SPOILER ALERT!
“Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” a short story about a mysterious cannabis cultivator, won the 2026 Alien Buddha Horror Showdown. The win gives author N.J. Gallegos the high of being the competition’s first back-to-back and first three-time winner.
Gallegos won in 2025 for her zombie pandemic tale “The Call Shift” and again in 2022 for her domestic horror story “The Fruits of Her Labor.” All three of her winning short stories are available to read for free on the Alien Buddha Press Blog by typing the story title into the search bar. You can read my review of “The Call Shift” here.
In “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” we meet Mary Jane as she’s eyeballing a hot woman at the bar. Mary Jane makes her move on the woman, who happens to be a wealthy female cannabis cultivator named Jacq. The two women share immediate chemistry, and when Mary Jane learns what Jacq does for a living, she says, “It’s fate, babe,” because of her name.
Oh, Mary Jane. She obviously doesn’t realize that she’s in an N.J. Gallegos story.
The two women go to Jacq’s mansion to finish what the flirting and dancing started. However, the night takes a weird turn when Mary Jane notices portraits of Jacq’s last three ex-girlfriends displayed prominently in the ornate foyer of the mansion.
The night gets even weirder when Mary Jane learns Jacq’s latest cannabis strain is named after her last ex-girlfriend Gem. After sampling a couple of hits of the Gem strain, Mary Jane is curious about how she created it.
Jacq’s response? “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Unfortunately, Mary Jane’s brain is too addled from the cannabis to recognize foreshadowing when she hears it.
Anyway, Jacq agrees to share her trade secrets with Mary Jane and escorts her to where the cannabis is developed. Jacq leads Mary Jane down two sets of stairs and through a keypad-protected fortified door. Gallegos reveals her dark sense of humor as she writes: “The door whooshed open, and a cloud of cannabis washed over them. Proving chivalry wasn’t dead, Jacq gestured. “After you, my dear.”
At least chivalry isn’t dead.
“Mary Jane’s Last Dance” is classic Gallegos, an author who loves to create dangerous, morally challenged women and let them act on their impulses. Gallegos did it with Casy Philips in her outstanding 2023 debut novel The Broken Heart. She did it again with Dr. Aldea Absinthe in her 2024 novel The Fatal Mind. More recently, she did it with Jules in her 2026 novella Eat Your Heart Out.
At this point, I believe Gallegos is having so much fun with her characters that she just can’t help herself.
As for her winning story in the 2026 Alien Buddha Horror Showdown, I won’t spoil the twist near the end. I’ll only remind you that the two women did dance at the bar, and the title of the tale is “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
RELATED LINKS
‘The Call Shift’ wins 2025 Alien Buddha Horror Showdown – LIONEL RAY GREEN
Najberg, Ellis, and Gallegos release new titles in first half of 2026 – LIONEL RAY GREEN
FRESH BLOOD: N.J. Gallegos – LIONEL RAY GREEN
SHORT SHOTS: ‘Close Encounters of the ER Kind’ – LIONEL RAY GREEN
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