Itch!

Itch! is a book that gets under your skin, from the creepy-crawly bug horror to the pervasiveness of trauma—how your past can feel like an infestation of ants, itching at you until it becomes all-consuming. The swarms of wriggling insects work double time as a metaphor for conformity, the way that being surrounded by people who think the same way can be not just stifling, but downright insidious. It’s a horror of the hive mind, surrendering to a greater collective of tiny, mindless beings—who, one at a time, can’t do any real damage, but altogether, have the power to devour you.

Cut to Josie, a queer woman who suffered through a quiet, sheltered upbringing in parochial Ellwood, before fleeing in adulthood and vowing to never return. Now, fresh from an abusive relationship, she is forced back—-but immediately, things start going awry. First, she stumbles over a literal dead body in the woods, home to a swarm of aggressive ants. She becomes convinced the little creatures have taken over her body, and the itching just won’t stop.

Josie isn’t the only one in town being haunted: there’s a strange masked predator stalking the woods, a living relic from the town’s pagan lore. Misogyny, too, haunts the narrative, from the “Devil’s March,” an annual parade used to shame women with allegedly loose morals, to Josie’s own feverish childhood memories. It's up to her to untangle what’s going on, all while grappling with the truth of her own twisted past—and the skittering six-legged menaces that just won’t leave her alone

Sexual assault, domestic abuse, self-harm.