Author

Caleb Bethea

Date of Award

Summer 2023

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

English Language and Literatures

First Advisor

David Bajo

Abstract

Disco Murder City is a slasher detective story haunted by sleep paralysis demons. The plot, characters, genre conventions, and prose blur, bend, rotate, and break as an animation artist named Netti sets out to pin down the killer knifing kids down at the disco—by catering to his addiction of stealing masks from demons. The trauma of a sleep paralysis demon outbreak across the city has sent the youth to revive dead clubs. Through Netti’s meandering through the mystery, he grapples with addiction recovery, past trauma, and arbitrary guilt. He ends the novel by trading in his eccentric fur coat for a demon skin (that he just flayed in the disco) – becoming an in-between entity among humans and demons.

Rights

© 2023, Caleb Bethea

Available for download on Sunday, August 31, 2025

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