Fitting how this antho funds UK food banks, the first short story is called Waste, where a 7 y/o English girl is teary-eyed about her weight and shrill/perhaps projecting mum. An easily relatable tale with cute flare like seeking solace in a GameBoy or describing people as having LEGO hair or alligator eyes. A cake “tasting of summer.” I like how the narrative seems unreliable at first so you can’t tell if the girl’s just picky, distracted, or developing an eating disorder to slim down like her goofy-rude classmates. Four is ironically the second story by LG Thomson, author of the acclaimed memoir Modernist Dreams Brutalist Nightmares. Now we move to Scotland via row boat. Ominous, hypnotic vibes. Visceral sea creatures and the consumption of or by them. Regional terms like the last piece but not enough to slow you down. Love hearing flotsam and flotilla dropped. Digested by Jacko Pook has a list of order tickets and waitress complaints. Reminds me of Squidward’s inner monologue. Or my bitchy world-owes-me sister. Except she’s too scared and lazy to do co*ke. Funny fridge grazing/patty stealing. Bit mental but eating raw pocket meat can’t help. Experimental shardy writing for sure. The next piece is a diary kept about the stasis of life when their mother got ill. The resentment and severe monotony. The only speck of light is spinning clay. The severed head metaphor is the striking one. A couple dreams of a sludgy slug-baby imbue the piece with some personality. Would have liked a scene of the mother’s actual malice. Like maybe her turning her nose up at her grade-school daughter’s sculpture present. I’d also have liked to have seen both their reactions the minute she died. Disclosure: Green Girl is mine, about a non-naked cam-girl making money being bulimic online. ED fetishism is totally a thing. Though I make light of it, the loneliness is real—especially on Valentine’s Day for Hollie Hurls. Though it’s not a perfect draft, I hope you have as much zany fun reading as I did writing it.
White Finger Across Fresh Buds has to be one of the best titles, so Lana Del Rey coded. Haha. Just as button cute as when Matthew McGuirk says “She calls things wicked without a witch around.” Yet it has the wholesome old couple energy of the song “Painters” by Jewel. Quite the pleasant departure from his grease-grit mechanic’s book Oil Stains like Rorschach’s. Except their gardeners.
Feeding Frenzy is about a wise-cracking ghoul who devours flesh. More of a recount of what and why they are than a plot. Smirk-inducing how jealous they are of vampires’ good rep. The next story is what you’d expect with the Hunger prompt: a homeless guy desperate for sustenance. Yet there’s the dark cinematic twist of him suddenly attacking a woman for retribution over some separate Bateman type and then vomiting. Viscerally Jhonen Vasquez-esque a scene.
A Clownward Spiral is certainly a memorable title. The drawer joke was cute, cartoony, as the fact he works in the tuna tining business. Bozo’s about to be cut from the circus for losing his pie-hurling mojo. Then Neda Aria, author of a striking story in slu*tVomit: An Anthology of SexWork, comes in with the tale of an abused boy in Paris. His mother basem*nts him so his peers think he’s just a stinky, starving incel—until a man takes him in, assuring his father must not care for him any better. The “if only ever Mama ever did this” after she beat him line is most brow-raising. That and the train metaphors, that gloomy midnight atmosphere, will stick with you.
Eddie Generous’s piece sure starts realistic with an Andy Griffith vibe of small town cops pretty friendly with the townsfolk. Though the drunk families are acting extra suspicious until the story veers supernatural and inadvertently silly with creepy craw lies. A fun sci fi quickie in oppressive heat.
A Dead Dog’s Eye by Ann Haton is certainly a great title and I’d love a prequel about the glory(?) days of when this Brit criminal first ex-pated to Thailand to get hitched and become a soda salesman. As is, he feels he’s dying, with bouts of numbness and then an ache for a home he forgot over decades and was run out of. Nice short ebb and flow of precise sentences. Life sentences are distributed in all sorts of ways, weaved out of site like a corner spider web.
Russel Thayer, known for Gunselle the gunwoman story from In Filth It Shall Be Found and a truly funkily “family friendly” story in slu*t Vomit, comes to us with The Grub. A woman from Hong Kong has been transplanted to the Philippines after her mom’s sordid love affair w/ a guy so seedy, he impregnated her! The language is engrossing, almost classic noir in that. Even saying “She crushed the tingle of a mosquito on her thigh” is so beautiful. So much history packed in here when it comes to wars and culture and the MC’s strange exact location where 40 women sleep nude among her. A uni turned encampment, where the trapped girls torture each other enough well enough. Poetic an end as a beginning.
