Iain Anderson’s Daddy was as surprising as it was captivating, keeping the reader–in this case, me–guessing until just before the shocking pivot in the narrative. Lauren is kidnapped and she’s certain it’s the work of a brutal murderer the press has dubbed The Callendar Man. Forced into a small, dark shed, Lauren soon learns she isn’t alone in the confined space. This story has something for everyone. We have a father’s love. There’s a sinister string of missing people turning up dead in a gruesome fashion. And, finally, we have the mystery of who or what is in the shed with Lauren. Iain Anderson might just answer the question that’s been plaguing you your whole life. Who’s your daddy?
Daddy is the Day Four release for the 31 Days of Godless event celebrating October 2021 at http://www.godless.com and you can obtain this story for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app. The link is below:
The second installment of Ash Ericmore’s Smalls Family series is somehow more engaging and intense than the first. Previously introduced to Edward Smalls as he experiences some peculiar circumstances in his attempt to produce a snuff film for a client, we’re now introduced to Daniel Smalls. Daniel’s nickname, Snuff, has nothing to do with the sort of films his brother was making, but is rather because he is really good at killing people. By the time you’ve finished reading Snuff, you’ll be convinced that he’s earned the nickname. The Smalls family is a dangerous group, for sure, and Daniel is almost frighteningly competent and nonchalant about taking lives. The story begins with Daniel having drinks with Megan, a woman he suspects might be into him. There’s no reason to suspect things will go sideways, but they certainly do. All Daniel knows is that it has something to do with his brother, Michael, and Eastern Europeans. The killings are fantastic in this story. It’s a short thing, but Ericmore packs so much graphic violence and death into these pages that it’ll feel like it has to be a much larger work. Megan’s fate leaves a reader feeling gutted and there’s a particular death of one of our Eastern European antagonists that will really fuck with your head. You have to check this shit out!
You can obtain this story for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app. The link is below:
Harold Schechter’s The Pied Piper tells the sordid tale of Charles ‘Smitty’ Schmid, Jr., The Pied Piper of Tuscon. A strange, diminutive man, Schmid developed a carefully crafted bad boy image and a demeanor reminiscent of Elvis Presley that aided him in drawing attention and devotion from other loners and outcasts. With the assistance of two of these friends circling in his orbit, Schmid committed his first murder in 1964. He didn’t stop there, murdering two sisters only a little over a year later. Bragging about these killings whenever the occasion arose, he displayed neither shame nor remorse over what he’d done. Schechter’s portrayal of Schmid and his friends is less than flattering, though much of what he shares seems to be descriptions of these people from either Schmid himself or others in his circle or involved with the case. It’s interesting to see so much detail packed into such a short narrative, and it was fascinating to learn more about one of the lesser-known serial killers from the annals of American criminal history. Steven Weber provides terrific narration, proving again to be articulate and eloquent in his delivery of the story.
Harold Schechter’s Panic showcases an early American example of moral panic, mass hysteria, and pattern recognition gone horribly awry. This well-researched narrative begins with details of a tragic event, the result of the sort of irrational, hysterical panic arising in the 1930s surrounding the fear of child rapists and murderers surging across the American landscape. One father’s need to protect his daughters from a danger he perceived as being right around the corner erupts in a disastrous and heartbreaking conclusion. From that awful event, Schechter traces backward to the small number of isolated incidents that had been blown up and made to seem like part of a growing trend. Each of these individual cases was certainly terrible, but they were hardly part of a nationwide surge in that sort of criminal activity. Looking at the world we live in today, one can see that we haven’t grown beyond this sort of outrage-driven crusade where we perceive the boogeyman du jour in every shadow. Steven Weber’s narration is perfectly suited to this gripping non-fiction essay. I’m pleased to see that he continues to narrate other short samples of Schechter’s larger body of work contained in Bloodlands.
