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:
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.
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:
Jonathan Butcher has assembled quite the vile and visceral collection of stories in Scats, Splats, and Stupid Twats. It’s a quick read, but one that manages to leave one hell of an impact on the reader. The anchor of this collection, The Chocolateman, definitely has me anticipating the release of the novel inspired by this short. A disorienting and frankly revolting chance encounter in a public restroom sets the stage for a particularly filthy sort of horror befalling a man who despises any manner of filth. The stories Slop and Pretty Cunt showcase a certain graphic and visceral reaction to infidelity that will satisfy anyone who has been on the receiving end of that sort of treatment. Taking everything too far, Butcher provides a catharsis, penning fantasies that bring to light some of the darker thoughts people have experienced in times of pain and vulnerability. The other four stories run the gamut of topics. We experience the undying love between a mother and child, the harsh consequence of senility afflicting a wizard, a Halloween ritual of monstrous proportions, and a broken home struggling to stitch itself together. Butcher also includes a poem replete with fantastic descriptive elements and visually stunning imagery. This is a fantastic collection of shorts that will absolutely demand the attention of any reader brave enough to dive in.
This collection was released on http://www.godless.com as part of the 31 Days of Godless event. You can grab a copy for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app. The link is below:
Peter Caffrey brings us a new tale of scumbaggery, and with it, a new glimpse of what Hooper is capable of in Freak Fuck. We meet Doctor Oliver/Doctor Fairweather just as he’s transitioning from one name to another, setting up shop in a new country. Our fly-by-night plastic surgeon dedicates his life to preying on the insecure and vulnerable, promising beauty and restoration of youth, only to take whatever he can swindle from his prospective clients/patients. As the story progresses, we discover that the good doctor has a great many unsavory and horrific appetites, the greatest of which being his desire to experiment on unwilling subjects, crafting monstrous perversions of natural, human beauty. When his accomplice nurse fails to arrive for work, Nurse Hooper arrives in just the nick of time, ready and willing to aid the man in his larceny and misdeeds. This is not the Hooper we’ve come to expect, and, arriving on scene as Hooper does, it sets a whole different tone to the interactions between scumbag and arbiter, showcasing Hooper as one who can adapt to whatever the circumstances require. Caffrey’s addition to the Hoopiverse brings us one of the more extreme and vile scumbags we’ve had the pleasure of seeing meet his fate, and Hooper seems to be a bit more hands-on in the application of judgment this time around. I wasn’t sure how this one would play out, and there were so many directions it could go, but Caffrey provides us with quite the unsettling, yet one of the most well-deserved punishments so far in the series.
This installment of the Fucking Scumbags series was released as part of the http://www.godless.com 31 Days of Godless event. You can procure this–and the other installments–by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Devon’s childhood is reminiscent of many of our own early years spent in front of the television, complete with mothers who worked as strippers and fathers who found themselves sexually aroused when ALF was on the air. Wait? Is that not a common thread for those of us within a certain age range? Well, we can surely all identify with childhood trauma associated with the sexual proclivities of our fathers, right? Alright, fine…maybe Devon’s childhood isn’t the everyday, standard set of experiences. I doubt it qualifies as a spoiler to suggest that Devon’s father has a certain fetish associated with hamsters. It’s a bit of a Richard Gere scenario, for those who recall those rumors that circulated around the man who brought Dick Tracy to life and who fell for the hooker with a heart of gold…just with hamsters rather than gerbils. What would spoil this for you is if I described the circumstances surrounding the father’s death. I will not do that. All I will say is that none of us reading this will hold a candle to the trauma Devon experiences in those final moments. Later in life, Devon finds his path crossing with a pet store associate, Peggy. Though he has developed a strange fetish of his own, he finds himself drawn to the woman just the same. From there, R. J. Benetti drags us through a gruesome conclusion no one will see coming. This story is fantastic in its unexpected absurdity and no-holds-barred disgusting content. I don’t know what I might have expected going into this one, but if I had any expectations at all, they would have been shattered before I finished the first section of narrative.
You can swing by http://www.godless.com to pick up a copy of this story as part of the 31 Days of Godless event. You can also obtain it through the Godless app, available for your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
It’s a depressing reality that we’ve all known people like @wellnesswarrior497. Whether in real life or online, at the workplace, in the classroom, or even in the checkout line at the grocery store, we have all surely run into the people proclaiming their high-vibration energy and how blessed they are. The same people telling us about fad diets, new types of massage, and how this or that crystal will help us manifest our best selves. Get Me Out of This Shimmering Oasis is a story of that sort of person, shared with us as snapshots to her Instagram account. She gleefully tells us of her arrival at a new wellness facility, regaling us with the litany of ailments she’s overcome through various dubious methods. Within hours, it becomes clear that this facility might not be what she–and the other guests–expected. Sadly, it dawns on us quite a bit faster than it dawns on @wellnesswarrior497. If you, like me, have little more than contempt for social media “influencers” and their pyramid scheming counterparts in our everyday lives, you are absolutely going to love this story. It’s hard not to feel a little bad for the vapid protagonist along the way, in the same way one might feel bad for a child who doesn’t understand what’s happening around them. It’s ok, though, that sympathy is easily overridden by a desire to never listen to the insipid ramblings of the two-dimensional loser any longer. Leitner does not disappoint as she scratches away the veneer of sanity and health of people like the protagonist.
