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Richard Laymon
Marlon staggered toward them, blood spilling from his tattered face.
Sandy stood up in front of him.
'Outa my way, bitch,' he gasped. When he said 'bitch,' blood blew off his lips and sprayed Sandy in the face. 'I've got some business to finish with your little monster, and then...'
She punched him in the nose.
His eyes bulged and he stumbled backward.
Sandy kicked one of his feet sideways. He tripped himself. With a gasp of alarm, he fell and landed on his rump. The trailer shook.
Sandy turned and lunged for the dresser.
Glimpsed a naked red woman rushing at the mirror.
Jerked open the middle drawer.
Snatched out her butcher knife.
'You take this,' Agnes Kutch had said, holding out the big, old knife to her. 'You gonna be moving outa the house and living in that trailer out there, you gotta have a weapon. Wish I had a gun to give you, but this here is a real good knife. Mama, she used it on a fella once.' 'I know,' Sandy'd told her. 'I was there. I saw her do it.'
She slammed the dresser drawer and turned to face Marlon.
He was already on his knees, struggling to stand up.
She raised the knife overhead.
Marlon screamed like a woman. -- from The Midnight Tour
Richard Laymon Kills!: The Official Website
The Richard Laymon Memorial Fansite
The Richard Laymon Library
Laymon on Laymon
Richard Laymon's Rules of Writing
Richard Laymon's page @ Fantastic Fiction
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Edward Lee
“Howie,” Leona said with the sickest feeling in her life churning in her belly. “That thing in your hand isn’t the hose…”
It hung limp until the moment she’d said that, almost as if it had sensed the trigger of Howie’s fear. His eyes snapped down…
Then the “hose” began to move…
Vaguely pink, glistening skin. About an inch thick. How long was it? It extended from his hand, behind him, its other end still on the other side of the shack. Howie tried to drop the grotesque thing but it was already too late for that. In the space of that synaptic second, the creature energized and wrapped around Howie’s upper torso—
Then Howie was dressed in the thing, wearing it like a corselet. His scream was severed when more of its length coiled about his neck. Howie fell over. -- from Slither
Edward Lee Official Website
Edward Lee interviewed @ Buried.com
Edward Lee's Header, the movie
Necro Publications
Edward Lee page @ Fantastic Fiction
The Edward Lee Forum @ Horror World
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Charlee Jacob
It was the day which would eventually turn into the night of Halloween that the seller of skeletons came to our town. Obviously intended as decorations for the traditional celebration of good-natured horror, they were immediately more interesting than those plastic or cardboard types which the five-and-dimes sold. They weren't flat, for one thing, but had three dimensions, having been molded out from an intricate form of papier-mâché perhaps. The skulls in particular were startling, almost an origami of macabre beauty. These were nothing mass-produced in some far-off Oriental country, created by near-slave labor who didn't even know what Halloween was.
Simonville was not a big place and the foundling strings of bones soon found niches in front yard trees and on broad, covered porches. The mayor, who ran into the skeleton-seller outside of the luncheonette where he habitually went each noonday, even bought twenty-six to be hung about the park--twenty-six being twice thirteen and somehow appropriate for the light- hearted festival of modern Samhain.
I lived in an apartment so there was no place where I might have put one up. But I noted the skeleton-seller as he took the wheelbarrow from his pickup truck and peddled his bones from place to place. I followed him when he had sold them all, curious as to where he would go. Did he have relatives in Simonville? Would he sleep in his truck that night or in the park where so many of his wares would be shaking in the branches? -- from Flesh of Leaves, Bones of Desire
Charlee Jacob Official Website
Charlee Jacob page @ Fantastic Fiction
Charlee Jacob interviewed @ Buried.com
Haunter
Charlee Jacob @ Facebook
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Jack Ketchum
You think you know about pain?
Talk to my second wife. She does. Or she thinks she does.
She says that once when she was nineteen or twenty she got between a couple of cats fighting – her own cat and a neighbor’s – and one of them went at her, climbed her like a tree, tore gashes out of her thighs and breasts and belly that you still can see today, scared her so badly she fell back down her again, all tooth and claw and spitting fury. Thirty-si stitches I think she said she got. And a fever that lasted days.
