Our Monster, Who art in Heaven

It’s 1997, and William Sturm is a freshman stuck at an isolated fundamentalist Christian college in a swamp near Tampa Bay, Florida. On his first day back from break, a student is found impaled on the chapel steeple. A week later, Will later tries to save a fellow student from choking on something no one else can see; only the result isn’t gratitude but public disgrace, branding him a pervert and a pariah.

Meanwhile, he’s struggling with the revelation that his eight-year-old sister has cancer. He’s in both a crisis of life and a crisis of faith. But it’s hard to deal with all these crises when the campus keeps getting weirder. More students are found perforated with stab wounds, their bodies hidden in high places. Human-sized stick figures roam the campus at night, which apparently only Will can see. A dead guy attacks him in the swamp. And with school leaders planning a massive revival to demand Christ’s return and jumpstart the Rapture before the new millennium, no one has time to worry about the campus pervert’s warnings.

As the school tumbles further into fanaticism and madness, Will is left isolated, disillusioned, and forced to question whether he’s the one losing his mind or if something far more sinister is at work. Either way, there’s just one small problem: Will’s not so sure he has enough faith left to save anyone at all.

Based on J.W. Ocker’s own experience at a now-defunct fundamentalist Christian college in 1990s Florida, this is a story of intense cosmic horror under the bright Florida sun, possibly to a soundtrack of Creed.