“Riviera Paradise” by Rick Koster
“Saturday Night Fights” by Robert Dunbar
“Preacher” by Cullen Bunn & Michael Howard
“Under the Skin” by Nicholas Kaufmann
“The Goddess of Sorts” by Ernest Scribler
Issue #7 features interviews with horror scream queen Lilith Stabs and author David Niall Wilson, an essay on the Halloween film series, an intimate look at the "Black Death," a nonfiction story about sicko mass murderer Ed Gein (inspiration for movies such as Silence of the Lambs and Psycho), and more. But eh, who reads nonfiction? Let’s look at the stories.
This issue leads with David Niall Wilson’s “The Milk of Paradise.” It’s this issue’s longest story and also one of its strongest. Editor Dave Lindschmidt raises expectations in his opening comments:
This story kicks ass and deserves not only all of the space it’s taken in this issue, but recognition and applause. It’s a fine piece of work.
Belle has a thing for Absinthe, the anise-flavored wormwood spirit which seduced the likes of Baudelaire, Van Gogh, and Crowley. Her problem is not addiction, however, but obsession. She is single-minded in her desire to discover a particular formulation of Absinthe. Her quest is a black cloud which seems ready to consume her lover, Art, her friend, Sammy, and Belle herself.
In “The Milk of Paradise,” Wilson combines two Nineteenth Century legends: the hallucinatory properties of old Absinthe, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “vision in a dream,” the poem Kubla Khan. His three characters are each attempting to create something—Art through his painting, Sammy through her music, and Belle through her alchemy. Each one is trying to make Xanadu real.
Wilson succeeds in creating a new legend, a depiction of the magical power of an artist’s obsession. It’s a story that grows as it unfolds, beginning with an almost claustrophobic study of addiction, ending with a revelation. Running through it all is Absinthe—drug, catalyst, muse, Philosopher’s Stone. A fine piece of work, indeed.
Rick Koster’s “Riviera Paradise” is another story which changes with every turn of the page. Unlike “The Milk of Paradise,” “Riviera Paradise” doesn’t blossom. It curdles. Fortunately, “Riviera Paradise” is urban horror, so curdling is not necessarily a bad thing.
The story is named for a Stevie Ray Vaughan song which Donny listens to again and again on the drive from New Orleans to Dallas. From the opening paragraphs, it seems that Donny’s journey is an homage to his girlfriend, Allison, who has recently died of AIDS; but things aren’t always as they seem.
The next scene, a flashback, is a poignant remembrance of Allison’s last hours. She asks Donny to make love to her. Despite her physical state, he can’t refuse: “I know instinctively what Ally must know too: that this will be the last time.” The tenderness of this scene came back to haunt me, and left me feeling dirty. Koster’s story is that wicked.
“Riviera Paradise” is a fine bit of horror, but it also works well as a character study. Donny is more than Ally’s lover; he’s her pusher, too. Donny’s guilt drives this story to its nasty, nasty conclusion.
Robert Dunbar’s “Saturday Night Fights” made me groan out loud in the opening paragraphs, and it wasn’t a good sort of groan. After holing up for the night in a grungy apartment—its true grunginess becomes evident only too soon—the lead singer and drummer for Blunt Force Trauma wake up to a dreary gray New Jersey skyline. “I see dull people,” the lead singer (Netta) says.
It’s a great joke, a cool riff on the movie Sixth Sense. I hunkered down for a comical romp, only to see the gag painfully explained ad nauseum in the paragraphs which followed. That’s when I groaned.
It took me a while to realize it, but the agonizing explanation is, in fact, artful characterization. These are drug-addled rockers, after all. They don’t get each others jokes. They barely get their own jokes.
The story begins, “By the time the two of them woke up, their friends had already met with disgusting deaths.” Before long, Netta and the drummer, Ray, must contend with the apartment building’s evil denizen, the critter who iced the rest of Blunt Force Trauma. Ray longs to prove himself. He wants to take that vision quest, hunt for that lost grail, slay that beastly dragon. The reader will learn if he gets his wish.
“Saturday Night Fights” is, in fact, a hilarious story. The sex scene alone (containing—I’m not kidding—a verbal sight gag) makes it a keeper. I’m looking forward to reading more of Dunbar’s work.
“Preacher” by Cullen Bunn and Michael Howard is jam-packed with unanswered questions. Brothers Curtis and Danny want to rescue their friend Andrew from the Boogeymen. They have something which belongs to the Boogeymen, so they intend to make a trade. But who are the Boogeymen, and what are their powers? What is the talisman/totem/creature the boys stole, and why do the Boogeymen want it back? What have they done to Andrew? In the end, what has Andrew become?
“Preacher” is a brief story, but overwritten passages like this make it feel long:
The air was heavy with the smell of urine, shit, gunpowder, and blood. His stomach shot down into his bowels like he had just plunged over a precipice into a long rollercoaster descent straight to Hell.
Nicholas Kaufman’s “Under the Skin” features an impressively dysfunctional Passover seder, sibling rivalry from Gehenom, a convincing portrayal of a cutter, and a chilling, memorable finish. What a story!
Christine and Karin are twins whose parents have separated. Thanks to Dad’s newfound post-separation Jewishness, they’re getting together for what feels like a first-ever seder (Passover dinner). Karin’s the favorite, the one who can do no wrong, the one who can commit murder and get away with it. But not this time.
Christine sees herself as “‘. . . the fucked up twin. The medical miracle. The one no one expected to survive.’” Karin out-competed her in the womb, and they’ve been fighting ever since. With her Goth hair, pierced eyebrow, smoking habit, and scholastic under achievement, Christine does everything possible to distinguish herself from her twin. One day, she cuts herself while shaving her legs, and so discovers a new way of setting herself apart.
Kaufman must know a few cutters, or else he has done his homework. He takes the emotional release experienced by cutters and amplifies it, makes it material. The result is empowering for Christine, but terribly destructive.
The Passover motif works well in this story. Christine’s clueless father says, “‘Passover is all about people dying so others can be set free,’” a chillingly twisted theology which resonates with his ill-favored daughter. The recitation of the plagues, ending (as it does in Exodus) with the death of the firstborn, serves both as foreshadowing and tension-ramping countdown.
Ernest Scribler (pseudonym?) gives us this issue’s last story, “The Goddess of Sorts.” Nansi, a survivor of abusive parents, has the power to breathe life into the dead. She’s also a necrophiliac who works in a morgue—quite a combination.
Necrophilic erotica isn’t for everyone, and I confess that I found it repellent. If you’re looking for more here, you will find it in the flashbacks to Nansi’s tortured upbringing, and in the hints Scribler gives regarding how Nansi the child becomes Nansi the adult. These effective passages horrify and engage the imagination. More of that, and less cold slab sex, and I would have liked this story.