SurrealAndEthereal: dark, cinematic short films and the stories behind them
SurrealAndEthereal

SurrealAndEthereal

Dark, cinematic stories of myth, horror and strange worlds, some ancient, some ruined, some not quite our own.

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“They did not tame the fire. They became its kin.”
LAVA'S LULLABY
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The worlds

Five doors. Pick one.

A ruined castle tower carved into a giant crowned stone face, a dark crack running down from one eye
01 · Major story

Abdication

Aeron gave up his crown. The kingdom, the war and his own past have not finished with him.

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Hands hold a burnt photograph of a woman and a girl outside a Victorian house, a pale face in the upstairs window, the same house blurred in the distance
02 · Major story · Gothic horror

The House

One house on a fog-bound hill. A different era, a different curse, and two chairs that never move.

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A pale woman with tattooed skin and closed eyes stands waist-deep in a dark rainforest river, cradling a spined orange and black dragon against her chest
03 · Series

Dragon Catchers

The ones who hunt dragons, and what each hunt takes from them.

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A volcano erupts under a towering black ash cloud, lava glowing in its flanks, a vast crowd gathered on the dark plain below and a river in the foreground
04 · Mythology

Lava's Lullaby

A world remade by fire, a frost older than the fire, and a song every mother hums without knowing why.

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A colossal floating screen hangs over a rain-soaked plaza, an alien face staring out through a frame of red and black data panels while hover-craft drift past and silhouetted figures watch from below
05 · Collection

Sci-Fi

Signals, machines and the cities that outlive us. Every sci-fi short, in one place.

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Cover of The Self That Survives, Volume One, by Marty N.O.: a black notebook balanced on a dark stone sphere, a branch of small amber flowers growing up across it
The audiobook · Out now

The Self That Survives Volume One

by Marty N.O.

Meditations on resilience and the nature of who we are.

The monologues behind the films, gathered into twenty-five chapters and spoken straight to you.

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The stories

The film is the doorway. This is the rest of the house.

Every Sunday, the week's film retold as a short story, with the full narration and where the idea came from. Free, by email.

Cover of The Abdication Prompt Book

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The Abdication Prompt Book: the prompts, rules and recipes behind the films, from the first still to the last chant.

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