Review – This Skin Was Once Mine by Eric LaRocca

A collection of four short stories, each concerned with the damage and hurt that humans do to one another, Eric LaRocca has created an intense, prosaic series of horror tales.

Opening with the eponymous This Skin Was Once Mine, the idea of trauma, but more importantly the lasting effect it has, is never more so poetically captured. Soaked into her skin, Jillian’s perspective is saturated in victimhood though she sees herself as a monster. This odd contradiction plays out in a number of ways: her parents and her feelings toward them; her treatment by others. Called back to her childhood home after a twenty year absence, her father’s funeral peels away the past to reveal something quite awful.

Deftly crafted, with little said explicitly until the end, the dread of the story is palpable yet frustratingly out of sight. As Jillian cuts through the obfuscations, she discovers layers of monstrosity right at the heart of her childhood and, thereby, within herself. It’s the disgusting and nasty cycle violence that family abuse creates laid bare in the words of a fairy tale. And, for that, it’s brutal.

Slightly more obscure in its telling, though clear in its meaning, Seedling is, once more, concerned with the death of a parent. Left completely anonymous, the narrator is never really known; a device that works well considering the direction the story takes. The father calls after the passing of the mother and, immediately the character goes to make sure he is alright.

What happens thereafter is a strange, mesmerisingly dark fantasy tale of wounds and hurts and the silences between people that are broken by shared grief. It’s not a complex idea, this notion of being let in to understand another’s suffering but it’s the twist in the story that makes it so much more. Those wounds fester; dark things are born there. In Seedlings it’s the revealing of those grievances, the releasing of them, that is so shocking.

Using an old fashioned quality to the writing, All The Parts Of You That Won’t Easily Burn reads like a classic. Propriety and social accountability permeate the story as Enoch immediately critiques a shopkeeper he has sought out. Looking to gift his husband a chef’s knife to mark a special dinner party they are hosting, Enoch, instead, finds himself beguiled. The shopkeeper, sensing something within Enoch, offers him a deal; the knife for a favour.

He wants to cut him and, though Enoch is initially repulsed, he acquiesces. Revelling in this strange new fetish, Enoch can’t get the man or the sensation out of his head. Obsessed with it, he finds his way back to the shop becoming more deeply embroiled in the activity. A disturbing yet compelling series of events, of opening up strange new associations, and breaking down of socially accepted codes, it’s a story that is as insidious as it is well crafted.

Prickle is hard define. There’s a sense of something more hidden behind the story and yet on the surface it’s two old friends reacquainting. In their seventies, both have past their prime yet their minds seem as sharp and as cruel as ever.

Playing a game to cause slight harm to unaware people, the two men enjoy the strange power they hold over the unsuspecting. But when one of them goes too far, it highlights a madness the other hadn’t seen before. What it says about the rationale and reasonings behind human games isn’t really clear but, for a short story, it’s an unsettling ending to a dark collection.

Swirling with malevolent and dangerous thoughts, This Skin Was Once Mine is a poetically written set of stories. Tinged with an atmosphere of the past and touching on some twisted truths, it’s a strange and gripping group of horror tales.

Review copy

Published by Titan Books

Review – Unspeakable Horror 3: Dark Rainbow Rising edited by Vince A. Linguine

When I saw the lineup for this collection, I had to get a copy. Featuring Paul Tremblay, Dan Coxon, Hailey Piper and more the book promised a lot. It delivered even more. An anthology thematically based around the LBGT+ community and its struggles to be, as well as those seeking to destroy it, the stories look out from multiple angles; horror about being persecuted, about being hunted, at times turning the tables but all offering insight into people’s perspectives. Full of brilliant stories, this is a fantastic book.

Hailey Piper’s Bad with Secrets was the first story in the collection to hook me in to the anthology. Set during the McCarthy era of witch hunts, it’s an insightful and cutting commentary on the LGBTQ+ detractors. Riddled with fantastical and supernatural horrors, it’s a story that says a lot in a small space.

Equally impressive and subversive was Such a Lively Place by Matthew A. Reyes. Taking the idea of a same sex couple moving to the suburbs, the set up is wildly twisted and brilliantly executed when the weird cult-like HOA take the husbands to task over their choice of flag.

Incident on a Social Media Platform is a dark and twisted story that is truly compelling. Narrated in a flowing cadence that captures a punk-esque rebellion, a gay couple’s relationship becomes warped by one of the men’s obsession with something entirely new. Powerful and weird, it’s a gripping tale.

Following a non-binary character into the night, Queen of Dirt’s End does something special. Opening a doorway into a mind’s eye that revels in the difference of itself, the story turns and twists, becoming a brilliantly brutal piece of sci-fi body horror. Deftly crafted and wonderfully executed, this was a definite standout as the sheer uniqueness of its premise and its delivery boils with talent.

Paul Tremblay’s story did that thing he does, issuing a conclusion to If Dillon Believed in Any Kind of Ghosts which left more questions and answers. Similarly, Border Towns by James Cato left a disturbing afterimage delivered on the back of a fantastically creepy story. Following that uncertainty and dreadful narration style Immaculate by Maryse Meijer was a wonderfully weird slice of left field horror.

Kaitlin Tremblay’s Dinosaur on the 18th Hole, digs into the trauma and anxiety around a past event, cleverly cutting into the paranoia of being hunted. Wishbone, however, takes that same anxiety but approaches it from a different direction as a young man seeks to understand and explore what he is in Michael Thomas Ford’s unsettling but compelling tale of desire and dangerous liaisons.

A further standout in this collection was Amanda M. Blake’s The Thing That Crawls. Powerfully executed, the story compellingly details a female U.S Marine’s journey in snapshot pieces. Considering her place amongst the men, her invisibility as a women, an affair and the consequent fallout. Visceral and gripping, it’s an outstanding tale.

An anthology stuffed with ideas and compelling stories, Unspeakable Horror 3: Dark Rainbow Rising is an original and highly engaging book.

Review copy

Published by Crystal Lake Publishing

Review – Everything The Darkness Eats by Eric LaRocca

Like many a horror fan, I’ve heard of Eric LaRocca but I hadn’t had the opportunity to read his work until now. As the authors first long form work, Everything The Darkness Eats is a dark tale about an insidious evil consuming a small town. Jagged, violent and unremitting, it’s an interesting introduction to a writer with a lot of hype.

After an impressive prologue, the book breaks into three distinct perspectives. Ghost, a damaged widower; Malik, a police officer and the enigmatic Mr Crowley. The latter seems to be abducting people about town though for what purpose doesn’t become clear until much later on. Malik, ostensibly investigating the disappearances is, however, more concerned with the prejudice he and his husband are experiencing from their neighbours. Ghost, caught up by the death of his wife and daughter, and still recovering from his crash injuries, has a different cross to bear; a bizarre spirit that lives on his misery and despair.

Each character arc evolves separately though each revolves around emotional pain in some form. At the heart of it is the nightmarish desire of Mr Crowley as he seeks to transform himself into something powerful through the death and destruction of others. It’s here that the title comes back into play. Ghost, Malik and Me Crowley are all consumed by the dark thoughts preoccupying them in one way or another. How these perspectives tie together is violently concluded. Despite a somewhat disjointed feeling to proceedings, the storylines of the characters are engaging and, in some instances, extremely violent.

Short at just two hundred pages, there were some impressive moments within the story though there were some caveats. Ultimately, it was a book that still leaves me intrigued enough to want to read more by LaRocca. A decent novel, Everything The Darkness Eats feels like a modern take on the old school horror novels I remember; lurid, gory and sometimes challenging.

Review copy

Published by Titan Books