Review – Our Own Unique Affliction by Scott J. Moses

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth stating again; horror is one of the best mediums through which to explore the human condition. Our Own Unique Affliction does that in spades. A poetical and complex look at existential dread and metaphysical conundrums, it’s riveting.

This is how vampire stories should be told. Tormented by her own existence yet consumed by her (un)nature, Alice Ann stalks the night. Not the one she was born into, but the modern, brightly lit, unsleeping urban night of clubs and bars and social media hook ups. She hunts those places and travels incognito via a network of human helpers, travelling America along with her sister, Hannah Grace, and staying secret. Theirs is an immortal life, hidden from humans.

Yet, Alice still misses her former life. She envies her prey. Jealous of their ability to find meaning in the impermanence; warmth in the face of existence’s harsh reality. However, she will still protect her self and when one of her own begins to slay victims with abandon, threatening the network that allows her freedom, Alice is called into action. What she discovers unravels everything she thought she understood.

Our Own Unique Affliction considers some complicated issues, not least those about what reality and individual perception means. Against a character for whom time has become fluid, and where memory has lost its hold over identity, the problem of existentialism takes on an intriguing trajectory. But in all this, Alice Ann must still survive. Regardless of loss, the sense of being demands permanence. It’s what makes this novella so compelling – an exceptional blend of vampiric horror and human experience.

More than that, it’s written with a unique voice, the prose at turns hypnotic and visceral. Flowing, strange and highly original, Our Own Unique Affliction is a brilliant and brutal horror.

Review copy

Published by DarkLit Press

Review – Hummingbird by Christopher Badcock

After reading Those You Killed, an exceptional horror novel, I was excited to see that author Christopher Badcock had released a short story. A tale of grief, alcoholism and spiralling hysteria, Hummingbird is a churning, dark ode to loss and the desire to bring things back.

Drinking alone with little idea what day of the week it is, Isobel has spent weeks trying to drown out the grief of losing her partner Lottie. As she mourns, losing herself to alcohol and holding on too tightly to the memories of cancer wards and a future of happiness torn from her, Isobel becomes wrapped up in her sorrow, drifting away on recollections. In her stupor, she stumbles upon a tattoo shop hidden down an alleyway, deciding that inking a reminder of Lottie could help ease the pain.

A hummingbird – Lottie’s favourite creature and the design of her own tattoo, it’s wings in perpetual flight forming the sign of infinity, encompasses everything Isobel feels. Yet, the proprietor of the shop is a strange figure. Wreathed in smoke and regaling Isobel with a tale from his People’s tribe, the process changes into something hard to hold on to. As the days pass, the tattoo also changes, metamorphosing into real feathers and changing images. Torn between hysteria and terror, Isobel seeks out the shop only for it to have disappeared.

In a clever piece of writing, Hummingbird weaves the tattooist’s native tale through the grief of the main character’s story, both of them calling back to that first human instinct to undo loss and death. Wrapped up by the hallucinogenic nature of Isobel’s narrative, the horror of her body morphing into something else takes that impulse and changes it. A powerful look at loss and how grief makes a person lose themselves, it’s a short story with a quality to the writing that is darkly captivating.

Enveloping the awfulness of an alcoholic spiral driven by grief inside a strange illusionary tale on the nature of returning, Hummingbird is a consummate, visceral slice of horror.

Review copy

DarkLit Press

Review – Inside Out by Lor Gislason

DarkLit Press are doing some great things in the indie horror space, and Inside Out is a perfect example. Giving a nostalgic nod to old school authors, this body horror is a wild, gory novella that hits all the right notes.

Broken up between redacted reports and first hand accounts, the book operates perfectly as a fractured record of a terrifying worldwide infection. Cleverly keeping some of the information sparse only adds to the realistic nature of the growing disease as it emerges in various hot spots and quickly takes root. Unearthing a strange, almost alien, moss, a group of miners are instantly dissolved, disappearing with little trace left. But, as time goes on, stranger and weirder occurrences come to light. Infected people becoming something other than human; melted, liquified masses of flesh hellbent on absorbing others into themselves.

Each perspective gives a different look at the infection both in terms of psychological reaction and physical responses. Some fight against the awful disease, others embrace it, some even seek to profit from it. It’s a brutal and terrifying kaleidoscope of human suffering and stupidity; a collective mental breakdown in the face of something determined to dissolve physical beings. The parallels it suggests with our own pandemic offer an intriguing commentary but it is the descriptive body horror that takes it far beyond.

Fractured chapters, like one of its own amalgamations of gloop, Inside Out is an inventive, fast and gory horror. Strange and fresh, it’s a unique splatterpunk-esque addition to the apocalypse canon. But, be warned, it’s not for the queasy.

Review copy

Published by DarkLit Press

Review – Those You Killed by Christopher Badcock

Horror is so much more than just gore or brutality; that is merely the canvas upon which to explore the human condition and unveil the things which we keep secret. Those You Killed is a perfect example of that idea. Heartfelt, intense and cleverly constructed, its a novel that took me by surprise for all the right reasons.

Elwood is strung out. Heroin has taken over his life and taken everything from him. In a moment of clarity, he’s decided to kick the habit and, luckily for him, his dealer has decided to let him ride out the rehab in his lake house. A surprising act of charity for a man who runs LA’s smack scene but not one Elwood is able to think about too clearly. In fact, he can’t think about anything clearly; his mind addled and his memory Swiss-cheesed, he’s a junkie in every sense of the word. His whole being is consumed by chasing the next high and he knows that the coming week, trying to undo years of addiction, is going to be an awful both physically and mentally.

