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False Positive: A Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy Webcomic Anthology
Webcomic Tales of the Surreal, Fantastic, & Macabre
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Good News for People Who Like Bad News
01-18-24
Dear False Positive Readers,
This is Ashley Walton, Mike’s sister and editor of False Positive. I have really terrible, awful news and a tiny bit of good news.
You might have noticed it’s been a couple years since we’ve posted anything on this website. Well, brace yourself for the saddest update I’ll ever share.
Did they have that many children? Doesn’t look like a place they likely got visitors often…
Only ones on mantelpiece are, I think.
Family gets grave markers.
What/ who was he hunting at the start?
I have really loved the minimal use of dialogue on this particular strip. It makes for a more contemplative narrative.
Someday some trapper is going to find the cabin, step inside, and lose bodily control.
Hmmm 58 skulls on the wall. It’s biologically improbable for a human woman to bear that many children. Could this be the remains of a whole settlement? The skulls of children are far over-represented if these are unwary trappers. The story is clearly much larger than this little vignette.
I don’t get it…I have more skulls on my wall.?
Watch this space for the future site of the Overlook Hotel.
Croatoa Hotel has a nicer ring.
Trophies ya know, like deer skulls…..
Wow. No time has passed since she put her man’s skull on the mantle.
Guess the man was killing anyone who could supply him with bullets.
Maybe all the adult-sized skulls on the wall are female, and the only male adult’s cranium now rests on the mantle? And she is the first escapee. Either that or she’s on her way to town for another sucker. Loved this one for the agonizingly slow Hitchcockian pace. Secretly I hope this is not the last panel!
That wall…represents a *serious* appetite.
Ok, since this is most likely the end of the story, let’s see what we have. At the beginning, the hunter was following the track of some… thing. The footsteps were small and close together and there were some blood droplets… a kid? However, instead of following the track, the hunter stopped to shoot at a white fox and was attacked by a wolf. Note that neither the fox or the wolf were wounded previously so neither were his original mark. He returns home, dies and is eaten by his lover. That night, the white fox approaches the cabin and remains around until the morning! Who or what is the fox? We know that the woman is not “human” and apparently only capable of eating people.
There was a third skull placed on the mantle in the last strip, next to two smaller skulls. There are three crosses visible near the house in this strip. In earlier strips there were only two. The new cross is larger. it’s obvious really. Tho, I did have to click back a few strips to verify that the third cross is a new one.
I still like that cabin.
It would seem he hunted for her. Humans being the preference, but meat is meat. He knew she was a monster, but a monster he loved. What is 58 humans to save thousands? And now she is free.
Fox fur cloak?
I really don’t think she isn’t human – I doubt we have to reach so far.
They met, they fell in love, they moved to the new place, he probably gave her the mountain version of the “house with a white picket fence” story, and she fell for it, because that’s what girls do. They had a couple of kids.
It’s the mountains, harsh weather, no food. Family is hungry, kids starve and die, in a horrile moment of desparation hubby and wife decide there is still something left worth living for, aaand it would be kind of a shame to let all the produce go to waste. Then they realise that it really is k, that most anything goes, as long as it is edible. Also important to note – he’s not huntung JUST for her, man’s gotta eat, too. There are probably other mountain folk around, some travelers. Shelter a couple of strangers from the snowstorm, let them stay the night, slit their throats while they sleep – presto, you are fed for a couple of months, no problem.
The chain, while we all might have thought it probably implied she is some sort of creature, is probably just there as the ultimate expression of love. If you love someone enough, that you would murder people so you can FEED them to them, in the name of your relationship, if you are willing to go hand in hand and actively contribute to turning them and yourself into monsters, then you are gonna “protect” you “investment” , no doubt! Hell, he probably would have chained her other leg to the other wall, too, so she would have a little less wiggle space, had he had a second chain. Just to make sure. And I can imagine she wanted out. Though I imagine after a certain point the sheer drive for survival took over.
There is no need, really, for her to be anything other than human. She isn’t some mystical beast. We’ve come to expect that over the years, but what’s the point? When Maestro was scared because she was dsipleased, some people basically implied she would morph and own his ass, that she had some form of absolute power over him. And how about the version, where she is the most precious, the one thing of importance to him in the whole world and her rejection is the ultimate, the absolutely WORST thing that could befall him?
