Benthic Zone II
electric bugaboo
A continuation of last week’s ramble.
First thing’s first: my partner,
, wrote a lovely piece about their mom stabbing a man in the face. Read it here.Secondly, I wrote a book review of Sutter Cane’s In The Mouth of Madness for Psychopomp.com which is available to purchase from most booksellers. It’s a novelization of the John Carpenter film but presented as the eponymous novel, complete with Sutter Cane as an eldritch self-inserted author. The book is decent, and I sang its praises plenty. I’m more interested in its existence as a meta-object, so my review plays along with the gag of Sutter Cane’s viral madness. Check it out if you’d like.
To be honest, I don’t make a good critic by its traditional definition. I’m not really comfortable critiquing what I think is bad about a work of art when I know it came from the earnest labor of a honest person scraping by. Everything is subjective, and if I don’t like something there’s usually countless forces that have nothing to do with the artist’s decisions. I also have little interest in mainstream literature (partly because I’d like to exude an aloof coolness) mostly because they have enough attention and money anyway. I’m sure Ocean Vaughn is a nice person, but I simply don’t care. I prefer to elevate the strivers at the bottom, people who are getting barely any attention for their crazy talent, outstretched like desperate sea fans.
I prefer Horror & Weird fiction because it’s largely unmarketable, ripped straight from the heart and presented raw to the revolted audience. Sucking holes spout fetid blood into the eyes of the intrepid reader who dares to stick around. Things that get banned, not for the lewdness of the content, but for the very fact that it dares to declare life an important thing.
Books I read recently that felt ripped straight from the heart:
The Pump by
. Surreal fiction about a desolate community. Gross and sad and beautiful.Nefando by
, translated by Sarah Booker. Poetic fiction about deeply traumatized people hurting themselves and each other.- . Philosophy Horror. I can’t praise this one enough; you can feel a truth both personal and universel poured into the writing like blood from a wound. I’m ready to gobble up everything Elsby has written after this.
This one’s for the metalheads who just subscribed: Chaindevils by Matthew Mitchell. Ozarkian Mad Max. Real tasty.
We Will Speak Again of the Red Tower — a totally free anthology of stories by various authors inspired by The Red Tower by Thomas Ligotti (my favorite of his, incidentally). Joe Koch numbers among the writers…
I’m going to save my praises for Joe Koch for a whole ass article, but their motto is “Literary Horror & Surrealist Trash.” If that’s your bag: run, don’t walk.
Some indie publisher recommendations.
- on Substack)
- on Substack)
I discovered these publishers on Twitter before it was X; I fear I’ll be unable to stumble on anything like them without rigorous mucking about the scum puddles of the disintegrating social media landscape. Such is life in the Benthic Zone. I hope you find succor in the morsels. When I support these tiny companies, I feel like I’m connecting with real people. My money goes to real artists whose lives matter just as much as the urchins skulking about the trench hollows. I’d like them to know that someone is out there catching their words in my filter feeding mandibles and finding sustenance.
We’re all huddled in the cold darkness, simultaneously craving and dreading discovery. We want community, but we don’t know who is a psychotic fascist until they close their jaws around our fragile shell. We want to feel safe and fed, but our society has been structured on a system of taking. My analogy kind of falls apart when I apply social media to it… is Twitter the water we see each other through? Is Substack some briny oasis where the friendly fish come to splash about before returning to dangerous waters? Is the entire techno-fascist panopticon some leviathan that has swallowed us, leaving us to suckle its stomach lining like gut flora? What of the censor-bots surveilling our movements? The hollow-folk waiting for a false move they can exploit for their masters? What are the jackboots?
Are our enemies bacteriophagic fuckers drifting into our gills to poison us against each other? Are they demi-omniscient sharks swooping down and thresh us as soon as they sniff out our delicious innocence? The predator’s evolutionary purpose is allegedly to quell overpopulation, but these people aren’t even really predators; they’re fat deposits for Capital to sit and rot for generations onward. The men ruling the world aren’t barracudas, they’re silt composed of the hopes of unborn generations, blanketing the sea floor with their uselessness.
The very bodies of the autarchs remain firmly ensconced in the space between you and me, keeping us from joining and reveling in our shared lot in life. They are alienation incarnate. They breath in our love and exhale microplastics. They just want to eat and eat and eat, then shrug at the Marianas wasteland they’ve shit out in their wake. My metaphor is melting between my webbed fingers, but I stand by it. It’s hard not to feel like a floundering wretch cowering in the shadow of these husk-mongers.
In all of this horror, I can share an epiphany that has brought me great solace: it’s a rare thing to be able to look into the eyes of a person and say “I love you” with full sincerity. So do that. Scream at the people in your life that you love them. Find an artist, fall in love with their work, and tell them. Share. Support. Stabilize. When you feel helpless, do the paradoxical thing and help someone else. You’ll feel the mutuality in your action. Donate and volunteer with food assistance programs.
Break my analogy, prove me wrong, shove The Doom back into its drowned crypt and improvise a sealing incantation. Make up the name of the deity that will redeem us. Hold out your flipper and pull your fellows out of the depths. Let us ascend into the jeweled Atlantis we were destined to build. Dwell in wonder and glory forever together with our aquatic comrades.
I hope you have a safe & happy Halloween, dear reader. I plan to celebrate the holiday with my friends and family held close. I’ll meet you in the chum bucket.
Thank you for reading. If you’re interested in my writing, please check out my book of Weird fiction, Drippy Trippy Doom. You can also find more of my work on doompunkdispatch.com
Oof, thank you for the kind Pump words, friend. 🦫