redemption amid the ashes of war.
““You are a demon,” I stated, gritting my teeth together, the realization bringing an icy calm. “One of the oni from the old tales my father told to frighten me.”
He grinned, a terrifying spectacle of teeth too long and too numerous for his mouth. “Demon is a word given by those who do not understand the arithmetic of extinction. I am simply the debt collector for the souls you just lost. And your soul, Hana, is currently producing a vigorous scent of rage. It’s intoxicating.”
He took a slow step toward me. The single, clean, beautiful feature of the man was a small, ancient-looking satchel draped over his shoulder, from which spilled the heavy aroma of copal and dried blood—the scent of sacrifice.”
The Day the Rain Tore Us Apart
In a drought-stricken village, children are chosen for a ritual that promises rain—but the price is a transformation that no one could have foreseen.
“She began to hum, a low, throbbing drone that vibrated through the soles of their feet. The children tried to join, voices faltering at first, then gaining strength, their croaks and whispers rising in uncertain harmony. The villagers swayed, faces painted with hope and desperation, eyes glinting with reflected fire.
The shaman leaned close, her breath hot and metallic. “Sing, little ones. Sing with all that you are. The price… the price will be known by the dawn.” Her words faded into the smoke, leaving only the pulse of ritual, the trembling of fragile bodies, and the unspoken promise of rain.”
Plus, over a dozen dark poems and micro-fictions exploring transformation, ritual, and the monstrous beauty of the human condition.