So yah, my money is on chicka being human, 100%. It’s much better – and scarier – than her being a monster lady. Again. Not saying there’s anything wrong with monster ladies, Mike portrays them very well, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Only question is how and where she managed to fit two month’s worth of husband and still stay so slim. 😀 But that little tid-bit aside, really, great work by Mike, got me steaming!
I’m not sure. That “from my kin” sounds really suspicious. I’ll agree to meet you at a mid-point where she’s human but some kind of racial (taxonomically speaking) offshoot.
There are too many little unexplained things hinting at a more truly paranormal thing that just a couple people driven cannibalistic by hunger. What was the hunter tracking initially? We never saw. Why did he attempt to kill the fox? It’s not a particularly edible creature. Is the fox something else? Did it cause the wolf attack? Why did it visit the cabin at night? Why hadn’t the woman tried to escape before, if she was clearly able to? And yeah, where did all the meat from the Maestro go once ingested?
It seems like most of your questions have answers based on the story and 6ftTiny’s post.
What was the hunter tracking before?: Anything we want him to because that’s not relevant to the story being told. A deer, a child, a wendigo, whatever it was, the actual important part is that he lost it, which put him in the situation of the story.
Why attempt to kill the Fox?: Simply, because it’s right there right now. The hunter still hadn’t caught up to the thing he was tracking and who knows if he’d find it again, but that fox was in his line of sight right then and there. Was it a better catch than his original target, who knows. But when severe hunger may be in play, a catch is a catch and (especially in this story) meat is meat.
Is the fox something else?: No clear evidence to say it is.
Did it cause the Wolf to attack?: Here is were maybe some level of supernatural might be at play. Perhaps the wolf was an emissary of the forest sent to strike at the humans who’ve committed some nasty sins in/upon it. Maybe it was the fox, supernaturally calling upon another creature to defend it. Also, it just as easy could be that the wolf was also hungry and had been looking for a moment when the hunter was less on guard (e.i. aiming at a fox with a bow), or that the wolf learned in time that this human and it’s tool presents a threat to itself/it’s pack and naturally started gunning for him prior. No hard evidence to tell, but it’s easier to infer the latter two.
Why did it visit the cabin that night?: The hunter was fatally bleeding all the way back to the cabin from the attack. That blood trail is plenty enough for a curious, or more likely hungry, predator to follow.
Why hadn’t the woman tried to escape before if she was clearly able to?: Well…some people have stayed in far worse relationships and living situations for a multitude of reasons. Perhaps part of her still loved him and wanted all of this to work, maybe there was some fear/shame she felt in freeing herself and abandoning the hunter. Maybe she felt less affection for him than it appeared, and she was simply waiting for an opportunity such as this (it was inferred that both of them hadn’t eating in quite some time and were probably weaker than normal.) There are a number of real to life reasons for her not escaping until now.
Where’d all the meat go?: I can’t say for sure how much food one could ingest after X amount of time with no food, but with likely both of them having eaten human before, I can imagine her devouring him as if he were an entire normal animal roast to herself. Will she have a tummy ache later on, pretty possible.
Also, in regards to the use of the word ‘kin’. Given the inferred time period based on the clothes and technology, I can easily buy that word getting casual use to talk about family/where one was born.
Another factor I didn’t think of. In regards to her eating him in one night, who’s to say only one night had passed? With the cold air keeping him from decomposing to fast, her extreme hunger, and the cabin seemingly having all the necessities for her to function with out having to leave, she could have spent several days grubbing on his corpse
Anyone else notice that she left the family Bible behind, or that they clearly shared a bed when both alive?
Each implies whole levels of weird and scary.
Another great twist.
I return to this after some time and notice some resemblances between the characters and people we’ve seen elsewhere, AND I note that she ate her man, Maestro, raw. She had cooking implements. Cooked food has more nutrients and tastes better to people. Also, it looks like she ate his viscera and non-bony hard bits as well, also without evidence of cooking … or butchering beyong what tooth and nail would do.
She’s NOT human.