Welcome to another Words for Thought! We are firmly within Spooky Season, which if you ask me, lasts from the beginning of September to roughly mid-December. As such, it seems appropriate to talk about stories of monstrosity and transformation—and sometimes both at once. As always, there may be some spoilers ahead, so beware!
“All Her Rows of Teeth” by Jordan Kurella, published in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, (https://www.3lobedmag.com/issue42/3lbe42_story4.html) centers on Caleb, who has spent his entire life caught up in the turbulent wake of his old college friend and occasional lover, Allysandra. During an unguarded moment, he accidentally tells her about the legend of the Vice Shark, a creature that feeds on hedonism and grants wishes. Of course—being who she is—Allysandra immediately goes looking for said shark, leaving Caleb to follow after her once again.
The dive goes poorly from the start. Within an hour of cutting the engine, the radar can’t pick up either the Vice Shark’s signal, or Allysandra’s. And I need both, if any of us are gonna see land again. So, because Allysandra was wild enough to go searching after the Vice Shark, I gotta go searching after Allysandra. Not because I still love her, but because she’s worth millions—millions of millions—and I can’t lose that kind of paycheck.
The story is smoothly written, with almost a noir feel at times, while also weaving in touches of cosmic horror. Kurella does an excellent job portraying Caleb and Allysandra’s messy relationship with its manipulation, dependency, and unequal power dynamic. The story perfectly captures the way a relationship can go sour, yet at the same time, be impossible to disentangle yourself from, and how the particular time in your life when you meet a person can sometimes tie them to you in unexpected ways. The horror is equally rooted in Caleb and Allysandra’s relationship and in the Vice Shark itself—because there must always be a Vice Shark, after all—and the two kinds of horror play well with each other.
“Bite Me, Eat Me, Drink Me” by H. Pueyo, published in The Dark, (https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/bite-me-drink-me-eat-me/) is another story featuring an unhealthy relationship that is both co-dependent and unequally balanced.
The story features two vampire-like creatures, though the word vampire is never explicitly used. Rosalia has recently returned to her crumbling family home, which for years has been watched over by a family friend, her godfather, Fishhook. As the story unfolds, it’s revealed that Fishhook was a guide to her family on a mountain journey, essentially kidnapped and turned by them, and Rosalia referring to him as her godfather is more of a form of mockery. Fishhook prefers not to kill, feeding off the family’s scraps, however Rosalia delights in trying to goad him to greater violence, looking for his breaking point while also fearing that once she finds it, he may snap and kill her.
Fishhook dropped his frock coat on the floor. He kicked the boots away, pulled out the socks, and walked slowly, following the runner rug. The smell of carnage activated his senses, bringing every dead nerve of his body back to life. Inside the bedroom was only darkness, but he could count one, two, three, four corpses—the professed cook and the kitchen maids. He stepped on a pool of blood.
The story is atmospheric and bloody, and like Kurella’s story flips traditional power dynamics through the intersectional identities that are at play. While Rosalia has the body of a young woman—the traditional victim in a Gothic scenario—she holds the power by being the owner of the house, the holder of her family’s wealth, and through her role as a colonizer, in multiple senses of the word, in her relationship to Fishhook. Similarly, in Kurella’s story, the expected male-female power dynamic is flipped due to Allysandra’s wealth and Caleb’s vulnerability within society as a trans man. Pueyo’s use of Gothic imagery is effective, and the way she portrays the relationship between Rosalia and Fishhook, particularly the indirect violence Rosalia uses against him, is unsettling and very nicely done.
“Painted Surfaces” by Guan Un, published in Nightmare Magazine, (https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/painted-surfaces/) is a beautifully written flash piece, re-telling a Chinese folktale in order to explore monstrosity and complicity, all in under a thousand words.
After we are married, I take my wife to the Broken Harbour. That might seem like a strange choice, but I like it there. All that forgotten machinery. The waterlogged skyscrapers. The Ferris wheel that rises above the water like a man indicating that he is drowning.
The desolate setting is the perfect backdrop for this story, as the husband who narrates it discovers that underneath her doll-like surface, his wife is something hungry and monstrous. He wakes to find her gone from their hotel room, follows her to a local bar, and witnesses her feeding on a sleezy man who hit on her. Rather than trying to stop her, or turn her in, he simply leaves her to feed in peace.
Once again, the expected relationship is turned on its head. In many folktales and legends, men who discover their wives’ secret monstrosity are horrified by it, ashamed, afraid, and become monstrous in turn, killing them. Here, the husband silently accepts his wife’s nature, finding her no less beautiful for it. The seemingly delicate character is monstrous under her skin, and rather than becoming monstrous in an attempt to stop her or control her, her husband takes on a quiet and supportive role, even if it makes him complicit in her killing.
“Cicadas, and Their Skins” by Avra Margariti, published in Strange Horizons, (http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/cicadas-and-their-skins/) is a gorgeous and bloody story of transformation. Cassandra is an orphan who learns the trick of temporarily stealing animals’ skins to live as them for a time. She is already an outsider in her village, and suspected of being a witch, causing Fani, the priest’s daughter, and a group of other teenagers to follow and threaten her. When Cassandra learns it isn’t fear, but jealousy, motivating them, she teaches them to transform as well.
Her white dress was green with forest-breath, her braid wild from the chase. There was anger inside her: muzzled in church, ignored by her holy parents and their simpering entourage. Here, I could taste her unbridled rage on my tongue.
The story is beautifully written, exploring multiple kinds of transformation. Cassandra, Fani, and the others are already at a liminal age between childhood and adulthood, depicted as half-feral and animalistic even before they learn the trick of slipping out of their skins. They hunt as a pack, surround Cassandra, then ultimately follow her once she gives them the key to their freedom and expressing their true selves. For Cassandra and Fani in particular, the act of transformation is bound up in desire, sexuality, and violence. Like the cicadas in the story’s opening line, they fuck, scream, and molt—expressing rage and shedding their old selves so something new can be born. Violence is inherent and necessary in the process of change, and what is seen as their monstrous nature from the outside is beautiful from within, and it is beautifully portrayed in the story.