My second wife says that’s pain.
She doesn’t know shit, that woman.
Evelyn, my first wife, has maybe gotten closer.
There’s an image that haunts her.
She is driving down a rain-slick highwayon a hot summer morning in a rented Volvo, her lover by her side, driving slowly and carefully because she knows how treacherous new rain on hot streets can be, when a Volkswagen passes her and fishtails into her lane. Its rear bumper with the “Live Free or Die” plates slides over and kisses her grille. Almost gently. The rain does the rest. The Volvo reels, swerves, glides over an embankment and suddenly she and her lover are tumbling through space, they are weightless and turning, and up is down and then up and then down again. At some point the steering wheel breaks her shoulder. The rearview mirror cracks her wrist. -- from The Girl Next Door
Jack Ketchum Official Website
Jack Ketchum Bibliography
'The Scariest Guy in the Country'
Jack Ketchum News Blog
Jack Ketchum @ Facebook
Jack Ketchum's Twitter feed
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Kathe Koja
Tess said less, watching the dancers, thinking of the rhythm inherent in metal, in corroding iron, in the slick long limbs of steel. Could it be found? Could she find it? ... Branches of mastery, hints and feints and driving piston hearts, the drip of machine oil, the stutter of living flesh mechanically enabled; what she wanted -- what did she want? Machines that were not robots, moving sculpture that did not mimic the organic but played, somehow, both with and off that distanceless dichotomy, the insolvable equation of steel screws and aching flesh, that wanted people not only as operators but as co-conspirators. See those dancers now, and imagine them locked in ballerina combat with the grip and clench of metal, the sweet smoke of rosin solder like incense around their dripping faces, imagine them lit with a hundred strobes and the subsonic growl of bass-heavy music like the throb of an engine running hot, burning hot, burning like the white heart of the arc.
Burning. All of it burning. -- from Skin
Kathe Koja Official Website
Kathe Koja's blog
Kathe Koja's books @ Bookfinder
Kathe Koja pages @ Fantastic Fiction
Kathe Koja interviewed @ Dark Echo
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Poppy Z Brite
My name is Andrew Compton. Between 1977 and 1988 I killed twenty-three boys and young men in London. I was seventeen years old when I began, twenty-eight when they caught me. All the time I was in prison, I knew that if they ever let me out I would continue killing boys. But I also knew they would never let me out.
My boys and young men were transients in the city: friendless, hungry, drunk and strung out on the excellent Pakistani heroin that has coursed through the veins of London since the swinging sixties. I gave them good food, strong tea, a warm place in my bed, what few pleasures my body could provide. In return, all I asked was their lives. Sometimes they appeared to give those as readily as anything else.
I remember a sloe-eyed skinhead who went home with me because he said I was a nice white bloke, not a bleeding queer like most of these others that chatted him up in the pubs of Soho. (What he was doing in the pubs of Soho, I cannot tell you.) He did not seem inclined to revise his opinion even as I sucked his cock and slid two greased fingers into his anus. I noticed later that he had a dotted line tattooed in scarlet round his throat, along with the words CUT HERE. I had only to follow directions. ('You look like a bleeding queer,' I'd told his headless corpse, but young Mr White England had nothing to say for himself anymore.) -- from Exquisite Corpse
Poppy Z Brite Official Website
Poppy Z Brite's blog
Poppy Z Brite interviewed @ Vice Magazine
Poppy Z Brite's books @ Bookfinder
Poppy Z Brite FanFiction Archive
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Douglas Clegg
The locals called it the Tombs, although it was much more than merely a series of subterranean burial chambers. It had been carved from rock by the local miners for some early Villiers ancestor and had been used just two years before my birth, when my grandmother had died. Her coffin was sealed up in granite and plaster within the Tombs, and there were spaces for other Villiers to come. My mother made me swear that I would never allow her to be buried there. “I don’t like that place,” she told me. “It’s cold and horrible and primitive. Put me in a churchyard with a proper marker. Do you promise me?” Certain that her death was years away, I promised her whatever she asked. I coaxed a smile from her when I demanded that upon my own death, she have the ragman cart me away to the rubbish pile.
