Month: October 2021

Three Family Portraits by Matt Henshaw

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Matt Henshaw provides us with a rather unique series of snapshots, showcasing a dysfunctional family at three different stages. The parents are awful, disgusting, and happier apart. As it turns out, they receive a child that almost perfectly resembles the state of their relationship and the household he’ll soon be joining.
We begin with the premature birth of Mother and Father’s new son, as labor begins during Mother’s shift waitressing at the diner. Father, unfaithful and almost certain the child isn’t his, finally arrives in the delivery room to witness the excruciating birth of a child neither parent could have anticipated.
We skip forward eighteen months for our next glimpse of the family trio, witnessing further descent into chaos. While they’ve been blessed with something that is not the child they expected, Mother insists on struggling to do her best while Father distances himself to a greater extent.
Skipping forward one final time, we are treated to something repulsive and insane, a household fully descended into madness, filth, and decay. You’ll have to read it for yourself if you want to know more. I can’t tell you anything else because sharing any further details would spoil the whole experience.
Henshaw hits us with a raw and visceral nightmare of parenthood. Tapping into something I think might be more common than a lot of people think, he paints us a textual portrait of the fears and terrors that plague all new parents as they await the birth of their first child, or maybe every child, taken to an extreme that leaves the reader repulsed.

This title is part of the http://www.godless.com 31 Days of Godless event, released on October 24th, 2021. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Three Family Portraits by Matt Henshaw – OCTOBER 24th

Dissing D*sney by Matt Shaw

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It pleased me a great deal to see another author, one I respect a great deal, deciding that it was worthwhile to focus on Disney as a target for extreme, unpleasant literature.
Matt Shaw dedicates his exceptional talent and delicious wit to providing the reader with horrific, unsettling epilogues to well-known tales previously co-opted by Disney and watered down for children. In a sense, it feels almost as though Shaw is restoring a sort of balance by bringing the darkness and sardonic wit to stories that were largely rather dark before Disney got ahold of them.
I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, but just the act of sharing which story connects with which fairytale property will, in some cases, spoil some surprises. I want to be sure you take that into consideration before you read beyond this point.
The escapades of Prince Charming with a series of princesses begin to seem reminiscent of Henry VIII in the stories Happy Ever After, Glass, and Bloods. I was especially pleased with Happy Ever After, in that it went the direction I anticipated it would go by the end. It’s nice to know there’s a writer out there with the key to my perverse, cruel heart.
The Toy Maker paints a picture of kindly old Gepetto that would disturb any fan of Pinocchio.
A Dinner Date provides us with the natural outcome one might expect for the characters of Bambi.
Wonderland shows us a terrible fate befalling Alice in her desperate search for Wonderland.
Grief brings the story of Nemo to a close, teaching an important lesson to a child along the way.
The Lion King is concluded with a truly ignoble end with Selfie.
The Harsh Truth shares The Little Mermaid meeting her end.
Finally, The Biggest brings a close to this collection as well as the story of The Jungle Book.
If you’re looking to ruin your childhood in retrospect, this is the collection for you. This is the end of innocence, the graphic and bleak punctuation that closes the book on the comforting tales that brought vibrant, technicolor characters to your youth.

Dissing D*sney was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. For a limited time, you can obtain this for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Dissing Disney by Matt Shaw

Ejaculate Of the Incubus by The Professor

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Oh dear me, Professor, dear me.
I began Ejaculate of the Incubus with high expectations brought on by the, quite frankly, stellar performance during KillerCon 2021 of a separate, though no less graphic and revolting tale. As you can probably ascertain, I was most assuredly not disappointed.
This lovely tale starts as an unnamed narrator meets with an old friend, Professor Roberts, for tea. Anticipating some minor transformation resulting from Roberts returning from his recent honeymoon, our narrator is taken aback by a far more startling and peculiar metamorphosis having taken place. A prim and proper, detached and naive gentleman no more, Roberts displays a wild-eyed intensity and disheveled condition as he begins to recount recent events.
It was the honeymoon between Roberts and his bride, Lily, at an old monastery on the Sussex coast, that led them to discover a peculiar metallic object buried in the sand. Returning to their lodging, they caught a glimpse of a strangely proportioned man emerging from the surf, and they hurried to the security of human habitation. Upon inspection of their discovered object, Roberts discerned graphic depictions etched onto the surface that shocked his puritanical sensibilities.
This is where the story truly blossoms into something altogether peculiar, blending eroticism and revulsion into a dizzying melange of fluids both human and infernal.
The author, publishing under the nom de plume of The Professor, provides us with a deliciously vile story that lends sophisticated use of language and eloquence to acts of sexual depravity one typically finds when perusing the Urban Dictionary or Reddit forums. To say that I was impressed would be an understatement. I knew to expect something magnificent from this author, and I was still blown away.
The audio narration of the same work, provided by the author, is a fantastic experience that adds a different nuance and enjoyment to the experience. I’ll be eagerly awaiting any new material from The Professor.

