For “Snowflake,” there’s perhaps no greater torture than performing as a Christmas elf at the mall. Understandably, she’d feel that way, from the pedophile Santa to the grimy, screaming children. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Except for maybe being subjected to a hot box apartment with no air conditioning, a bare trickle of water pressure, and an elderly neighbor who listens to her television far too loud for anyone not hard of hearing. She’s got problems, but it’s about to get more interesting. She’s about to make them your problems instead. With irreverence and humor, Lindsay Crook assaults the hyper-commercialized Christmas holiday. She also sets her sights on inconsiderate neighbors, annoying coworkers, perverts, and Karens through the proxy of her protagonist, exhibiting knee-jerk reactions of violence that every reader is sure to relate to. How much chaos can one Christmas elf cause in the week before Christmas? You might be surprised. As with the previous Manic story, Crook manages to hit on topics from misogyny to miserable workplace conditions, while also attacking the seeming ubiquitousness of perverse male behavior, from the security guard to the mall Santa. Sure, it’s a fun romp as well, but there’s a whole lot of uncomfortable truth in this story as well.
This story was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device. The link is below:
I didn’t know Santaphilia was a thing until reading this story from Nikki Noir and S. C. Mendes. I can’t say I was surprised, just that it never crossed my mind to imagine there might actually be an official term applied to individuals with a Santa fetish. As a bearded man named Nikolas–who also happens to celebrate a December birthday–it almost seems disappointing that I’ve missed out on an opportunity to capitalize on this fetish existing. There’s so much more to this story than just Amber’s frustrated attempts to find a man who is willing to fulfill her fantasy of making love to the Jolly Old Elf himself, though that does set the stage quite nicely. Rooted in a possible hallucinatory experience when she was 12-years-old, Amber’s fixation on Santa begins at the same point when her family life falls apart. Saint Nick sits her down and tells her she’s special, warning her that life is about to become more challenging and assuring her that she’s strong enough to make it through everything. Ten years later, is it finally time for Santa to return? At its core, Santa’s Package is a tale that delves into the potential ambiguity of that point where mental illness and legitimate visitation might coexist. How easily can our perceptions and attitudes be manipulated? Are there cases where someone seemingly insane is actually the victim of experiments and sinister machinations? Santa’s Package may not answer these questions for you, but it’ll certainly raise new questions to consider and explore, and isn’t that what the best literature is meant to do? There’s a whole lot of potential inquiry crammed into this relatively small package, but if you’ve had the pleasure of discovering this one under your tree, you should certainly enjoy it.
Santa’s Package was released through http://www.godless.com as part of the AntiChristmas event for December of 2021. You can obtain a copy for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app for your mobile device. The link is below:
The Breed begins with Theo seeking refuge, hoping for nothing more than to use a phone to call his mother, his bike broken down in the rain. When he knocks at the door of Cullis House, his belief that he’s found a refuge is short-lived. Ericmore leaps ahead a matter of decades and we join two friends hoping to stay at Cullis House in the middle of their backpacking trip. Sore feet and the attention of a sleazy guest already in attendance are soon the least of their concerns. This story could be adapted to serve as a Hellraiser sequel with only minimal alteration required. One needs only think of the house in place of the Lament Configuration. Ericmore crafts a grotesque, sexually-charged nightmare that even Barker would be hard-pressed to deny as a suitable abbatoir for his playthings to explore.
Distinctly I Remember further cements The Professor as the master of what can only be described as splattergothic literature. Even if he had any peers in this genre, they would be hard-pressed to approach the passionate embrace of topics considered taboo and the literary flair with which he delves into the depths of perversions that are both titillating and revolting. In this story, the influence of Poe is unabashedly on display, blending elements of The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher into a tale of deeper darkness and depravity than Edgar Allan Poe would have dared document. Twins, a brother and sister, secluded and kept in isolation, become victims of the hallucinatory madness and obsession growing increasingly profound within the young man. The incestuous relationships and compulsions, often writ as subtext by traditional Gothic writers, come to the forefront with The Professor’s ministrations…and the story is all the better for that brazen lack of subtlety. As events unfold before us, we stare with rapt attention as a thing of beauty is systematically destroyed by the very admirer of that exquisite object of the narrator’s obsession.
This story was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your device of choice. The link is below:
The release of Kristopher Triana’s And the Devil Cried is one of those examples of strangely serendipitous timing. It serves as an odd juxtaposition with Stephen King’s Billy Summers. Both stories are about men who became involved with organized crime after committing a murder during their youth and enlisting with the military. That is, of course, where the similarities end, as the characters themselves couldn’t be more different. Triana excels in crafting unlikeable characters. His true skill is in developing these characters who manage to be entirely captivating precisely because of how unlikeable they are. Jackie is a prime example of that. Committing his first murder at the age of 17 for no better reason than greed and bitterness over the good fortune of the victim, Jackie never strives to be a better person. After his time in the Army, Jackie never adjusts to civilian life, and he gets arrested for an attempted armed robbery. The story picks up as he’s being released and reacquainting himself with bad people he met while on the inside. As the story unfolds, you find yourself wishing he’d never been released, but there wouldn’t be much of a book if that were the case. Misogynistic, abusive, sexist, violent, bigoted, and fundamentally heartless, there’s not much about Jackie that resembles a human being, and that’s what makes him an excellent protagonist for this particular story. While this isn’t one of Triana’s extreme horror or splatterpunk tales, he brings those sensibilities to the pulp crime genre with a character so devoid of decency that he’s almost a caricature of what one might expect a hardened criminal to be. There are components of this story that are difficult to read. I’d suggest those are notably Jackie’s treatment of homosexuals in prison and his unabashed fixation on young girls, but it’s worth sticking it out to the end. Triana showcases a talent for writing hardboiled pulp crime that transcends the genre conventions. It’s a little bit Scarface, a little bit The Godfather, and all Triana. While it’s not my favorite of his books, it’s well worth reading and it displays a side of Triana as an author that I’d never witnessed previously. It’s encouraging to see him stepping outside of his comfort zone and exploring new ground, and that makes me curious about what he’ll have in store for us next.