What lay below the Tombs had once been a sacred site to the Cornish people, more than a thousand years earlier. It had been a cave, leading down the cliff-side through a series of narrow passages out to sea. It was believed to be an entrance to the Otherworld—the Isle of Apples, it was sometimes called—where a stag-god and a crescent-moon mother goddess ruled. -- from Isis
Douglas Clegg Official Website
Douglas Clegg's blog
Douglas Clegg Bibliography
Douglas Clegg @ Twitter
Douglas Clegg interviewed @ thedfunderground
Douglas Clegg on life as a horror writer
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Lucy Taylor
A lot of people are going to be turned off by the kind of horror I write. I don't write very much supernatural horror. It's less frightening, because it's horror couched in metaphor. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, all this stuff, can be brought off really well if the writer's good enough, but real-life horror is much scarier. We're pretty sure there's not going to be a werewolf coming through the window, whereas if somebody flips out, breaks in, and blows us away, that could happen. I'm much more worried about the guy out there with the gun than the werewolf. -- Lucy Taylor
Lucy Taylor Bibliography
Lucy Taylor @ Facebook
Lucy Taylor interviewed @ Locus Online
Lucy Taylor's books @ Amazon
Lucy Taylor's The Flesh Artist
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Jeremy Robert Johnson
One day you fall asleep happy. Next to a river under a dark sky. Then you wake up and everything has changed. Including you. You changed so much that for the first time you actually risk your life.
For what?
Love. It’s as good a word as any. It will do.
And you’ve gone so crazy with this feeling, call it love, that you find yourself in an absurd situation, humming moaning at telepathic bugs and killing brainwashed entymologists.
I know.
It sounds silly.
But it feels important at the time. -- from Extinction Journals
The Basement Cypher: Jeremy Robert Johnson's blog
Jeremy Robert Johnson Official Website
Jeremy Robert Johnson @ Goodreads
Jeremy Robert Johnson Bibliography
Jeremy Robert Johnson @ Facebook
Stephen King
The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through treacherous whirlpools, and continued on its way down Witcham Street toward the traffic light which marked the intersection of Witcham and Jackson. The three vertical lenses on all sides of the traffic light were dark this afternoon in the fall of 1957, and the houses were all dark, too. There had been steady rain for a week now, and two days ago the winds had come as well. Most sections of Derry had lost their power then, and it was not back on yet.
A small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. It tapped on the yellow hood of the boy's slicker, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof ... a comfortable, almost cozy sound. The boy in the yellow slicker was George Denbrough. He was six. His brother William, known to most of the kids at Derry Elementary School (and even to the teachers, who would never have used the nickname to his face) as Stuttering Bill, was at home, hacking out the last of a nasty case of influenza. In that autumn of 1957, eight months before the real horrors began, and twenty-eight years before the final showdown, Stuttering Bill was ten years old. -- from It
Stephen King Official Website
Stephen King's Paris Review interview
Stephen King Bibliography
Stephen King Unofficial Fansite
The Stephen King So Rocks Site
Stephen King Library
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Bentley Little
John Hawks had started walking the night after his fever broke. At first they'd thought that the sickness had passed. When they heard the creak of his bedsprings, heard his footsteps on the hardwood floor, they assumed that he'd gotten up and out of bed because he was all right. But when he strode straight through the kitchen and outside without so much as a word, when they saw the almost complete lack of expression on his skeletal face, the glassy stare of his pale eyes, they knew something was wrong. Robert and Cabe had run out after him, trying to find out what was going on, but the old man had begun circling around the house, bumping into the cottonwood tree, stepping through the jojoba bushes, apparently oblivious to his surroundings. They had followed him around the house once, twice, three times, yelling at him, demanding his attention, but it was clear that he was not going to talk to them. They were not even sure he understood the words they screamed. The only thing they were sure of was that he was still sick. And that, for some reason, he could not stop walking. -- from The Walking