Lindsay Crook tells us a tale that’s a little bit Hostel, a little bit Nightcrawler, and a whole lot of unpleasantness. Does that sound amazing to you? It really should! As important as it is to love what you do, Hank loves his job perhaps a little too much. As a guard in the high-security facility where the most depraved desires are fulfilled, Hank witnesses atrocities that would shatter the spirit of most people. He is not like most people. What happens when watching simply isn’t enough? We’ve all taken liberties at work. There’s no sense in pretending we’re innocent of that. Unfortunately for Hank, his employers are far less forgiving than most. One might expect such a thing from a shadowy, secret organization that caters to only the ultra-wealthy and decadent when legal pleasures are no longer sufficient. Come walk the halls with us and tune into the monitors as we watch horrors unfold.
Day 2 of 31 Days of Godless brings us this fantastic title from Lindsay Crook. You can pick it up for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app. The link is below:
Warning: There are minor spoilers included in this review!
We rejoin John Stabberger as he gleefully slaughters a pregnant neo-Nazi. How else would one slaughter a neo-Nazi than with glee? Upon extracting the baby from her foul womb with perhaps less than surgical precision, he has to figure out what he’s going to do with the infant. As single-minded as Stabberger might be, he recognizes that the newborn isn’t guilty of the mother’s evil. Unfortunately, there are Nazis everywhere, including the hospital where Stabberger attempts to unload the baby on a buxom nurse. In fact, the hospital is less a hospital than a laboratory environment where awful human experimentation is conducted. Will John Stabberger finally meet his match in the unanticipated battle ahead of him? Well, of course not! He’s John Fucking Stabberger! Questions are answered: As sharp as an SS uniform might appear, is it anywhere near as sharp as a scalpel? How many razor blades can one fit into the wrenched-open jaws of a Nazi scientist? New questions arise: What is John Stabberger’s secret past? What happens when the blade spawning Nazi Annihilator encounters a target who is out of reach, with 24-hour protection and surveillance in a maximum-security prison? This installment of the Godless League takes no prisoners. Do any of them? Taking aim at anti-vaxxers and Nazis alike, John Baltisberger delivers a tense, exciting thrill ride through hospital corridors and basement laboratories like a B-movie hero on steroids.
This is the first book available as part of the Godless Halloween event: 31 Days of Godless. You can pick up a copy for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Little Slaughterhouse On the Prairie shares the story of the Bender family, contemporaries of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family in Kansas during the late 1800s. A family of serial killers operating an inn in the remote, seemingly endless fields and plains of Kansas, the Benders were responsible for an unknown number of missing persons. Like something out of the fictional Splatter Western tales published by Death’s Head Press, the Benders were a monstrous family. Inviting guests into their inn for dinner and sleeping accommodations, those guests would frequently be greeted with a sledgehammer to the head before being further mutilated, robbed, and disposed of on their sprawling homestead. Men, women, and children alike fell victim to the predations of the Bender clan. The mystery of where the Benders disappeared, and what might have happened to them as they evaded justice was the primary focus of this narrative. Unfortunately, Schechter doesn’t seem to have any answers, even after all of his research. Ultimately, we’re left with more questions as multiple theories are proposed, some more appealing than others. Steven Weber’s narration is, again, fantastic. His delivery of these gruesome, historical details is satisfying and articulate.
Cocksucker is a joyride through the swamps of Florida. Lucas Milliron paints a not-so-pretty picture of an Everglades populated by incestuous hillbillies, cryptids, and wild pigs…essentially what anyone outside of Florida expects to find in Florida. We first meet Clive as he and his sister, Abigail, are enjoying each other’s company in a way most of us hope our children never will. The true miracle of this book is that the hillbilly family, and Clive in particular, ultimately come across as sympathetic by the end of this tale. Not many books featuring inbred families manage to make those same people the heroes of the story, and yet that’s precisely what the reader will find within these pages. Sure, they’re disgusting people in essentially every way one might imagine, but they’re also quirky, funny, and–most importantly–human. When the henhouse is destroyed and the chickens are slaughtered and exsanguinated, Clive is forced to accompany his father on a hunt for the chupacabra-like creature responsible. Instead, Clive makes his first real friend, and that is only the beginning of this strange adventure. In the meantime, a suddenly tense vacation for a group traveling from Florida back home to California leads them on a collision course with the inhuman residents of the swamp where Clive and his family live, and it’s safe to assume none of them will be the same again, assuming that they survive. If you only read one book containing graphic depictions of men being raped by a skunk ape, Cocksucker should be that book. Are there other books with that subject matter? I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t care. This is the only one you ever need to read.