The story begins with tightropes and titties, as Perry and his best friend, Devin, enjoy a vacation in a small Mexican town alongside college students from all over America–and the rest of the world. Their enjoyment doesn’t last long, as Diablo Snuff has plans for the revelers, at least the ones they find attractive enough to press-gang into the same sort of service Kong and Nick “Lucky” Luciano were providing in Passion & Pain. If you haven’t read Passion & Pain, hopefully, you’ve read A Foreign Evil, The Grind House, and Slaughter Box. You should still have some idea what I’m talking about if you’ve at least read those three. Personally, I recommend going back and reading both Passion & Pain and Grad Night as well, because they all come together in the pages of The Maddening. It’s wrong to say this story begins with tightropes and titties. It all begins in the pages of A Foreign Evil when Michael drunkenly follows a beautiful woman to a push-button hotel for a night of carnal pleasures that swiftly devolves into a nightmare of unearthly evil and sinister conspiracies. You’ve come all this way, though, so you know all about that. The journey here left its mark on you, I imagine. The Maddening is Carver Pike’s conclusion to the Diablo Snuff series, and this man knows how to end things with a bang. The best way I can think of to describe the events taking place in this novel is to suggest that it’s John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness meets The Purge while managing to be both more horrific and graphic than either of those movies. If that doesn’t sell you on diving into this book, I honestly don’t know why you’d be reading my reviews in the first place. You might not be my target audience, in which case you’re almost definitely not the target audience for Pike’s Diablo Snuff books. The movies were bad enough, allowing incarnations of evil creatures on the screen to infiltrate our world, stalking and murdering the viewers unfortunate enough to witness even small portions of each film. The release of the novels written by the authors who disappeared from The Grand Georgina signals the next stage of the Diablo Snuff master plan as the madness spreads throughout society, irrespective of nation or culture. This plague of lawlessness and insanity is amplified with the release of The Maddening, the book Tobias desperately hoped he could keep from distribution. None of these things are fast or dramatic enough in dismantling society and sewing chaos, and that’s where the app comes into play. Across the world, psychopaths and damaged people compete with one another to commit the most creative and devastating horrors, racking up more money with each rape and murder. Against this horrific backdrop, the members of Psalm 71 must make their way to the heart of the evil that is Diablo Snuff, saving as many innocent lives as they can along the way. Knowing this is the final volume in the Diablo Snuff series, it should come as no surprise that the tale culminates in a battle between the forces of good and evil that crosses the border separating our world from unearthly planes of existence. This is a spiritual clash that would make Frank Peretti envious. If you’re unfamiliar with Frank Peretti’s Christian horror novels, you might be missing out because some of them are surprisingly good; but they’re nowhere near as good as what Pike has laid out for us in the pages of The Maddening. This book is punctuated with set pieces of such depravity and cruel imagination that the reader can’t help but wonder at the apparent limitless creativity brought to the table by Carver Pike where horror is concerned. At its core, this is a story of hope, though. The Maddening–as with the Diablo Snuff series as a whole–is about facing a terrifying evil and refusing to flinch. It’s about standing ground and fighting, even when the easiest solution would be to turn away or to give in. Knowing that you may not survive, that those you love and who stand by your side may fall as well, but persisting in doing what you know must be done; that is the core of it all. In that respect, as in all others, Carver Pike has succeeded in crafting a masterpiece with this book.
While My Christmas Story by Rayne Havok is not a new story from her, it’s new to me, and it was a perfect tale for her to make available on Godless for the Antichristmas event this December. Lydia’s spending her first Christmas night alone, but her husband is still there…in spirit…in a sense. We’ll go with, “in a sense.” It was bad enough that Henry had gotten her a blender for Christmas this year, but that’s the least of his transgressions…and Lydia is not the forgiving sort. As she decorates her tree with the ornaments Henry provided, it does seem like Lydia is finally getting into the spirit of the holidays, and we can’t help but feel happy for her. While the holiday might have started as a bit of a disappointment, she found a way to make it festive just the same. If you’re familiar with Rayne Havok’s work, you damn well know what to expect…so I’m not going to spell it out for you here. If you’re not familiar with her writing, you’re in for an enchanting, heartwarming tale of Christmas cheer.
This title was released on http://www.godless.com as part of the Antichristmas event for December of 2021. 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:
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:
Domus Necrophagous 