Before You Begin

Before you begin.

This compact Weird Tales satire begins with an ordinary civic errand: a directory canvasser needs a name, an address, and a few plain facts. Ann Hay, sitting in her modest parlor, answers with perfect calm while the interview keeps slipping into stranger domestic logic. The story belongs to the comic-gothic side of the magazine: household objects, names, remarriage, cremation, and city record-keeping all become part of one deadpan joke. Read it as a parlor conversation that turns the familiar things on a mantel into a private museum, then lets the visitor carry that unease home.