FICTION FROM MOUSTIQUE
Moustique Stories
Long stories. Short stories. One town that keeps leaving things out.
Moustique is more than one story. It is a fictional Louisiana bayou town built to hold novellas, short fiction, novels, local legends, missing records, and the people who have learned to live beside all of it.
Some stories begin with an investigation. Some begin with a family name, a bad road, a fishing camp, or a rule nobody remembers learning. They all lead back to the same blackwater.
THE FIRST MOUSTIQUE STORY
MOUSTIQUE
A state investigator comes to explain a killing, only to discover a town that has survived for generations by refusing to explain itself—and the one monster who has been protecting that silence from something worse.
When state investigator Claire Thibodeaux is sent into the wetlands to examine a killing that does not make sense, she expects bad evidence, frightened witnesses, and the usual resistance that comes when an outsider starts asking questions.
She gets all three.
What she does not expect is Etienne Boudreaux.
Reclusive, watchful, and far too familiar with what moves through the swamp after dark, Etienne has spent years protecting Moustique from dangers its residents understand better than they admit.
Claire believes every mystery has an explanation.
Etienne knows some explanations come with a cost.
And something in the marsh has begun breaking the rules.
COMING SOON
THE TOWN
The road into Moustique was not meant for strangers.
The pavement narrows. The signal disappears. Water gathers on both sides.
And somewhere beyond the last reliable sign sits a town whose residents have spent generations learning how to live beside things they cannot control.
- They do not whistle after dark.
- They do not follow lights into the swamp.
- They do not answer voices they cannot place.
Nobody agrees on why.
That may be the point.
WHAT LIVES UNDER THE STORIES
Folklore
The people of Moustique inherited rules long before they inherited explanations. Some are superstition. Some are not.
Hunger
The most dangerous monsters in Moustique are not defined by what they are. They are defined by what they choose to do when they are hungry.
Silence
Everybody in town knows something. Very few people know the same thing. Nobody knows the whole story.
“You do exactly what I say when the frogs stop.”
MOUSTIQUE — D.P. HARLAN
FOR READERS OF
Southern Gothic. Folk horror. Mystery. Swamp noir.
The Moustique stories are for readers who like horror that unfolds slowly, monsters that retain traces of humanity, small communities with long memories, and mysteries where the official explanation is technically true but nowhere near complete.
Some stories will be short. Some will be long. Some will follow familiar names. Others will open a door elsewhere in town.
The setting remains the same.
The rules may not.
BEFORE YOU READ
Visit Moustique.
This website was built as though the town were real.
Explore the places. Meet the locals. Find somewhere to eat. Learn the history. Read the rules.
Just remember:
Moustique is a fictional town. The warnings are part of the story.
Probably.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
D.P. Harlan
D.P. Harlan writes Southern Gothic horror about isolated places, old promises, inherited secrets, and the people who survive by learning which questions not to ask.
More stories are coming.
Short fiction, longer works, and new corners of Moustique will live here as they are released.
For now, the town is open.