The editor, James Jerkins, writes an ironic tale of a working man paired with a stereotypical boomer. The funniest takeaways are that someone named Terry should be taken seriously, UK politics sound so much like US ones but circled around tea and beans, and that all the fault with the new crop of kids are the result of a lack of older generations’ parenting. “White van man” is a great phrase but comes across more “paedo” than company guy in American memes. I like that the MC doesn’t just argue back with the guy because it’s hardly worth the energy but funny everyone’s grandparents might’ve been more of the “it’s impolite to discuss politics” ilk we could all learn from. Also I like that the partner is not so 2D, as he loves his birds, reminding me of Mike Tyson. Quite the turn of events by the end!
Bloodbelly is next by Bam Barrow. Dude wakes up missing an eye and rightfully is like WTF. Reddit and TikTok users should be especially interested because I always see them bring up the fun fact that if your nervous system finds out about your eye, it will try to attack it like a foreign entity. Love all the void talk and the less serious “don’t remember a sausage“ quote. But then things take a…cultish turn. I’m unfamiliar with all the references but think it’s meant to be like cosmic horror, all taken in too nonchalantly. The last line rings poetic: “his belly full with our festering eyes.”
Feeder by Sebastian Vice! Known for his dark yet whacky premises (ass-eating quests in Anxious Nothings or glamor girls heading grind houses in slu*t Vomit, anyone?), you know this will live up to that theme by the title. Modern fun with 4Chan slang. Glenda is like the Good Witch here, and by that I mean the MC’s ethereal beauty despite everyone else going like, hey what about the behemoth/witch part? That gets buried in the guy’s adoration for WalMart scooter trips alongside her, the egg-troughing, the sweaty sex. I love the fact drop about how we only view about 150 as human like us and how natural objectification is. Maximum irony.
Next is Cassie Premo Steele, writer of Beaver Girl. This piece is about a mom trying to lose weight through ‘80s vids after having a baby. It seems she’s doing this just for the other women who make thoughtless comments, yet she takes her hate out on her husband, who never did anything negative. In fact, she is oft compared to Cindy Crawford in a pretty maroon getup and gets off on it. Then the video and visualizations become p*rnographic in quite an unexpected but on-brand way for the book: talk of growing and gardens. Very memorable.
Guided by the Nighy by A. Stanton is a steadily rocking piece about gazing at the stars from a long-ago exploration ship. I would have liked more description of the garb and ship carvings/tools but we learn a decent amount about constellations and mythology. Sea/starving hallucinations of shark-eyed demons. Reminds me of the dark episodes in The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Not an end I anticipated.
Torture Origami by Mark Burrow has his signature Brit slang/prose from a male student like his Punk Noir piece. Conversational like “cos” and callin people “f*cken spoons.” Over way too soon. Kinda figured it was gonna get all hom*oerotic. Haha.
The next story by Tabitha Bast has a sister wife ordeal, the one telling the story highly suspicious in her virtue signaling and conceit about her toothless beauty. Suppose it’s deriving religious or Handmaid’s Tale but I’m unfamiliar. No husband or quotation marks on the scene. Demons abound in this book. Surprised there was never an anorexia story.
Eye Level is about living in an obsolete apartment owned by a “profit pig.” The language is striking in chunks like that. Written in second person. Mr. Wont is a good Lemony Snicket-ish name. Everything centers around a tall grill for some reason, which made me think the broke bloke was gonna commit suicide with it indoors like is trendy in Japan. Sure did not see the literal breadcrumbs leading to the last sentence.
The Butcher is King adds Tom Leins to the mix, a pleasant surprise after reading his excellent Punk Noir Helton Tower piece. Here, people scarf down ketchupy scraps in a disgusting caravan. Love the city colorings like the Hope and Grope and comparing holding a weapon to feeling up a whor*. The family the criminal works for are Mucinex glob gross and funny for that. Talk about violence. And certainly not w/ an expected weapon.
The last piece is almost a second person essay. The threatening letter you’d expect to send a politician or cold businessperson. Then more word sketches akin to Great Depression portraits. I at least like the phrase “coat hanger hips.”
