Laird Barron’s story, casting an eerie light on Thomas Ligotti, is available (complete) here.

A taste:

L dwelt in a moribund American Heartland city (although independent confirmation of his residence and bona fides were lacking) that had been abandoned by most of the citizenry and at least half the rats. Afflicted by a severe mood disorder, he maintained few contacts among the professional writing community, albeit his associates were erudite men, scholars and theorists such as himself. Perhaps this hermit-philosopher persona is what eventually cemented his status as a quasi-guru whose fictive meditations upon cosmic horror and Man’s minuteness in the universe gradally shifted to relentless proselytizing of antinatalist propaganda in the form of email interviews, random tracts produced on basement presses, and one full-blown trade paperback essay entitled Horror of Being, or HoB as his acolytes dubbed it. That book was published to much clamor amongst his fans and a tentative round of golf claps by the critics who weren’t certain which way to jump when it came to analyzing L’s eerily lucid lunacy. Nobody enjoyed receiving death threats or dead rats in the post. On the other hand, endorsing such maxims as “The kindest and most noble act any sapient being may commit is to never procreate” and “Consciousness is an abomina­tion” wasn’t too spiffy on a journalist’s credentials.

Warning: Puppets.