Thank you so much for your kind words! I feel a bit overwhelmed! :)
I think this story is probably the best of the ones I wrote in the last couple of weeks. I enjoyed working on it a lot.
I agree with your points about my work being a bit too long for Hive to find general readers unfortunately. People are more used to short bursts than long 3.000+ words stories on the internet. It's a bit regrettable, but it is what it is.
As for publishing, it's really tough to be honest. I've been thinking about an anthology for a while, but I still feel I need a few more stories that truly shine. I think most of my work is average at best, apart from a few who are truly good. I'm also a bit wary about self-publishing, since I'd rather not throw out something that's subpar and editing also costs a ton of money. So that's a bit of a problem.
A good point are magazine submissions though that you touched on. There are a few places out there that are interesting and even a few horror themed magazines. So I might try my luck with them and see what happens.
Again thank you very much!
You're very welcome. I wish you well with the submissions - and as for the editing, proofreading, beta-reading, you can try online workshops that cost no money, just time - trading edits with other writers. Ah, but time is money... I used to spend thousands of hours of my life on unpaid edits, and the edits I got in return were often not useful to me. "Try killing off the daughter to bring the mom and dad closer to each other. Change the heroine's name to Gertrude, or something more interesting than Cecelia." Then the anti-Oxford-comma people, then the "was" + -ing and POV violation police.... ugh. Finding a compatible editor is just daunting. If you get ready to publish an anthology, let me know...