Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror

I decided to read this book because I'd been looking for Datlow anthologies at the time and the subject interested me. Most of my exposure to body horror up to this point had been in visual mediums, mostly in Junji Ito stories with a few scattered examples in film. There were also some examples in The Magnus Archives, but they weren't enough to stand out. I was interested in seeing if written material could elicit the same gut reaction as visual examples. Written text gives the power of the visual to the imagination of the reader while also allowing for a smooth integration of the internal experience of the characters. However, this can only really be utilized if the author provides enough of a description with the proper tone. With this in mind, let's talk about the first story!

Warning! Spoilers for the stories below!

The Travellers Stay by Ray Cluely

Ray Cluely has had work published in "Wilde Stories: The World's Best Gay Speculative Fiction", so that has had some influence on the way I read the story. The protagonist is framed as a pretty self-centered and shallow guy through his descriptions of the women around him. Sometimes women are described in very strange ways in fiction as a quirk of the writing style, but I interpreted it in this instance as a reflection of the character since the author is potentially queer.

The story follows a family consisting of Matt, the protagonist, Ann, his wife, and John, Ann's son, settling down at a motel during a trip. The family dynamic is very tense with a lot of friction between John and Matt and some lighter tension between Matt and Ann. The motel is super grimy, with roaches occupying nearly every square inch of the premises. I think this is pretty effective foreshadowing that also helps set the mood for the interpersonal conflicts going on. The air feels stagnant and musty, which reflects the lackluster personality of Matt while also highlighting his inner conflict of taking on personal responsibility by settling down in a job given to him by Ann's father and abandoning his dreams of a musical career. For unexplained reasons, the motel turns its inhabitants that exhibit an intention of leaving (?) into roaches. The transformations are the body horror element and are done well enough, but they didn't really make me feel any kind of way. The title comes from the sign above the motel, which the family initially interprets as a name with Matt eventually coming to understand that it was a warning (I thought this was a neat detail :]). Overall, the story was well-constructed but failed to make me feel particularly unsettled. That being said, my judgement could be skewed due to the fact that I was expecting something a lot more visceral. This story gets 3/5 roaches!

Toother by Terry Dowling

This story follows a psychiatrist Dan as he and a psychic patient of his, Peter, try to track down a serial killer. The case is brought to them by an old friend (?) of Dan's, Harry. The relationship between Dan and Harry is strained for unknown reasons with some amount of tension surrounding the subject of Peter. Peter is not really a patient of Dan but he's staying at the psych hospital without paying room and board in exchange for his help on cases. The serial killer they're tracking down asks his victims whether they'd like to live or die before removing all of their teeth while they're awake or having them bitten to death before removing all their teeth. Victims don't survive the former. The biting is initially believed to take place with the use of a machine as there are tooth shards found that date back to the early 1900s, but it becomes clear that there is a supernatural element involved. The story is engaging and well-paced and the body horror element works well. Most violent descriptions are clinical, but the concept of pulling teeth without painkillers more than wakes up for it. The story makes your mouth uncomfortable :]. This story gets 4/5 teeth!

Painlessness by Kirstyn McDermott

I had to take a break after this story, it was r o u g h. It follows the development of the relationship between Faith, a woman who completely abandoned her old life to start anew, and Mara, a woman that can't feel pain and lets people brutalize her for money. They initially meet when Faith overhears a session between Mara and one of her clients and misunderstands it as domestic abuse. Faith is sick when she checks on Mara and collapses in front of her, leading Mara to take Faith back to her apartment and tend to her for a few days. As times goes on, Faith learns about Mara's career and condition and they become closer. Mara is initially completely disinterested in any kind of relationship with Faith while Faith is interested in making friends to build up a new life. Throughout the story, you come to realize that Faith left her old life in order to escape a codependent relationship with Livia, a woman who regularly engaged in self-harm. As the relationship develops, Faith begins to feel a similar urge to save Mara from injury as with Livia to the detriment of her own health. This reaches a climax when Mara asks Faith to pick her up from a particularly gruesome session in which it's implied that Mara killed her clients. She seems to have experienced a vivisection along with incisions all along the rest of her body. She has also suffered severe genital mutilation brought about when the group pulled down her underwear and realized she didn't have any genitalia to speak of.