Bentley Little Homepage
The Horrifying World of Bentley Little
Bentlet Little @ Myspace
Bentley Little Bibliography
The Bentley Little Community
Free torrents of 19 Bentley Little novels
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*
p.s. Hey. So, it's cleaning/exile day here at the Recollets, and if I seem to be brushing by the commentaries, and I'll try my best to use my hampered circumstances as thoroughly as allowable, that's why. ** David, Ah, mystery solved with a flourish. I heard about that Laurie Anderson dog concert. What will she think of next? ** Oscar B, Hey. Mr. Mike got swept away by his visiting family yesterday, dashing the meeting plans, but we're hopefully going to meet with Chrystel in about twenty-one minutes from now to be exact. News as soon as I have some. In other Recollets news, we have new washing machine and dryers now. No more tokens. Update: It turns out the Recollets didn't realize we wanted to hang things on the wall?! And we can't, but we can starting in July, so we have now delayed our show about a month, and we'll get a new date picked out maybe before you get back or soon thereafter. Weird, but I guess the extra time is fine, right? ** Misanthrope, Dude, I know every mirror's shock and horror show quite well, yes. And I hear you on your post-Justin home life. I say use the feeling of absence as an empty canvas, man. Fill it before it fills you. Moyak? I'm not sure what his name is. I think he has his own website a la Mike but punier. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, yes, I'd forgotten the Straubs did that. Very curious to hear or at least read your thoughts on the Godard film once you've seen it. I don't believe I've ever heard of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson. How did you see his films? Yeah, Araki's new one won the 'Queer Palme'. Didn't know there was such a prize. ** Syreearmwellion, I'll get that Belburu Poly album you mentioned, great, thanks! Do you try to publish your writings? I mean in traditional or outside contexts, I guess I mean? What, you're saying there's a life outside of hovering over one's own lit? That's news to me, ha ha. Oh, wait, I also hover over a blog too. Really, about the paean's lesser second half? Hm, I think I don't see it. It was an accident, if that's the case, 'cos the arrangement was alphabetical. ** Alan, Thanks, man. Isn't the Godard film on Youtube anymore? It was at one point. Hold on. No, it doesn't seem to be there anymore, weird. I got mine from a site that had it available for two days, and you could only download it if you were in France. It must be somewhere. Have you tried to find a torrent? Everyone, anyone out there know where and how one can download or stream the new Godard film? Thanks. ** Dandysweets, Hey! I've only read some Bruce Wagner, and it didn't do all that much for me. He has his champions, though, and they're usually smart folks. I haven't read 'The Road' yet. Really want to one of these days. 'Nowhere Boy' ... is that new? Is it in theaters? I don't think I know it. Oh, you bet, a pre-Beatles Beatles Day would be splendid and hugely welcome if you don't mind. Thanks, pal. Best wishes back to you from rainy Paris. ** Peter, Hey, welcome to here, Peter. Good to meet you. Yeah, you described the pull of those images for me very beautifully. And, yeah, their relationship to Gary Wilde's work/image is a definite to my mind. Have you managed to get 'The Punishment of ...'? There was a short time five or so years ago when you could get a VHS of it via naughtybids fairly easily, but I'm not sure if there are any options now. I have a few of his short solo films in their original Super8 formats in my LA pad somewhere. I knew him extremely peripherally through a boyfriend in the early 70s when they were both street hustlers, but I don't really have any interesting stories or anecdotes unfortunately. Anyway, hey, thanks, and I hope I'll see you again. ** Stan_cz, Hey, man! It has been a hell of a while. Great to see you! I'm glad LA is keeping you busy though. Yeah, not a great time to need a job, and I'm guessing your visa status doesn't work in your favor on that front? I didn't know about the John Fante renaming. 