This title is available as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can obtain this for yourself by going to the website or downloading the app for your mobile device. The link is below:

Ejaculate of the Incubus by The Professor

Squid Game (2021)

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I’d been seeing a whole lot of hype about the Korean mini-series Squid Game on Netflix for a while before I took the time to watch it for myself. I hadn’t been dedicating much if any, time to watching movies or television shows for what turned out to be quite an extended interval. I have to say that Squid Game was a damn fine way to return to watching a series.
While the overall narrative isn’t entirely original, its various components are assembled in such a way as to create a rather unique and exciting experience. Hugely reminiscent of Battle Royale, Squid Game incorporates elements familiar to fans of The Running Man, Tzameti, Series 7: The Contenders, and the old BBC series The Prisoner. While mingling all of these diverse elements–as well as other sources of inspiration–it transforms itself into a captivating and largely unpredictable story that retained this particular viewer’s attention throughout.
Primarily following Lee Jung-jae’s Seong Gi-hun, we’re introduced to a man living a life of regret and poor decisions but who is, at heart, a genuinely decent guy. It would be easy to suggest he’s a degenerate gambler and a deadbeat father, but there’s a whole lot more to him than that, and it’s quite clear that there’s a stubborn streak of optimism and desire to do right that motivates him along the way.
When presented with a mysterious opportunity to potentially change the course of his life and keep his daughter nearby, Seong Gi-hun accepts a fateful invitation that will certainly change his life forever, assuming he manages to survive.
Along with 455 other people, including his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo (played by Park Hae-soo) and a pickpocket he only briefly encountered, Kang Sae-byeok (played by Jung Hoyeon), the numbered contestants wake up in a large auditorium, wearing jumpsuits. The collection of mostly strangers are greeted by armed and masked workers who carry out the commands of the even more mysterious Frontman.
Led to the first game of the challenge, the sinister reality of their situation becomes terrifyingly real and the remaining contestants must determine whether the potential reward outweighs the all-too-real risks associated with the games they’re expected to play.
It’s all but impossible to write anything more than this without giving away spoilers. I don’t know if I should even worry about that, knowing how popular the series happens to be, but I’m sure there are plenty of people still sitting on the fence and uncertain whether they should watch the series, and I can’t help but say that they’d be making a mistake by not settling in for the series.
When the sixth episode concludes, only the most inhuman of us would be left unmoved and devastated. Consider that a fair warning, that you’re going to hurt while you’re watching the events unfold, helpless to do or say anything to change what we’re witnessing.
The only thing I found disappointing in the whole nine-episode series was the final moments of that concluding episode, and that wasn’t enough of a disappointment to sour how I feel about the show as a whole.
As a commentary on the predatory and toxic aspects of capitalist systems, Squid Game succeeds where plenty of other movies and series have failed to elevate the conversation. The mysterious Frontman says it best when he suggests that the goal is to give the 456 contenders an equal chance, where the outside world made equality a virtual impossibility.

