‘The Myth of the Familiar’ by EC Dorgan

Myth-Making

From Pulp Literature Issue 46, EC Dorgan presents us with a unknown and overlooked source of storytelling in ‘The Myth of the Familiar’. Enjoy an excerpt of this tale below, and discover the rest in Issue 46, Spring 2025.

The Myth of the Familiar

by EC Dorgan

The myth-maker wears fuzzy socks and works at a table. She’s very old. She hasn’t spoken in a long time. Her familiar is a Maine Coon called Mac. The cat sleeps in the bread basket while the myth-maker works.

You’d think a myth-maker would use a fountain pen, but this one uses dough. She bakes with the oil from her fingers. Sometimes a hair falls into her batter. She forms the stories into shapes—pretzels for tragedies, little round dough puffs for heroic sagas.

Though heroes are hard to come by these days. Something’s gone off with the recipe. The myth-maker can’t figure it out; she’s been using the same flour for eternity.

One day, the myth-maker’s AC unit fails. The kitchen gets hot. A drop of sweat from the myth-maker’s temple falls into
the batter.

The myth-maker pauses. She knows the five-second rule, but this is something different. Should she throw it out or start over? The myth-maker considers. She’s not on a fixed schedule but she prides herself on efficiency. Her production numbers haven’t faltered for three thousand years.

She looks at the batter. Except for the sweat, it’s perfect. The myth-maker thinks about it. She’s not one of these bakers who livestreams their creations. There’s nobody around to see.

The myth-maker harrumphs. It’s decided, no one needs to know. She resumes her work on the batter. But now while she’s kneading, she feels eyes. She looks up and sees the familiar. The cat stares, and at that moment, the myth-maker knows—if there’s one thing she’s learned birthing stories all these millennia, it’s that cats see everything.

The myth-maker shakes her head. Cat or no cat, she’ll continue baking. She works the dough into shapes. She preheats the oven. She drops her dough puffs onto the hand-oiled tray: one, two, three, four.

When her timer goes, the myth-maker opens the oven and holds her hand for a moment in the heat. She grew up with a wood-stove and though she’s now using convection, she remembers how to gauge heat with her hand.

Today the heat’s perfect, like the little round puffs she’s formed with her dough. She puts on oven mitts and pulls out the tray. The little puffs are perfectly browned, and she doesn’t need a toothpick to know they’re cooked through. The dough has risen just right.

Read the rest in Pulp Literature Issue 46, Spring 2025!

EC Dorgan writes weird fiction and horror stories on Treaty 6 territory near Edmonton, Canada. Her short fiction appears in anthologies such as Northern Nights (Undertow Publications) and Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Fiction (Psychopomp), and in magazines such as Gamut, Hexagon, and Reckoning. She is currently working on her first novel. We first published her in Issue 41 with ‘Mooneater’, and ‘Flehmen Grimace’ and ‘Watercolours’ were runners-up in the 2023 Raven Short Story contest, appearing in Issue 43. We’re delighted to have her back with a softer touch of horror.