It's revealed that Mara isn't human and can also feel pain. She expresses disdain for the selfishness and cruelty of humanity, but she lets Faith go home. Once Faith gets back, she visits Mara's house to find that it's been destroyed. She finds evidence that Mara lost a companion named Arthur in the early 1900s and this loss led her to her current occupation as a way to distract from the loss. Faith breaks down, wishing to be with Livia.

The story meditates on some of the unconvential ways human beings engage with pain. Both Livia and Mara seem to use physical pain as a distraction from mental anguish. Although Faith never physically harms herself within the story, she craves the familiarity of depression and her codependent relationship with Livia. Being without pain represents new challenges. Although the story focuses on Faith and Mara, Mara's clients also have a strange relationship with pain as people eager to cause it. The symbolism of targeting Mara's groin once they realize nothing is there adds a gendered element to the discussion as well. This damage seems to be done recklessly compared to everything else, framing the men's inability to define Mara as a sex object as an emotional affront. Faith's struggles are mirrored and repeated in Mara as she begins to fall into old habits with a person representative of the worst possible outcome for herself. Not only is Mara the second in a potential pattern of codependence, Mara's commitment to literal torture as a replacement for loss basically confirms to Faith that she will never be okay again. This story was very well done and left me feeling strange; it gets 5/5 stars.

You Go Where It Takes You by Nathan Ballingrud

"You Go Where It Takes You" follows single mother Toni and her struggles raising three-year-old Gwen. One fateful night, she meets Alex and brings him home. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about Toni's relationship with Gwen and her absent father Donny. Toni resents Gwen for the opportunities and freedom she's lost as a result of Gwen's birth (Toni is 23 years old in the current day). Alex is a pretty threatening presence, being a pretty big dude who admitted to stealing the car he rode into town with. There's a bit of tension watching Alex and Gwen interact, but it becomes clear that Alex has no interest in hurting Gwen or Toni. Alex behaves cryptically, pushing Toni to demand an explanation about the car. He confesses that he stole the car from The Grey Man, an entity capable of skinning people and turning their skin into a wearable suit that changes your identity. The back of the car is full of these suits and Toni begs Alex to let her go with him. Alex refuses, but shows Toni the process of putting a suit on, which is implied to involve skinning yourself first. The story ends with Toni abandoning Gwen at a rest stop before driving aimlessly away, set on starting over. Toni's relationship with Gwen is difficult to read through (in a praiseworthy sense), but the story overall wasn't too impactful. Although the Grey Man concept is interesting, the story could've operated without it which feels like a weakness in this context. This story gets 3/5 scalpels!

A Positive by Kaaron Warren

This story follows an unnamed man as he grows up in a medically abusive household that forces him to donate blood to his father (for the sake of the review we'll call him Sam). Sam is kept in physically good condition, but he's emotionally neglected with his parents being open about the reason for his birth. It's questionable as to whether the father has a legitimate disorder that requires blood transfusions as he claims he needs to replace his "old blood" for "young blood" to maintain his vitality. The story explores how Sam grows up, learning about the uniqueness of his situation and eventually railing against it as a teenage. Sam starts staying out with a girlfriend he met at a BDSM club and during one of these instances, the dad goes crazy and kills the mom for her blood. Her blood's incompatibility with the father's was known before Sam's birth, but the father doubted it in this moment. Eventually, Sam and his girlfriend send their respective parents to a hellish "retirement home" in which they suffer specific abuses related to the abuses they subjected their children to. The story was well-done and could be interpreted as a metaphor for parents who have children as objects of personal fulfillment or simply medical abuse as the majority of the story is pretty grounded. It was a well-crafted personal narrative that ended in an unapologetic and rowdy revenge. This story gets 4/5 drops of blood!