Aliens: Infiltrator by Weston Ochse, Narrated by Bronson Pinchot

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I don’t know when–or even if–I’ll have a chance to play Aliens: Fireteam, but listening to the audiobook for Weston Ochse’s Aliens: Infiltrator certainly sets the stage for a fascinating and original action/horror gaming experience. If I never get around to playing the game, it won’t be for lack of interest, and it certainly won’t be due to this book disappointing me.
The protagonist, Dr. Hoenikker, serves as a cipher of sorts, the lens through which we experience the introduction to the Weyland-Yutani scientific facility. While there’s ample character development across the board, Hoenikker being the newest member of the scientific team provides us with a great opportunity to experience everything through a fresh set of eyes. With his military experience, Ochse does a fantastic job bringing the supporting cast of characters to life, particularly the former Colonial Marines on staff at Pala Station.
With Murphy’s Law in full effect, Dr. Hoenikker joins the crew of Pala Station just as an infiltrator begins a campaign of corporate espionage. As with the real world, this relatively small trouble of spying and theft escalates in a cascade effect that explodes into an utter nightmare by the conclusion. Laboratory experiments go horribly wrong, communication breaks down, and everything falls apart.
Experimenting with what we’ve come to think of as the black goo from the Alien prequel films from Ridley Scott, we encounter some interesting and dangerous creatures produced from the local fauna, potentially more deadly than the Xenomorphs we’ve all come to know and love. This being an Alien novel, of course, there are Xenomorphs in the mix, and we get further exposure to how the black goo can modify the outcome of the genesis taking place.
Bronson Pinchot’s narration is sufficiently skilled that the characters almost always sound distinctly separate and discernable as individual actors in the narrative playing out. I especially enjoyed the performance for Rawlings, who I couldn’t help but picture as an African American Matthew McConaughey. The only instances where Pinchot’s narration failed was concerning female characters, but I’ve heard worse over time.

Curse of the Ratman by Jay Wilburn

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To set the stage for this story, the best I can think to suggest is that it’s a twisted abomination crafted by combining Willard (either the 1971 classic or the superior 2003 remake) with the Clive Barker story, “In the Hills, the Cities.” That doesn’t truly capture the sheer giant monster lunacy of what Wilburn’s created here, but it’ll whet the appetite and prepare the reader as best one can.
A family curse comes on with a vengeance, rampaging across the southeast, leaving a swath of devastation that can only be explained as a natural disaster. To call it an act of God would be to beg the question of what sort of God would allow such a monstrosity to exist.
The intense pacing of Wilburn’s tale propels us forward even as we want to turn back, knowing that nothing good can come of what he’s racing us toward.
If he’d written a novel, including more of the family history and details of the events in the distant past, I’d have gleefully settled in to read the whole thing. As captivating as the story gets, with the expanding threat thundering its way across the landscape, I would love to dive into the origins of the curse in greater detail. There’s a thoroughly fascinating story to be told, and maybe if we beg Wilburn enough–in the form of spreading the word of the Ratman–he’ll find himself compelled to share that part of the tale with us in similar detail.

This novella was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com and you can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app. The link is below:

Curse of the Ratman by Jay Wilburn

Fucking Scumbags Burn In Hell: Halloween Special by Drew Stepek

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The Trap House provides us with a story of squandered potential, pissed away by an inconsiderate jackass. We’ve all known people who peaked in high school–or sooner–who never evolve past that point, and who can’t seem to recognize that the rest of the world has moved on around them. Get ready to see that taken to an extreme.
Lil Snap was seemingly a golden child, with a great future ahead of him, until he tripped over his own ego and shit the bed in a spectacularly public display of ignorance and bigotry. Of course, one can never be too sure just how accurate that recollection is, seeing as how the character is a selfish psychopath with delusions of grandeur.
With everyone turning their backs on him out of self-preservation and dignity, an embarrassing altercation in a check-out lane shatters the last vestiges of humanity in the vile cretin.
Enter Hooper, with a deal that’s too good to be true. For someone accustomed to expecting everything handed to them, there’s no consideration that it can’t be that easy.
The punishment in this installment is one I didn’t see coming until it had already been enacted. It’s become a thrill, trying to figure out from the narrative which direction the comeuppance will take, but this one hit me out of the blue, even though the clues were there.