You can also obtain a copy of Cocksucker for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your mobile devices. The link is below:
It’s been a long time since I first read The Woods Are Dark. I was a teenager at the time. This version of the story is vastly different from the one I remember, but that’s probably because this is a different version of the narrative from the version I’d been exposed to back then. Forty years after it was published, it doesn’t hold up as well as some of Laymon’s other material, but it was still fun to listen to the audiobook edition and reacquaint myself with the story. Two groups of people stumble across the hideous secrets hidden away in the forests near the seemingly quaint town of Barlow, and their lives will never be the same again if they manage to escape. Neala and Sherri stop at the diner after a harrowing experience on the road, only to find the patrons are planning to serve up something off the menu. Lander, Ruth, their daughter, Cordelia, and her boyfriend, Ben, stop for the night at what they anticipate will be a peaceful set of cabins, but they soon discover they’ll never have a peaceful night of sleep again. Facing off against the murderous, inbred, cannibal Krulls, the two groups of victims and an unlikely ally find themselves in a life or death struggle in the woods. But the Krulls aren’t the only things lurking in the darkness, as there’s something even the monsters fear out there. None of this is pleasant or fun. This is not that kind of story, and Laymon was not that kind of author. This short tale contains graphic depictions of violence of all kinds, cannibalism, dismemberment, murder, rape, and pretty much every awful thing a reader might expect to find. Lander’s story is particularly awful and disturbing, showcasing an educated, well-read man descending into madness and depravity in no time at all. The trauma of the experience, the loss of loved ones, and the constant state of terror hardly seem sufficient to explain how one transforms from man to beast in such record time. This descent isn’t something unfamiliar to those who’ve read more of the author’s material. Laymon–as in much of his work–wanted to hint, not too subtly, that our pretense of civilization is more tenuous than we often fool ourselves into believing it to be. So, while it may be unrealistic and a bit absurd, it’s important to note that this is fiction, and Lander’s transformation is meant to be an extreme example, a caricature in a sense, of how primitive and bestial we are just beneath the surface. There’s a brief, passing reference in the narrative to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (the basis for Apocalypse Now), and there are some intentional similarities to be found in The Woods Are Dark. Laymon knew exactly what he was doing when he crafted this story. The narration of the audiobook, performed by Bob Dunsworth, was not the best I’ve heard. Dunsworth has the voice of a radio DJ, with clear, articulate, annunciation, but there’s little more that I can say about him. He managed to make the characters distinct enough that nothing got confused or jumbled along the way, but his delivery was lacking in several ways.
We first meet Fiona, a single mother doing what she can to provide for her daughter. As the story unfolds, we learn just how far she’ll go to do precisely that, and to make the world just a little bit safer for her child. Wesley is a depraved piece of work. Killstreme introduces us to a man who can’t get off without viewing snuff pornography–or what he believes to be snuff, since there’s some positively hyperreal productions out there. His wife has been neglected as he’s lost all interest in her, instead focusing all of his attention on the dark web where he spends far too much time and money. When he receives a questionnaire from a contact online, he’s thrilled to discover he might be able to take his obsession to the next level. Wesley has an opportunity to star in his own snuff film. Will he have his dreams fulfilled or will Wesley discover that some offers are far too good to be true? Rayne Havok handily subverts the misogyny that goes hand-in-hand with the sort of people who want to see women hurt and murdered. In the end, even as a man, I can’t pretend there was a single aspect of this story that wasn’t deeply satisfying. The graphic sexual violence is something one should expect when reading anything by Rayne Havok, but this is particularly extreme and so well described as to almost feel real. I’m sure this story won’t be for everyone, but it most certainly is for me.
You can obtain this terrific little tale by going to http://www.godless.com or by using the Godless app on your favorite mobile device. Unfortunately, Amazon has determined this title should be banned twice now. The link is below:
Domus Necrophagous 