La beauté sans vertu by Genevieve Valentine

This story explores events in the fashion industry in an over-the-top cruel world. Fashion houses, the main one being Centifolia, cut off the arms of models and replace them with arms from deceased 14-year-olds as a matter of aesthetic preference. The ways in which the fingertips darken becomes a fashion trend. The main characters of the story include Maria, one of the top models at Centifolia, and Rhea, one of the head designers. The models are treated to frequent surgical procedures and harrowing practices by the choreographers. The designers are made to work in awful conditions and even the harvesting of the materials used to make textiles is cruel. The story explains the way that silk is harvested, which is accurate to real life and potentially a hint as to how the models get their arms. The press that attend the shows attribute meaning to the shows that seem trivial and over-the-top compared to the cruelty required to stage them. The story seems to explore beauty as a construct really well with the ways that the fashion industry works consciously to reframe certain aspects of the models or stages to make as much profit as possible. Desirability becomes restrictive and violent in this context where performance is expected and painful. The story is incredibly well-crafted and darkly comedic in how out of touch most of the players are, with each party's attitude representing a different angle on beauty, consumption, and violence. This story gets 5/5 silkworms!

Subsumption by Lucy Taylor

This story had a bit more of the body horror I was expecting, which was its main strength. It follows Anikka and Baris as they travel through a post-apocalyptic world to find Anikka's father. The story begins with them leaving a bunker Anikka's father built to take cover from a barrage of meteors that destroyed a large portion of the human race. After leaving the bunker, they're surprised to find that much of the landscape is still intact. After nearly coming into contact with a group of survivors who execute one of their companions right in front of them, they commit to staying off the roads. In the forest, they encounter a man whose body has been partially integrated into a tree. They try to save him, but kill him after realized it's impossible as an act of mercy. They now understand that it's something in the air, but it's too late for either of them as they transform into plant creatures. It's quick but unsettling as Anikka's sense of identity is lost as she loses physical agency, forgetting the purpose of the gun as she raises it to end it. There's an environmentalist element to this story, with Anikka noting that the infection only seems to affect humans. The main draw is the absolute loss of control over one's body and mind. The end of the story leaves Anikka with an unclear and transformed consciousness which is difficult to stomach (in a good way :]). This story gets 4/5 trees!

Spar by Kij Johnson

This story follows a human woman and an alien trapped in a too small escape pod (the woman is not named so she'll be called Jane). The alien is not humanoid and Jane spends most of her time sexually engaged with the alien, though the story starts to deconstruct this. Communication between Jane and the alien is never established and Jane only becomes certain that the alien is an animal when she accidentally injures it internally. She then commits to hurting it again for a reaction, but she fails in doing so. Over time, she starts to lose her grip on herself and her past. The sex in the story completely lacks eroticism and focuses on the physical aspects of sex. Orifices are referred to as Ins and protrusions of the body (arms, legs, tongue) are Outs. Sometimes Jane and the alien create new Ins on each other. The story has a unique way of making the reader uncomfortably aware of their body in a lukewarm way. Although your body may be your own, the story makes it feel trivial and unsacred. I think the story really excelled in this aspect and I admire its unique approach. It was well-done, but not really my thing. I could imagine it having a great impact on others. This story gets 3/5 aliens!

It Was the Heat by Pat Cadigan

This is the first story in the book to get less than 3 out of 5 points. The story follows an unnamed woman (who will be called Sara) on a business trip to New Orleans. She suffers a supernatural affliction after a night out with a spirit. Although Sara's struggle as a woman in the workplace is interesting and sympathetic, the story overall feels like jungle fever. There's a sense of "civilized, proper white woman falls victim to vice in the barbaric South". It wasn't her that cheated on her husband, it was the influence of New Orleans that made her do it! It doesn't really help that the author grew up in New York and Massachusetts, which makes the way that Sara talks about New Orleans seem more suspect. Overall, it wasn't a very good read as a story or a body horror story. 2/5 flames.