The Trap House is Drew Stepek’s contribution to the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com, released on his birthday of October 21st. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or downloading the app. The link is below:

Trap House (Fucking Scumbags Burn in Hell: Halloween Special) by Drew Stepek – OCTOBER 21st

My Dildo Is a Serial Killer by Simon McHardy and Sean Hawker

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I’ve never looked at a dildo and mistaken it for a chest expander, but I’m not a priest, so there’s that. This is how Hawker and McHardy begin their novella, My Dildo Is a Serial Killer.
A priest opens a box containing what he believes to be exercise equipment, and insanity ensues. Of course, this mistake arises because someone who couldn’t spell “exorcism” delivered the box with the expectation that someone associated with the church would be able to remedy the problem with the giant purple dildo possessed by the spirit of a serial killer. His name is Terry.
Escaping from the exorcism performed by a couple of priests, Terry finds his way to Christina, a disgusting human being with potentially no redeeming qualities. She is the perfect tool for the fulfillment of Terry’s needs. It’s not totally her fault, though. Wait until you meet her parents because, as messed up as Christina happens to be, there’s no doubt they played a key role in nudging her along that path.
I’m not telling you anything more about this one. You have to experience it for yourself. The deaths are over-the-top and gruesome, the humor is dark and perverse, and the blistering pace keeps the reader raw and sore as McHardy and Hawker bestow us with a barrage of absurd, graphic, and hilarious events from beginning to climax.
These two are fantastic on their own. Combined, they craft a seamless narrative that captures the best of both worlds.

This title was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can pick up a digital copy of this release by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app on your mobile device of choice.

My Dildo is a Serial Killer by Simon McHardy and Sean Hawker

Bone Cider by Lucas Mangum

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Lucas Mangum listed Bradbury and Laymon as his inspirations when writing Bone Cider, but he didn’t need to tell us that. Reading this story made me want to pick up my worn out copies of Bradbury’s The October Country or The Illustrated Man or Laymon’s Night In the Lonesome October.
Mangum’s descriptions of the sights, sounds, and experiences shared by our young protagonist evoke reminiscence of the Octobers of childhood. Reading these words, we can’t help but feel the chill in the air, the fallen leaves blowing with a light rattle across the sidewalk as we trespass in the gloom of dusk or full night, and the tingling deep inside that remained only so long as we still believed in the magic of those nights. Some of us hold on to that tingling sensation well into adulthood, and Mangum is clearly one of those people.
Bone Cider is a story of loss, of family, and of the way the world seems–or is–different when the nights are long and the world is only thinly separated from other worlds we glimpse only in our dreams. Lucas Mangum brings all of that to life in the tale he tells.

Bone Cider was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for the month of October, 2021. You can grab a copy for yourself by going to the website or using the app on your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Bone Cider by Lucas Mangum

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows by James Lovegrove, Narrated by Dennis Kleinman

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James Lovegrove writes himself into the narrative with The Cthulhu Casebooks, in a fictionalized account of his own life in the preface to this tale. As a distant relation to the former H.P. Lovecraft, a parcel finds its way to him upon the passing of another member of the Lovecraft family.
Contained within is a trilogy of manuscripts penned by Dr. John Watson, confidant and partner of Sherlock Holmes. In the tale that unfolds, we learn that the meeting of Watson and Holmes did not transpire as we’ve come to believe. Additionally, further elements of Watson’s previously available documentation of the cases he and Holmes investigated have been fictionalized to protect the world from forbidden knowledge of things best left unknown.
From the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan to long-forgotten catacombs beneath London, a global tale of unspeakable horror emerges. Upon meeting one another, Holmes and Watson find themselves in pursuit of answers to a rash of ritualistic deaths occurring during the new moon. What they discover will leave the pair, as well as other familiar characters from the Holmes’ archives, changed in ways never hinted at within the released accounts from Watson.
All-in-all, this was a worthwhile mixture of the Lovecraftian mythos and the characters developed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The writing style emulates Doyle’s prose surprisingly well, and the insertion of creatures like Nyarlathotep and Cthulhu into the narrative was performed seamlessly. The story itself didn’t impress me quite as much as I’d hoped, but it was decent enough to nudge me toward checking out the additional two volumes in this series.
Dennis Kleinman’s narration of Watson was quite fantastic, as was his performance of Holmes’ dialogue. Sadly, the other characters felt perhaps a bit less set apart from the background. This is not to say that they weren’t distinct enough to tell them apart, because he managed that quite well, just that they weren’t brought to life in quite the same way the two protagonists were.

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Cthulhu-Casebooks-Sherlock-Holmes-and-the-Shadwell-Shadows-Audiobook/1094095028?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp&shareTest=TestShare