I Still Remember has been published on Horror Obsessive for a few weeks now, and the experience still feels surreal. What began as a passion project — a challenge to step outside my usual work in journalism and content writing — became my debut short story and introduction to the world of fiction writing.

On the surface, I Still Remember may read like a traditional horror story; however, my aim was to create something quieter. The story explores themes of guilt, shame, addiction, and memory — the quiet, internal battles we fight long after the worst has passed. At its heart, it’s about the struggle to move forward when the past won’t let go. But ultimately, I wanted to ask one central question: If we’re treated like a monster for long enough… do we eventually become one?

What Set the Story in Motion

When I began writing I Still Remember, I knew I wanted to explore what happens after the horror of a zombie outbreak, rather than during the chaos itself. So much of zombie media — from Dawn of the Dead, The Last of Us and The Walking Dead — fixates on the immediate terror and the relentless urgency of survival. And the cure, if it ever appears, is often framed as a miracle: a clean slate, a return to “how things used to be.” But something I kept asking myself was: after something so devastating, so deeply traumatic as a zombie apocalypse, could the world ever truly go back? Would people? And what if the hardest part wasn’t surviving the apocalypse, but rather the aftermath?

That’s what led me to The Cured, a 2017 Irish horror film starring Elliot Page and Sam Keeley. Set after a zombie apocalypse that ravaged Ireland, a cure was developed and worked on 75% of the infected. However, that doesn’t make reintegration any easier for Senan, who moves in with his sister-in-law Abbie and her young son. Haunted by what he’s done, Senan faces suspicion, fear, and social unrest in a community that views him not as someone saved, but as a threat that never really left.

The Cured struck a chord with me, as it asked a question often overlooked in zombie media: What if you came back, but the world refused to let you forget what you did? That quiet sense of shame, isolation, and the cost of human recovery became the catalyst for I Still Remember. When I began writing, I wasn’t trying to create a large-scale narrative or fill the story with thrilling plot twists. Instead, I wanted something smaller. Something intimate. A man trying to live with himself after what he’s done, and suppress the part of him that might want to do it again.

The Horror Beneath the Surface

At its heart, I Still Remember isn’t about zombies — it’s about addiction. While it also touches on guilt, shame, and isolation, its core lies in the pull of compulsion: the kind that makes you act against your better judgement, and the uneasy truth that recovery is rarely clean or linear.

When developing the premise, I knew I wanted to tell the story of someone cured after a zombie outbreak — but I didn’t want the horror to come solely from the outside. I wanted it to stem from something more human. That’s when I began to see the “infection” as a metaphor for addiction. The idea felt natural: both involve a loss of control, the pull to act against your better judgement, and the fear of what might happen if that pull wins. Rather than fixating on the spectacle of violence, I was drawn to the quieter moments where the real tension lingers — the silences, the forced reassurances, the constant scrutiny. In many ways, it became less a story about monsters, and more about the fragile, ongoing work of staying in control.

Part of my focus was on shaping the world around the protagonist to mirror gaps that can be found in real-life support systems. On the surface, he has people around him and access to help, but none of it truly addresses what he needs. The reintegration centre offers pills, mantras, and tightly controlled routines; his mother, though well-meaning, hides behind shallow reassurances that mask her fear; his father stays distant and cautious, acknowledging his son only through suspicion. I didn’t want these dynamics to fade into the background, but rather to reflect how systems designed to help can sometimes fall short of offering the right support. While I understand that resources are essential, they aren’t infallible — and in my story, that gap becomes the space where isolation deepens, trust erodes, and the pull of old instincts quietly returns.

Though I’m biased, I do have several favourite moments — but when discussing its themes, one in particular stands out. In Part Six, moments before the protagonist is arrested, he recalls a warm summer’s day from his childhood, long before fear and suspicion, when life was defined only by simple joys. This memory is pivotal because it serves as his anchor — the reason his reintegration and recovery mattered so deeply to him. It wasn’t driven by obligation, but by a profound longing for what he once had, and for the people and peace that came with it.

How the Story Took Shape

I Still Remember marked my first real step into the world of fiction. Until then, my work had existed almost entirely in journalism and content writing — forms I knew well, with their own structures, rules, and demands. While I’ve always loved reading fiction in my spare time, writing it felt like stepping into unfamiliar territory. Still, I welcomed the challenge. Drawing on my existing skills and experience, I discovered a new sense of creative freedom — the chance to shape narratives on themes I care deeply about, while exploring them with a more intimate and atmospheric lens.

When shaping my voice, one of the most pivotal influences was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. While not overtly horror, it remains my favourite book for many reasons — one of which is its restrained, simmering, and deliberate language. Even in its most brutal moments, Atwood sustains a quiet tension, never wasting a single word. I was drawn to that balance of beauty and brutality, and it became a guiding thread in how I approached my first piece of fiction.

For I Still Remember, I wanted the structure to feel fractured and rhythmic, mirroring the protagonist’s unsteady state of mind. Short lines, repeated phrases, and silences — all filtered through an unreliable narrator — became essential tools in capturing how he perceived the world, with his constant pull between control and compulsion. In addition, when approaching the structure of the story, I didn’t want to create traditional chapters. Instead, I built self-contained parts, each reading like a confession: an intimate moment, memory, or thought that reveals just enough to unsettle.

While I’m more used to fact-based, structured writing, I knew I wanted to use fiction as a way to explore important themes and topics from a different angle. I began to feel a new sense of creative freedom — stepping outside the constraints of journalistic and structured writing — to take my knowledge of subjects I’m passionate about and approach them with nuance, subtext, and emotional depth. Instead of reporting on an issue directly, I could weave it into a character’s inner life, their memories, and the spaces between what’s said and unsaid. That freedom allowed me to not only tell a story, but to invite readers to feel it.

Looking back, I Still Remember taught me a great deal about my own voice as a writer. Adapting the skills I’d honed through journalism and content writing into a fictional framework allowed me to approach storytelling in a new and deeply personal way. It showed me that the precision, structure, and clarity I relied on in my non-fiction work could coexist with the ambiguity, atmosphere, and emotional weight that fiction demands. In blending those elements, I was able to create a story that felt both deliberate and instinctive — one that reflected not just the themes I wanted to explore, but the kind of writer I’m becoming. With the skills I’ve developed through this process, I hope to carry that same balance of craft and emotion into any fiction I write in the future.

Audiobook Adaptation

Despite I Still Remember being available to read for free on Horror Obsessive, I want to make it as accessible as possible. That’s why I’m currently working on an audiobook edition for Horror Obsessive’s YouTube channel: a full narration of the story, performed by me and accompanied by its featured artwork. My hope is to offer a quiet and immersive way to experience the piece in a new light. While a release date can’t be confirmed, updates will be shared once it’s available. 

Final Thoughts

Writing I Still Remember has been one of the most creatively rewarding experiences of my career so far. One of the things I love most about horror is that it doesn’t need to scream to be effective; sometimes it’s quiet, patient, and persistent. It lingers in the spaces between thoughts, returning when you least expect it.

What began as a small personal challenge to step outside my comfort zone became a story I’m proud of — an exploration of guilt, addiction, identity, and the unsettling question of whether we can ever truly be forgiven, by others or by ourselves.

I’m thankful to Horror Obsessive for giving the piece a home, and to everyone who has taken the time to read the story. If it left you with a thought, a feeling, or simply stayed with you for a while, then it’s done what I hoped it would.

And for me, I Still Remember is just the beginning.