Atwater by Cody Goodfellow

This story follows Howell as he discovers a mystical town named Atwater that shows up whenever he gets lost. He sees a variety of nightmarish people and is sexually assaulted by a woman that seems to be made out of tar and oil. At a later visit, he attends the birth of the child that was conceived through the assault and apparently burns to death. By the end of the story, it is revealed that Howell is an avatar in a shared dream for a man in a coma. The descriptions of Atwater and its denizens are really cool and well-crafted, but that's about it. The Atwater Institute narrative seems clumsily molded around the imagery, feeling relatively unimportant to the rest of the story. It feels as though the scenes in the town of Atwater were created before the story which dulls its impact. It almost feels like the story may've been better off without an explanation. This story gets 3/5 brains!

The Transfer by Edward Bryant

This story followed a weather forecaster named Dorrie through a couple romantic relationships that culminate in a hostage situation. Dorrie seems to be physically and mentally transformed by intimacy, with the main horror of the story involving slow ego death. It's an interesting premise and it's done well enough, but this story's impact suffered from my picking it back up in the middle after a couple weeks :P. The body horror is pretty muted as well, so that also limited its impact (though it might do well in a different collection). It is certainly worth reading! This story gets 3/5 clouds.

Welcome to Mengele's by Simon Bestwick

This story follows an unnamed man (Jacob for our purposes) as he becomes entangled in an elite brothel that uses technology to transform trafficked victims according to the desires of the clients. The brothel was founded by the eponymous Nazi scientist as a way to fund his research. Jacob is initially guided here by a wealthy friend where he has a foursome with 3 actresses before he's taken hostage and forced to work at the brothel. The story describes the transformation process of Jacob and some of the other victims which thoroughly earns the story's place in this collection. Jacob also gets payback on his "friend", which is nice. Overall, it wasn't really my cup of tea. The beginning involves pretty grounded subject matter which isn't necessarily my preference for horror. Mengele's place in the story feels out of place and bizarre. He was a truly despicable human being who committed atrocious acts, including human experimentation, and invoking his name here purely for the exposition feels slimy somehow. The story spends a bit too long getting set up which leaves the reader feeling voyeuristic more than anything (good when purposeful, but here it doesn't really feel that way). 3/5 scalpels.

Black Neurology - A Love Story by Richard Kadrey

This is one of the shortest stories in the collection at 2 pages and it follows the narrator's experience at the readers autopsy. The story takes place in first person with the narrator referring to the person on the table as "you". I wasn't sure at first whether the narrator was addressing the reader or an unnamed character, but the narrator uses gender-neutral language in a way that seems to imply the former. Over the course of the autopsy, increasingly strange things are found and removed (modeling clay, tar, rattlesnake, etc.). Eventually, the narrator kills the mortician and the reader rises out of their own body similar to a phoenix and is taken home by the narrator. The story doesn't try to explain itself and remains rather dreamlike, with the moritican not exhibiting a proper amount of confusion. The story is gruesom in a way that's softened by the absurdity and apparent care that the narrator has for the deceased. Despite the viscera, the event feels intimate in the way the narrator remains unfazed and informed about the past of the deceased. The story was well-done, though it didn't manage to inspire the same kind of reaction as some of the others have. The length suits it and the narrator's speech conveys a familiar voice well, explaining enough to give a story but not so much that it feels as though the narrator is speaking to a stranger. This story gets 4/5 incisions, but it was probably one of my favorites so far!

Cuckoo by Angela Slatter

Cuckoo follows a vengeful spirit as it attempts to take down a serial killer/pedophile by possessing people and scaring him enough to let it in. It tries possessing one of his recently dead victims, setting itself on fire in front of him, and even possessing his comatose mother, but nothing works. In its last attempt, the killer seems to initiate something sexual at which point the spirit flees. The nature of the spirit is interesting as its sense of vengeance is completely ungrounded in empathy. It displays little to no guilt over its impact on its hosts and kills with impunity. Most of the body horror comes from the spirit's possession of its hosts, with the spirit describing the "fit" of a host and typically leaving them worse for wear (dead, dying, or rotting). The depravity of the killer is engaged with tastefully, giving enough text to understand what's going on without getting into particularly graphic territory. Overall, the story is pretty effective and the concept of a vengeful spirit that's not guided by empathy is fascinating. 4/5 cuckoo birds!