5th and Grand, okay. Is that precise spot related to his work or just random? Cool, in any case. Yeah, good to see you, man. ** Jargon/Joseph, Dang, sorry about the almost win re: the Pank contest. You were gyped, clearly. How was that 'Greek' movie? All I've heard is Diddy's 'great' in it, and since Diddy makes my skin crawl, I've been not exactly lured closer. I'm probably just a little less stressed than yourself. Here, accept some only slightly stressed vibes, if that helps. ** Justin, Well, that's why Russian porn is the Ingmar Bergman of gay porn, I guess. Czech porn would be the Ken Russell of porn. Bulgrian porn would be the ... Todd Solondz of porn maybe. With my allergies, polyester is like a stun gun. I feel for your knuckle. ** Empty Frame, When I eventually get myself to Berlin, you'll have to show me this stretch of your Berlin strasse. For, uh, artistic reasons. The PiL line-up is a relative sham with a couple of late period holdovers and some newbies. I'm far too suspicious to think about seeing PiL sans Levene and Wobble, but, if you dare, do tell. Well, the CfPA sounds a whole more interesting than the title had suggested, although, now that I know what it is, I love the title. ** JW Veldhoen, Maybe I dreamt last night that I was a guillotine. Now wouldn't that be interesting. I don't remember a dream-related thing, though, as usual. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, I haven't actually done 18 of those totem poles, have I? Yikes. Nixon: yeah, you know my dad was a good friend of his, blah blah, and my brother's named after Nixon, blah blah. I sussed out a means to reacquaint myself with Bark Psychosis just last night. The actual contact might come as soon as this evening. ** Steevee, That is a really nice Oneohtrix Point Never video, yeah. The porn model with the teddy bear is one of the spookiest Russian models. He has that tragic look on his face in every image and video I've ever seen him in. At one point, I wondered if his face is partially paralyzed, but I don't think it is. ** Pascal, Gosh, man, thank you a lot. Wow, that's really kind. Yeah, that means a lot, thank you. ** Statictick, Your neighbor sounds very cool. Oh, I suspect that if you're feeding her my books in order, 'Frisk' should do the trick long before 'Period' gets its chance. ** Little foal, Hey. Wow, a generous and thoroughly amazing amount of your presence yesterday. I wish I wasn't scrambling to beat my exile. But the S&M practice is very much about order, isn't it? Testing but maintaining a strict orderliness? Hm, that's a gross simplification of a broad practice, obviously. Oh, you might make it to 'Jerk' in Dublin? Damn, I'll try to redouble my efforts to get invited along for the shows, although I think it's probably a no-go. Do you live in Ireland? I suddenly realize I don't know where you live exactly. Strange, but don't feel any need to say. That's totally fantastic news about the acceptance of your story in the anthology! How heartening, how wise of them, how great for the lucky segment of the reading public! Yeah, I guess wait to make sure the publisher isn't the type to put his or her foot down or something, but ... that's so cool! The dye is cast, little foalmania is green lit! That's really strange about the Recon thing. I mean, I've seen all sorts of questionably 18 year old slaves and masters on there. Yeah, I guess send them a scan of your passport or something. I hope that site isn't starting some sort of dreadful 'cleaning up' of their act. Sadly, I fear the interest in poetics and complex guys is probably fairly low there, yeah, based on the rudimentary, cookie cutter schpiel on 90% of the profiles. I guess they don't want intelligence and nuance to interfere with the constructing of their b& w fantasies or whatever. [infected] is gorgeous, and it would be really interesting to see who likes its offer. Oh, gorgeous new piece by you. Everyone, a new tiny, great piece by little foal right here. ** Kier, Hey, pal. The apron one is nice, yeah. In the porn from which the image came, the lad was making his ... boss, dad, friend of his family, ... who knows? ... a nice pot of tea when ... whammo. He's probably thinking, 'He doesn't like my tea, sigh'. ** I just got back from an unusually long 90 minute period of exile, and it's really late, and I'm going to have to rush now, sorry. ** Ken Baumann, Thanks, buddy. Sorry to be so under the gun on my end today. ** Frank Jaffe, Glad your trip ruled, and I hope my book doesn't make your bf rethink you, because my stuff's been known to screw up perfectly good relationships before, ha ha but true. One week to LA! I'll give you LA tips next time since I'm thinking/typing like a speed freak at the moment. The weather is rainy but warmish, not bad. Supposed to rain all week, turn summery after the weekend. The Florida skies are presumably in their usual fine shape. ** Nb, Skype's such a bonus, right? I don't like videochats. Maybe when the technology gets them smoother or something, but they seem weirdly