The Slob By Aron Beauregard

The Slob
By Aron Beauregard
2019 Maggot Press
Paperback, 128 pages

 

                This book gets a lot of mentions on the Horror Books and Splatterpunks Facebook pages and naturally, that caught my attention. I like to indulge in the extreme stuff and this one was supposed to be way out there. Imagine my delight when I was walking through a local Horror Con and unbeknownst to me, Aron Beauregard was there! I bought a few books from him (and Daniel Volpe), ready to bust my AB cherry. He seemed like such a nice young man.

 

                Having grown up in a squalid setting, Vera became a neat freak, always cleaning to overcome the filth of her childhood. Life hadn’t been easy, but she eventually persevered, married her (disabled) husband and was pregnant with their first child. For extra cash, she became a door-to-door vacuum salesperson and business was booming. In her second trimester, she knew she’d have to give up the job. But just one more day… one more sale…

 

                Then, she rang The Slob’s doorbell. And her life went to hell.

 

                Beauregard is a hell of a good writer, and this book is much more than an extreme horror gross-out. Vera is a fully developed character, flawed (as we all are) and very relatable and I really became attached to her. That is why, halfway through the book, I got the biggest sucker punch in the gut since I read Let’s Go Play at the Adams’. From the point she gets to The Slob’s house till the end of the book, it is pure nightmare.

 

                The Slob is full of horrific violence, various bodily fluids, rape, dismemberment, humiliation, and every sordid action you can (and could never) imagine. Then why do I heartily recommend it? Because it is compelling, very well written and, well yeah… gross as fuck. Not many books make me wake up in the night feeling nervous and lousy, thinking of the protagonist. This one did.

 

                This edition has a lovely cover and interior art by Anton Rosovsky.

 

                And he seemed like a nice young man.

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Killstreme By Rayne Havok

 

Killstreme
By Rayne Havok
Self-published, 2020/21
Paperback, 80 pages

 

                This book (and author) came to my attention when I heard that Amazon had banned a few extreme horror books, this one included. Naturally, I immediately wanted to support this book and author, so I put it on my wish-list and kept checking back to see if it was still “unavailable”. Eventually, sanity prevailed, and the book was again for sale on that billionaire’s website. I bought it.

 

                A slender volume, it is. Just over 70 pages of story, double-spaced; it would be about a 30-page story in a normal anthology. But that doesn’t bother me. I like ‘em short. And sweet. And violent. I’ll admit that got a little nervous when I started the story; as with many self-published efforts, a good proof-reading was needed. The first chapter is a mess of punctuation and sentence structure errors, but as the story went on, I either stopped noticing or they weren’t present.

 

                But that’s just the editor in me. Story-wise, this is loads of fun. A sick fuck gets a chance to make his own snuff film. He goes to a secluded film-site and begins his torture/ murder in the vilest ways imaginable. And then the tables turn…

 

                Havok gleefully describes painful torture on the male anatomy and I fucking love it. After so much misogyny in the genre, it’s nice to see uncompromising male genital torture. Read ‘em and weep, fellas. The extremity and over-the-top violence were obviously a lot of fun to write and it sure is fun to read.

 

                I will definitely look into her other work, but I will also hope that she hooks up with a worthwhile proofreader/ editor. Her great ideas deserve to be properly presented.

               

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Dead Inside By Chandler Morrison

 

Dead Inside
By Chandler Morrison
2020 Death’s Head Press
Made-to-order Paperback, 162 pages

 

    This book got a lot of comments on the Books of Horror Facebook page and it piqued my interest. Disgusting, vile, sickening, “I had to put it down”… it almost seemed like a challenge. When I saw it had a necrophiliac character, I happily put it into my Amazon basket.

 

    The main character, a hospital security guard, is indeed a necrophile. His morgue visits were more than just doing his rounds. He eventually meets a maternity doctor, a woman who enjoys eating abortions. He finds out her secret and an oddball romance ensues. That’s right; Dead Inside is a romantic story, and a pretty goddamn funny one, too.

 

    Yes, it’s gross for grossness’s sake, but there is a wicked sense of humor throughout. Told in first person in the security guard’s voice, his bleak outlook of the world and his casual acceptance of what he is drives the narrative and makes for quite a few chuckles. Sure, there is explicit corpse fucking, fetus eating, combinations of the two, skull fucking, slime, ooze, ejaculate and nihilism, but somehow, I could understand the guard’s motives and I’ll be damned if I didn’t agree with some of his thoughts.

 

    Dead Inside is extremely well written and engaging, once you accept the fact that it is an extreme horror book that aims to shock. But shock isn’t the main objective, I don’t think. I’ll be looking for more of Morrison’s books. This one was good. Unlike any other romance novel you have ever read.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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Cows By Matthew Stokoe

Cows
By Matthew Stokoe

Made on Demand, 1997/ 2015

Paperback, 206 pages

 

                This is the notorious, gross-out, disgusting novel that has all the kids a’ twitter about how nasty it is. When online discussions about the “most extreme” horror novels pop up, Cows is sure to get a mention. Needless to say, I needed to take the plunge and shell out my hard earned dough.

 

                Steven is a fucked-up guy. His unloving mother (The Hagbeast) routinely abuses him, and he longs for the “real”, happy family life he sees on TV. He gets a job in a slaughterhouse, his first move towards independence, and it fucks him up even more. Soon, a group of rogue cows that have escaped the kill-line are talking to him and indoctrinating him into their underground society, hoping he can help with their cause.

 

Yeah, that’s right. Talking cows. On the surface, it’s just more wackiness in a book that has more shit, vomit, blood, jizz, and other bodily fluids than every other book ever written combined, but it’s all just allegory, and it does get a tad heavy handed at times. Not to say that it doesn’t work, though. The world (and our place in it) is a mess and Stokoe does a masterful job of showing just how bad it could be for some folks. Granted, I’m not going to shit down my mother’s throat to kill her, but I do feel a little alienated sometimes.

 

Is the book a gross-out? Oh, hell yes! Has Stokoe actually eaten shit? Because he goes into great detail about the texture, taste and viscosity of feces that will have your brow furrowing at the very least. His descriptions of the desolate world of Steven filled me with his hopelessness and, as a veggie, the slaughterhouse scenes reinforced my choice of a meatless lifestyle in a massive way. Yes, the book is a gross-out, but it is a hell of a lot more than that. It will make you think about things you’d rather not think about. I made me squirm, laugh, roll my eyes and think. It’s actually quite a deep book.

 

First published in 1998 by Creation Books, Cows is now self-published by Matthew Stokoe.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March 2022.

 

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