Cinerous by Livia Llewellyn

This story takes place in the autumn of 1799 in Paris and follows lab-assistant Olympe in a facility that engages in human experimentation. Olympe aspires to be a scientist in the facility and is completely uninterested in the state of the victims. The subjects are primarily children who haven't had any contact with the outside world since birth, known as les enfants sauvages. A variety of horrific experiments are done in the facility, but the only one explored in any detail is the living head. The scientists behead the victims using a guillotine and record information, with Olympe being the assistant that collects the blood. Eventually, a particularly sick victim is brought in and the experiment goes wrong. Olympe is bitten through the skin and infected. She eventually comes to understand that the disease came from crematorium ash but she is unable to share this information before she either loses her mind or dies. Olympe's character is irredeemable in a way that is engaging, especially as the victims are all children. Olympe frames her dreams of becoming a scientist as radical within a misogynistic and repressive culture. This is not necessarily untrue, but her understanding of her position as an underdog is undercut by her willingness to exploit the vulnerable for her own gain. Olympe doesn't ever display any feelings of guilt or remorse over the state of the children which challenges the notion that women are born with a maternal instinct. Olympe remains a mad scientist from beginning to end which is refreshing in a culture that seems insistent on casting women as inherently more moral or else less capable of violence than men. This story was well-crafted and effective in showing the fall of a mad scientist. I read this one in two sittings so it's impact was diminished a bit. However, I still liked it overall :]. 4/5 labcoats!

The Truth that Lies Under Skin and Meat by Cassandra Khaw

This story follows Molly, a kind of werewolf pursuing vengeance for her partner. Molly lacks empathy for her victims and mostly sees them as sources of food or pleasure. This lack of empathy is also seen in her treatment of her partner as her pursuit of vengeance goes directly against their wishes. The woman who wronged Molly's partner has a daughter and Molly kills and eats both of them knowing it means the end of her relationship. Molly expresses satisfaction in her actions and seems consciously dismissive of the value of human life, but it also seems as though she's not fully in control of her hunger. This is not in any way that would redeem her though. Molly's characterization as a werewolf was interesting to read, with most of the horror resting in her transformations and feedings. The story in general is told through a series of vignettes labeled by an expense involved in the story which is a unique way of grounding Molly in everyday life. It also seems to emphasize Molly as mundanely evil in a way that's enabled by supernatural factors. 4/5 fangs!

Natural Skin by Alyssa Wong

I had to take a walk after this one which is pretty impressive considering the body horror aspect is relatively tame. The story follows Liin as she traverses a "meat market" in search of a flesh broker (the setting seems a bit cyberpunk). As we move through the market, we learn about Liin's physical insecurities, her attempts to address them, and her strained relationship with her family. The reader eventually comes to the conclusion that Liin is seeking the flesh broker for more plastic surgery. Liin reaches the flesh broker Zhao and convinces her to let her in with the promise of a sale. Zhao and Liin start talking business (with a particularly homoerotic tone) and the reader learns that Zhao acts as a human butcher as well as a plastic surgeon. This exchange incorporates commentary on the fetishization of Asians with Zhao talking about the comparative rates that Chinese and Japanese flesh go for. Liin reveals that she came here to sell her little sister, who is the golden child of their family and also conventionally beautiful in a way that Liin is always compared to. The story ends on Zhao and Liin sneaking back into Liin and Xuemei's room to butcher Xuemei. Liin's struggle with insecurity and the way it was exacerbated by her family was well-done. Liin is condemned both for her natural appearance and the measures she takes to change it which feels realistic. Personally, I've always been squeamish when it comes to the idea of surgery so that may've made this story more impactful for me than it may be for others. Overall, this story was fantastic :]. 5/5 eyes!