What he isn’t prepared for is the lake house. Dilapidated, the lake is well passed it’s former glory days and the house is neglected – much like Elwood. But, there’s something else. Something his curdled mind can’t grasp. Yet, with each passing hour, as the cold turkey kicks into gear, there’s a lot going on he can’t make sense of. Cosmic terrors haunting the woods, reanimated corpses dancing in the night and, worse, a presence trying to lure him deep into the forests. Luckily for Elwood, he meets Whiskey, a long time resident of the local area who becomes a touchstone of sanity. But, it’s Elwood’s journey and one he has to take if he hopes to make it out of the hole he’s dug himself and the nightmarish hallucinations trying to drag him under.

It’s this combination of terrible addiction (and the personal loss that comes with it) and terrifying ghouls that makes for such an intense narrative. As Elwood begins to remember his past, his present comes more into focus. And, with each moment, each small success, he comes closer to realising what is happening around him. Building the tension with every chapter, when the conclusion comes it hits with all the weight and force it can muster, and it is epic. Facing his own demons and the ones out in the woods, Elwood’s journey is a brilliant allegory.

Considering the brutal reality of addiction and the toll it takes on the user and all those around them, the story digs into some dark and very private spaces. As that arc curls around the story, the horrors haunting the woods take on an even greater significance so that when both come to a head, it’s impact is both meaningful and cathartic. In that sense, Those You Killed, the title itself a metaphor that echoes throughout the story, is a wonderful piece of horror writing. Baring those secret things that make us human, against a backdrop of superbly constructed folk horror, it’s a book that will stay with me.

Deftly written and populated with excellent characters, Those You Killed is a wildly creative and compelling work of horror.

Review copy

Published by DarkLit Press

Review – Dark Lines by Jack Harding

A collection of short stories, Dark Lines is an intriguing series of speculative fiction. Owing a nod to Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, indie author Jack Harding has produced a mix of dark and, at times, horrifying tales.

Featuring some of his earlier published stories, the collection also contains the very excellent short – The Devil’s Mountain. When a couple, fresh into their relationship, decide to visit an old Cold War site during a holiday to Germany, they end up discovering much more than the tour description promised. Building the sense of dread perfectly as the landscape becomes draped in fog and the cold creeps into the joints of the narrator, it’s a story that captures the first bloom of love only to dash it against something unknowable and terrifying.

It’s a skill Jack Harding has; able to build believable characters and settings effortlessly. Yet, it is his ability to close a story out that really shines. In Vagabond, the strange and seemingly ageless focus of the story, a homeless wanderer, follows a well trodden path but, it is the conclusion that really nails the whole thing so well.

This can also be seen in the grim Silent Treatment. The irritated inner narrative of a man stuck sleeping on the sofa after an argument with his wife holds enough clues to offer an insight into its trajectory. But, the gripping description and the way that the ending is hammered home is cleverly done.

Though, for me, there were a few too many moments when other stories or films were mentioned, used as signifiers to describe a situation, it hardly detracts from the tales contained within. What Harding has done is produce a collection that clearly shows a burgeoning talent and a mind rife with ideas.

Concerned with themes of sleep paralysis and intrusive thoughts, Dark Lines deals in the worrying and terrible inner workings of the mind. Twisting and inverting strange visions or capturing awful final moments, it’s a collection that’s as character driven as it is inventive. Dark, unsettling and well crafted, Dark Lines is exemplary indie fiction.

My copy

Published by DarkLit Press

Review – Slice of Paradise: a DarkLit Press anthology

A collection of beach based horror stories, Slice of Paradise is full of nasty little vignettes that speak to the disparity between the joy of a holiday and the terror hidden within each tale.

Whilst some, like Jack Harding’s offering is a mere hundred word suggestion, other stories are longer and more complete. Yet each one is a sharp, short and bloody piece of writing. As a fan of short stories, this anthology is a perfect distraction, allowing the reader to dip in at their leisure. For me, however, a few authors really stood out.

Roman Hill’s They Eat People, You Know? eschewed the standard ‘things in the water’ trope for a twist on the serial killer idea. Following two, young, American girls travelling along Australia’s coastline in the 1980s, the tale weaves a sense of tension and fear through the narrative expertly, leaning on social apprehension perfectly to produce an excellent and shocking story. Gripped from the outset, Hill kept me hooked right up to the final revelation.

Equally intriguing was Spencer’s Hamilton’s Out of The Shadows, Into the Sun. Told between a past and present narrative that sees Adam travelling to his husband’s native island for a getaway, it’s rife with guilt, paranoia and hidden horrors. Whilst the ending is brutal, it’s made so by the terribleness of realising the one you love is nothing like you thought; that the small voice at the back of your mind was right all along. Cleverly crafted, it hits from an unseen angle and is all the more powerful because of it.

Finally, The Guardian by Philip Fracassi fulfilled all those nightmares of a paradise curdled into panic. Hoping for a proposal of marriage, Eva and her boyfriend, Bryce, join two other couples to venture to a private beach where, their guide assures them, they will see a real paradise. Beautiful white sand, clear surf, peace, quiet. That is until Karyn and Terry begin screaming. A sun bleached story of terror and trauma, it captures the essence of the anthology brilliantly.

In general, Slice of Paradise is a quick and fast flurry of frightening stories – perfect for a little beach time reading.

My Copy

Published by DarkLit Press