When his teenage daughter disappears, Offi–former Officer Standish learns he will do anything to find her. In his search he will plummet to lows he’d never dreamed possible, braving trials that test the limits of his imagination and his intestinal fortitude. How far would you go to save the life of your only child?
Just in time for Thanksgiving, I’m bringing you a story that should make you hold your loved ones closer, treasuring family. I don’t want to spoil anything, because I delve into the backstory surrounding what motivated me to write this one in the Author’s Notes at the end of the story…but in the midst of this, you’ll encounter the snippet I’d set aside to share as part of the KillerCon 2021 virtual convention. Sadly, I opted not to dive right into the depravity and that decision did me no favors.
You can find this Godless exclusive short by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Robert Sinclair is a good kid who has a lot on his plate, but he pushes through it all and remains good-natured and hard-working. Working multiple jobs, struggling to remain afloat while caring for a mother suffering the end-stage of cancer, Robert doesn’t have much room in his life for anything else. While working a dead-end job at L-Mart, Robert has developed a friendship with an elderly gentleman, Josef Lazerowitz. A former theology professor in Poland, Mr. Lazer is burdened by an unbelievable history, plagued with unspeakable secrets that will soon become Robert’s burden to bear. Both of these men, Robert and Josef, are decent and sympathetic characters forced to experience their individual, horrific torments separated by more than half a century. In the end, what they’ll share is a terrible and shameful confidence that could destroy both of them and anything they hold dear. Daniel Volpe constructs a captivating, mysterious tale that’s so thick with atmosphere and depth that the reader can hardly keep from being immersed in the experiences brought to life on the page. His detailed exploration of Josef’s life in 1940s Poland is gripping and profoundly vivid, almost painfully so. The author’s unique portrait of the supernatural world and how it interacts with our own was fascinating. As the story delves into those things only near the latter half of the book, it still doesn’t feel like the reader is short-changed or left wanting. I can’t recommend this book enough, especially to those who enjoy a bit of historical fiction with their horror. I will suggest that one scene in this book troubled me, and it involves a bit of a spoiler, but I’ll do my best to dance around that by explaining a little bit about my own life, hopefully framing why I found it disturbing without telling you about the scene itself. I had a dog named Molly. She was a terrific, atypical chihuahua who was perpetually thrilled to meet new people. When she was seven years old, she was taken from me by cancer in her blood. That little girl died in my arms, in what I can only describe as a traumatic experience without going into detail. I now have a dog who is half golden retriever and half German shepherd and husky–funny enough, named Talia–who is two years old. She’s been with me since December of 2019. Fans of Volpe’s work might find that last bit to be a strangely serendipitous thing. Having a personal connection with both a golden retriever and a dog named Molly, there’s a particular scene that I found difficult.
I picked this title up as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com in October of 2021. You can obtain a copy for yourself by going to the website or downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
If you’ve already braved the horrors of Lucifer’s Mansion, the earlier prequel to Hellsworld Hotel, you might just have an idea of what awaits you in Mephistopheles Den. That doesn’t stop Matthew Vaughn from crafting a whole new and exciting house of horrors for us to explore. We follow two groups into an abandoned factory that’s been converted, for one night only, into a most graphic and distasteful series of rooms. Meant to elicit terror and disgust from those unfortunate enough to purchase tickets, each new display is more unsettling than the next. We follow along as helpless witnesses, slipping through black curtains into a nightmare from which there is no escape. Or is there? Vaughn brings to life two vastly different groups of people, for the sole purpose of stealing that life away in callously violent fashion. Of course, one of those groups includes Donald and Tony, and any reader is likely to want those two dead before we really get started with the story. This one takes a slightly different direction as we reach the end, presumably leading us into the much larger work that is Hellsworld Hotel. I suspect you, like me, will be eager to dive into that title after reaching the conclusion of this prequel.
This title 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 to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
If one were to take the movies Haunt and The Houses October Built, place them into a blender along with some Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a splash of Satanism…well, you’d probably have a totally ruined blender…but you might also have the recipe for Matthew Vaughn’s Lucifer’s Mansion. When the abandoned old school building was purchased and converted into a haunted house by a mysterious family, the teenagers around town thought it would be a blast. In place of rubber masks, painted plywood, and smoke machines, what awaits visitors to Lucifer’s Mansion is an endless barrage of gore and sadism on display wherever one might look. Tasteless and cruel, the effects appear all too real for some of the visitors as they search for an exit, but not everyone who enters Lucifer’s Mansion is allowed to leave. The haunted house described by Vaughn is the sort of place I’d happily venture into, thus validating yet again that I am the first person to die in a horror movie. As a prequel to Hellsworld Hotel, this tantalizing glimpse of the world the author’s creating definitely encourages the reader to dive deeper into the darkness and depravity that surely awaits them.
You can read this for yourself by picking up the title from http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Cockwinder introduces us to Liam, thus far the most stable and normal-seeming of the Smalls brothers. Don’t worry, the rest of them set the bar pretty damn low, so it’s easy to seem stable and normal by comparison. While in the midst of plowing his wife, Liam witnesses a strange reaction from Wendy, the little girl next door, through the window. He’d already felt like something was a bit off with Ray, the girl’s father, and the peculiar behavior Wendy displayed lines up with those sentiments. Liam’s concern is validated when he catches Wendy playing an unsettling game with her dolls, and he decides it’s time to do something about the monster living next door. This is the point in the story where Ash Ericmore hits us with all of that Smalls Family goodness we’ve come to expect. As garage tools and hardware are put to purposes that definitely violate warranties based on any manufacturer’s recommended use, Liam goes to work. The violence is as graphic and imaginative as any reader could hope to experience, and there’s a moment at the climax of the story that almost had me laughing out loud, just as Liam burst through the bedroom door in his newly crafted attire. I can’t spoil it, so you’ll have to read it for yourself. Thankfully, it all works out with a happy ending…but that should come as no surprise. The Smalls brothers always create their own happy endings from the disasters all around them.