The Lake by Tananarive Due

This story follows Abbie, a highschool teacher, as she moves to Florida to start a new job following an unknown scandal. Half of the story (the body horror part) follows her transformation into a sea monster after swimming in a contaminated lake. The other half follows her efforts to get some of her students to help renovate her run-down house, all with a sinister tone. It's revealed in comments throughout the story that Abbie is a pedophile and this is why she was fired from her last job. The way she talks about her students as romantic candidates and resents them for their adolescence makes my skin crawl to the point that the sea monster plot felt more palatable. The story ends with her entirely becoming a sea monster and eating a couple of boys in the lake. The story explores some of the ways in which spaces protect pedophiles by keeping a communal roster of threats instead of pursuing legal action or considering children more mature than they are. The story makes Abbie a friend of Mary Kay Letorneau, a real pedophile who assaulted and married a student of hers. This reference feels a bit out of place and awkward in the same way that the Mengele reference above did. That being said, this story was really effective in turning my stomach, 4/5 fins!

I'm Always Here by Richard Christian Matheson

This story follows a Rolling Stones reporter interviewing a musical duo named Baby and Daddy. Daddy was initially a solo act, but a series of personal misfortunes leads to Baby, a childhood fan, becoming part of his act. It's revealed that in order to save Daddy's life, Baby and Daddy were physically fused together. Baby and Daddy's relationship is difficult for the reporter to process as they've just been through a difficult divorce. The story ends with the reporter having a deeply emotional moment during a concert. This story does well with making the dialogue feel realistic which lets the reader grapple with the concept independently. There are a few details that make the reader uncomfortable, such as the fact that Baby met Daddy when she was 13 and Daddy was a solo act. Baby confirms that they were lovers at some point which is...something. This fact makes it even more uncomfortable when Baby and Daddy's fusion is metaphorically interpreted as a mother-son relationship with Baby's body supporting Daddy's. Baby's admiration for Daddy came from the fact that Daddy's music helped her weather a difficult home life. The narrator's admiration for the relationship feels realistic with the narrator's desire for intimacy allowing them to overlook the codependent nature of it. The body horror aspect is pretty muted, but the quality of the rest of the story makes up for it. The relationship is complicated and the story gives the reader enough room to chew on their feelings about it. The story didn't affect me very much but the way it's written gives the reader a lot to think about which I find admirable. 4/5 notes!

The Look by Christopher Fowler

The story follows a girl (named Ellie for our purposes) and her friend Ann Marie as Ellie tries to get noticed by renowned fashion designer Kit Marlowe. Ellie kind of sucks, looking down on Ann Marie and keeping her around to make herself look better while expecting deep friendship in return. She and Ann Marie come up with a scheme to meet Kit Marlowe that ends with Ann Marie getting noticed instead. A model takes Ellie asid and fills her in on the horrors of the fashion industry (plastic surgery, predatory recruiting, short career lifespan, etc.). A timeskip takes place where Ellie gets to meet Ann Marie, now Andromeda, at one of her fashion shows and she's become a victim of the industry. Similar to "Natural Skin", this story deals in relatively realistic surgical procedures which tends to affect me more deeply. The critique on the fashion industry was pretty poignant without being too preachy. This was a pretty good story :]. 4/5 lights!

The Old Women Who Were Skinned by Carmen Maria Machado

This story is a fairytale about two elderly sisters. One is propositioned by the king under the pretenses that she is young and the king throws her out of a high window once he realizes she is not. Fairies then make her physically young. Her sister sees this and has a barber remove her skin to expose younger skin underneath but there isn't any. The skinless sister suffers physically and socially while the younger yearns for her familiar skin back. It's gruesome in a way that's reminiscent of older fairytales with a bit of explicit eroticism mixed in, 4/5 razors :].