I was provided a review copy of this anthology by editor Sloane Leong, whose work I’ve quite liked in the past, though admittedly I have only read her comics work (Graveneye is a masterpiece). What follows, is a review of some, but not all, of the stories collected in the anthology Death in the Mouth, which Leong edited with Cassie Hart, whose work I am extremely unfamiliar with. I have based my selection of five stories on how cool the titles are, though I will say all of the stories have extremely cool titles. I wish I had time to read and review all of them, but such is the nature of deadlines.
Above the Hungriest Dead
By Beatrice Winifred Iker
The opening story of the collection, and an extremely unsettling one. While the shortest of the stories (bar the forward), Iker nevertheless utilizes the prose format to a disquieting degree. Their capabilities with the pen allow for turns of phrases that are at once funny, horrifying, and tragic. One simply cannot hate a story that opens with “You will help me slice my breasts off tonight under the waning moonlight.”
Bring Your Own Bombs
By Nadia Bulkin
The thing about stories being told is that they’re always unreliable. Whether it’s something as small as revealing information after the fact or making up names wholesale, it’s always interesting to see what a narrator leaves out, adds in, or changes to suit their needs. Bulkin uses this uncertainty to tell a ghost story haunted by the unknown. Our lead, whose name may or may not be Matt, know so little that our perspective on this tragedy is muddied and confused, adding to the richly developed horror. But then, there are some horrors we remain willfully blind to. Ignorant, if you will.
An Ode to the Mirror Arcana in a Triplet Flow
By Xavier Garcia
I will admit, the rap scene was never mine. I’ve been more aligned with the beats of R&B and Disco than I have with rap. This is in part due to a childhood aversion to the genre on the part of my brother’s insistence on playing 50 Cent every single day. I’m sure I’d find something to love about the field if I gave it a chance, but I’ve never been able to do so. Still, Garcia brings a texture and horror to those who aspire to be seen as violent men. The refrain of “I want it, I need it, I’ll take it. It’s mine.” In particular takes on a chilling effect as it grows from bravado into something far more sinister.
A Jaguar in the Light of the Sixth Gun
By R Diego Martinez
This is a prose poem from hell about the feeling your heart gets when young love turns sour and you so desperately want the whole world to end just so your heart no longer feels like it wants to tear itself apart and the only alternative is to rip out the throat of everyone in your life with your bare fucking teeth, even as you know (if only on an intellectual level) that the son of a bitch isn’t even worth it; just another bastard in a long line of bastards. Truly unsettling shit.
Rebuild Me Out of that Thing You Call Your Soul
By M H Cheung
“Am I future? Am I past? When you sleep, I rest my shoulders, my jaw, these metonyms of me, on your chest, I fold my fingers into your throat, will you recognize me. I speak your language of redshift, but I don’t hope you understand.
You’re bubbling with unfulfilled hopes and dreams. You’re the worst sort, killing duodecillions every moment by your indecision and regret. Here’s a dream that your engine eats:”
“You are the child of genocide. Your people are lords of life. You were born without nature, but impressed upon yourself, into the substrate of your soul.”
I mean, why wouldn’t you read a short story with lines like that. Absolutely killer work.
Overall, this is a great anthology worth reading for those who love horror and want better fictions to infiltrate and infest the world like a cavalcade of despair on a lonely Christmas night.
Death in the Mouth Vol. 2 is available now.