You can pick this up for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:
Follow the Maggot Wagon takes the road trip narrative in a deliciously awful direction. Jamie and Adam had been friends for most of their lives, but they’d gradually grown apart as Adam’s impulse control issues and drug use led him down paths Jamie wouldn’t follow. Though Adam’s poor impulse control might have helped to push the friends apart, it was also the thing that contributed to years of pranks, dares, and manipulation by Jamie and other friends. Old tensions arise as the two friends find themselves stuck behind the maggot wagon, a truck that smells like it’s hauling a full load of carrion beneath the tarp in the back, and Jamie takes this as an opportunity to push Adam into doing something risky and juvenile, pushing his buttons along the way. The true surprise of Essig’s story isn’t what’s going to happen, as the reader begins to suspect where things are going long before we arrive at the farmhouse. The shock is the motivation behind it. Throughout the story, we catch glimpses of the eroding facade of civility between the two friends, as the interactions take on an increasingly cruel and bitter tone. We think we know why we’re speeding toward the inevitable outcome, only to find ourselves just as stunned as Jamie and Adam are when more secrets get revealed. I suspect many of us have friendships like this, where old grudges and recrimination are difficult to forget and perhaps more challenging to forgive. Thankfully, most of us don’t decide to follow the maggot wagon as Jamie and Adam did. This was an excellent character study, portraying both individuals with vivid and tragic dimensionality. Both Jamie and Adam are relatable, and that makes it all the more disturbing because one has to wonder how much or how little it might take to push us into either the driver’s or passenger’s seat.
This title was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can obtain a copy for yourself by going to the website or downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Unfit is a fascinating mix of dystopian science fiction, bizarro, and splatterpunk that blends smoothly into a narrative that is equal parts disturbing, heartbreaking, and sardonically hilarious. Clarissa has a crying baby in her cart. We’ve all seen it before, many of us having experienced it from Clarissa’s perspective. It’s frustrating. It’s embarrassing. Other shoppers judge her as she desperately struggles to get the baby to be quiet…but nothing calms the infant. There’s only one way to silence the crying and screeching, and this is where everything takes a particularly dark turn, followed by a few more turns. R. J. Benetti has essentially written an episode of Black Mirror that hasn’t been optioned yet, and it’s almost a shame this isn’t a more visual medium, except that I’m not sure anyone would want to see this played out on screen. If you’re looking for social commentary and bleak prognostication, this is the story for you.
This title was released as a Godless exclusive title that you can obtain for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:
Jane Lushbutcher hits the streets with a vengeance in her second outing for of The Godless League, St. Practice Day. The least stable of the bunch, Lushbutcher is always sure to provide an entertaining and gratuitously violent experience for readers. It’s Saint Paddy’s Day in September, or it will be next weekend, and in preparation for the festivities, Pittsburgh drunks are pub crawling for St. Practice Day. Everything is all fun and games for the green-clad alcoholics until Jane’s outing with her elderly friends is interrupted by God’s warning that there is danger afoot. Lucy Leitner kicks it up a notch from the previous installment, leaving a trail of bodies (or parts of bodies) in the wake as Lushbutcher seeks out the mastermind behind the pub crawl. By the time she’s done, there’ll be so much red and green on the ground that it’ll look like Christmas in September instead.
You can grab this title as well as the previous Godless League titles by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Picture Perfect tells the tale of a mother and daughter plagued by a cursed or haunted painting brought into their home by the mother. While the daughter finds the imagery depicted on canvas repulsive, her mother seems strangely fascinated by the grotesque artwork. The fixation takes on a more sinister quality as the picture begins whispering, and driving the mother to madness and self-destructive outbursts. It’s only after the daughter begins hearing those haunting whispers for herself that she understands the helplessness her mother felt under the painting’s influence. McAdoo provides readers with a story of inescapable fate, loss of control, and suffering, all with a twist and a glimmer of cruel hope at the end.
This story was released on Halloween as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com and you can find it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile device. The link is below:
As peculiar, violent, and perversely humorous as Demophobia happens to be–and it is all of those things–it is also a deeply sad story about survivor’s guilt and an insightful discourse on being an outsider. Mr. Foicus is a Pus-Eater, or as he prefers, an Eiterfresser. A packed auditorium watches his multimedia lecture on the history of his kind, distorted and sanitized to elicit sympathy and hopefully engender less of a freakshow aspect to his existence. He’s one of the last of his kind, and he’s regretful of that. While he may be an inhuman, vicious monster, he suffers from the same melancholy any human might experience under similar circumstances. All of this doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Foicus is still a monster, and it doesn’t take long before the story takes a violent and revolting turn when the Pus-Eater shows his true colors. Through the perspective of someone hoping to capture images amid the panicked crowd, we experience the dread of knowing that everyone should have left when things turned sideways. That’s the problem with a crowd, though; they feel safety in numbers, and if a large number of the individuals begin to relax, everyone else will go along with it, even if they think there’s something wrong. I’ve never been more grateful for the fact that I loathe being in crowded spaces with large groups of people than when I imagined the carnage and wash of bodily fluids in the lecture hall. Geick does an excellent job of building the reader up to a conclusion that feels both fitting and depressing.
This title was released as part of the 31 Days of Godless event at http://www.godless.com for October of 2021. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Domus Necrophagous 