distracting to me, which of course makes no sense. I would say Russian twinks own stoicism, relatively speaking, yes. The Japanese twink porn stars are pretty good at it too. ** Sypha, Ha ha, no matter how unhappy they look or how complicated their inner lives, you're always looking for hotties. You're incorrigible. ** Inthemostpeculiar, So, there's the post you hugely helped me out on. Hope it's okay. Yeah, I do work the fuck out of my novels. Sometimes I wonder if I need to, and then I know I'll never know. No, he'll read in French, but it's just about bring in his presence for me, really. I don't do long hair well, never did. It doesn't suit my face, and now that I'm thinned on top, it looks no good at all. Wow, 'Wolf', I forgot all about that movie. Your enslavement sounds like it was kind of okay. I saw that Lady Gaga video yesterday. Yeah, I don't know. I still think she tries awfully hard. Sometimes, I just see the strain. Luckily, my day was nothing much because I have to really jet today. Worked on the novel, mostly. Almost entirely, even. Talked to a few people. Made some plans (meeting about the 'Jerk' radio show book/CD this afternoon, Palais de Tokyo opening tomorrow, Guyotat reading and free Brigitte Fontaine concert on Friday). Read a little, listened to music a little ... mm, really not much at all. If I forgot anything, I'll add it to my day report tomorrow. Good day, my friend, and unleash it on me. ** Postitbreakup, Hey, Josh. Uh, I think I know how much you don't like yourself sometimes, yes. I watch too much porn too, but I have blog posts as my excuse, ha ha. Mm, knowing me, I probably would call you at some point, but not until I finish my novel at the very least. I'm reclusing. ** Math, Hey, M. Are you back in NYC now? Things good? ** Bollo, Oh, slurp, Dutch french fries with mayonaise ... one of my favorite food stuffs in the world. They also do them with peanut sauce, which is literally the second coming of Christ in your mouth. Bataille theory recommendation ... oh, shit, I'm in such a rush. Uh, maybe 'Erotism' or the selected writings book 'Visions of Excess' to start? ** Schlix, Exactly, re: your thinking on the reason to write. Amazing how in finding the right words, you find your truest thoughts/opinion. It shouldn't work that way logically, but it does. No, I don't think I know 'Rhotenburg'. The only movie I've seen about that German cannibal was called, mm, 'Cannibal', I think, and it wasn't good at all. If you see it, let me know, okay? ** Brendan, Oh, I truly love that first Pinback album, and, well, their stuff pretty much always. I definitely was studying them for a bit. Great album, great band. Jucifer, no, I don't think I've heard them. Huh, okay, I'll listen up. Sorry to be so speedy. ** 于呈均名 , Twice! ** Changeling, Really great, beautiful comment! The sequence about your grandfather alone was mesmeric, and filled me with questions, and, man, I'm just so not liking how I have to scurry along in this p.s., but, if I don't, some supposedly powerful person will take my late arrival at our scheduled meeting as a serious affront, or so I've been warned. Anyway, ... I think I like earnestness best when it's kept under musical lock and key. JAMC, yes, The Hold Steady, nah, for instance. I'll say more about that jolt between my two voices later on, but, yeah, it's weird to me too. I want to see your journalism piece for sure. There must be a way. Send it to me, or ... ? Would it make a good blog post for here? How about sharing it that way? ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Hey, Nick. That sounds like an excellent preventative method. I do that. Sometimes I do this trick where I imagine I'm physically inside the bodies of people who wrong me or overly attract me or whatever, and that sometimes kind of works to debunk them too. It's weird. I'm reading the new Ben Brooks too. It's fucking great, isn't it? Yeah, he's pretty amazing. Really nice to see/feel you feeling more yourself, as I'll dare to put it. ** Casey McKinney, Hey, Casey. Different Davids, actually. Ours here is Ehrenstein, ours back then was Ehrlich. So it was the Jabberjaw gig. A crowning jewel in my GbV rebuilt head, that gig. Okay, I have terrible requirement on me to scoot the heck out of here and into a fucking meeting, but I'll talk to you more tomorrow hopefully. ** Right. I'm literally going to post this and run out immediately my door like a maniac, lest I be screwed. 99% of the credit for today's post goes to our heroic d.l. and friend Inthemostpeculiar way. All hail him and literary horror too! See you tomorrow.
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