This title is available as part of the 31 Days Of Godless event over at http://www.godless.com or via the Godless app. The link is below:
Poisoning the Well begins with a short, shocking tale of Trevor Wolf defying authorities and braving a life-threatening storm to get home to his wife, only to receive a startling homecoming the reader shouldn’t see coming. With this auspicious start, Todd Love invites us on a journey through thirteen brief tales that will leave you wishing he’d given you more. Spiders deposit clutches of eggs in horrible places. Irish myths and legends are examined. The reader will experience equal parts nostalgia, amusement, and horror as Halloween of 1988 is brought to life in a way any child of the 80s will appreciate. And that is only a small sample of the stories you’ll have to look forward to. You will be satisfied. You will be entertained.
This title was released as part of the http://www.godless.com 31 Days of Godless event to celebrate October of 2021. You can snag it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app on your mobile device. The link is below:
Reed is the fourth of the Smalls brothers we’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and it could be argued that he might just be the most unstable and disorganized of the bunch. In Wasphead, we discover a man who prides himself on a certain level of decorum and a pretense of organization and planning, but he is clearly quite lousy at formulating and executing a plan. With the help of his recently adopted associate, Reed Smalls takes on a risky, high profile job that stands to put him in direct conflict with a local crime boss. Thankfully, for us, nothing goes even remotely according to plan. As the story progresses to a messy, fluid-drenched, and dismembered conclusion, we can only hope to hold on for the ride. Reed might be my least favorite of the Smalls brothers we’ve met so far, based on personality alone, but his misadventure is no less captivating than the previous three. The fact that this character is so starkly different from the others we’ve encountered is an excellent display of how thoroughly diverse in their disfunctionality the Smalls brothers are. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s coming next.
Wasphead is available as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app. The link is below:
Attempting to provide a traditional review of Reekfeel’s three Alien Sex Fluids titles would be to perform a disservice. It could be argued that this is simply me attempting to rationalize the fact that I am in no way capable of properly reviewing the material contained within these shorts. Packed with a sort of free association or stream of consciousness writing that more accurately resembles poetry than narrative prose, Reekfeel’s Alien Sex Fluids plays fast and loose with both language and structure. One almost has simply to let the words–the sounds and visual elements implicit in those words–flow over and around them, dragging the reader along through the cacophony of it all. The free-flowing, anti-literature qualities are most pronounced in Alien Sex Fluids: Experiment 1, where we’re introduced to Nyarlathotep of Lovecraftian fame, and reinterpreted by the author. This is not the being/creature/god as good ol’ Howard Philips wrote it, but rather a mischievous and whimsically cruel thing prone to juvenile outbursts and toilet humor. We are also introduced to the beings/people ostensibly conducting the experiments–or are they the subjects of the experiments?–named after various elements of the periodic table. We’ll get to know them in greater detail in further installments of the series. Reekfeel also takes this time to introduce us to the inhabitants of the garden, strange, child-like creatures without discernable form or function as we perceive it. There’s no conceivable way I could describe the activities during that interlude, and you’ll have to read it for yourself if you want to better understand what I mean. Alien Sex Fluids: Experiment 2 takes on a more prose-like structure in part, diving more into the narrative elements of the overall story being constructed/deconstructed by Reekfeel. We focus more strongly on Selenium, and it’s a strange reversal of norms that the revelation of a dream is more coherently literary than the surrounding material. In Alien Sex Fluids: Experiment 3, we get to witness Reekfeel inserting themself into the narrative in a rather tongue-in-cheek sense, providing a sort of halfhearted apology for how challenging it is to follow along with dialogue from Bismuth as an RPG of some kind is being played to assist Selenium(?). Of course, this only serves to upset Nyarlathotep, who is sharing this story with us through Reekfeel as a conduit. I’d like to say that Experiment 3 continues the more coherent aspects of the narrative as we’d experienced in Experiment 2, but I’d be lying to you, and I’m not a liar! The vast majority of this installment of the series takes place within and is focused around the role-playing taking place, and Reekfeel’s attempt to clear up the mess of multiple dialogues only serves to make it all more of a mess. It’s virtually impossible, as you might understand, to provide a proper review of Alien Sex Fluids, but it’s worth taking the time to dive into the tumultuous, disorganized, yet strangely calculated and lunatic-by-design story you’ll witness unfolding. This is, after all, something being conveyed to us, through Reekfeel, by the crawling chaos itself. If it weren’t indicative of madness, it wouldn’t be authentic. One thing I can say for sure, there’s a certain brilliance and creative imagination impossible to ignore in the distorted, untethered, insanity of Reekfeel’s work.
Experiment 3 was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event over at http://www.godless.com You can pick up all three installments of Alien Sex Fluids by going to the website or by downloading the app to your preferred mobile device. The links to the three current volumes are below:
Domus Necrophagous 