'A brand-new collection of four intense, claustrophobic and terrifying horror tales from the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. Four devastating tales from a master of modern horror...'
My experience with Eric LaRocca's work has been one of ups and downs. I've always found his writing to be very well made, to be interesting, and to be stories that I remember. But I'm not sure I always enjoy them because they're the kind of stories that I remember with a slight shudder and a sense of unease. He's perhaps one of the few writers who I'm always excited to read more of, yet also never want to read again thanks to how well he works the horror centre into truly unsettling pieces of art.
His latest release, This Skin Was Once Mine follows a similar style to his previous work with Titan Books, where you find several small stories collected together rather than one large narrative. And I think this is my preferred method of reading LaRocca's work, as I'm not sure I would bring myself to read a whole novel length story by him as it would feel like too intimidating a prospect; but when it comes to the horror short story format he's become something of an expert. And as much as his stories get under my skin I can't help but delve into one of his short stories with a sense of perverse excitement.
The first story in this collection is the one from which the entire book takes it's title, 'This Skin Was Once Mine', and tells the story of a young woman, Jillian, and her having to return home and deal with her estranged family after the death of her father. Unlike with most people returning to their childhood homes and finding them smaller, them having grown both physically and emotionally since they were last there, Jillian finds a home that feels larger, full of secrets and dark emotions waiting for her. The setting is as much a character as the people in the story, and the tale takes on as strange, psychological horror that twists and turns so many times that you begin to wonder what might be real. It gets into your head in the most perverse way possible. The story has an almost nightmarish, dream logic to it that is easy to imagine, but hard to translate well to the written word; yet LaRocca does so wonderfully, creating an experience that feels like it's crawled out of the back of your mind in the small hours of the night.
The second story, 'Seedling', has a similar theme to it, as it deals with a man learning that his mother has died, and returning home to console his grieving father. The loss of a parent seems to be a theme that LaRocca uses a lot, and despite having two stories in a row in this collection that have that as a basis, the execution of each of them is very different from the other. The story is less about loss and more about obsession. It deals with something twisted and wrong in the worst way possible, a part of your body. Unable to escape it, it becomes all you can think about, it dominates your mind and takes on a life of its own. It's an experience most of us are familiar with, from picking at a wound, to worrying over an odd lump, to having fears about losing a piece of your body. But as with most things LaRocca takes it to a horrific extreme and plays into some primal and disturbing phobias that will at times leave you feeling ill.
'All The Parts of You That Won't Easily Burn' takes the third place in the book, and tells the story of a man who buys an ornate, antique knife and the journey that comes from that simple purchase. A tale about kink, pushing boundaries, and the extremes of consent, it tells a dark story about a spiral of self destruction. This story is one that definitely gets under your skin, pun intended. It reminds me in some ways of 'Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke', a story about someone being introduced to new, extreme experiences, and how the person who does so seems to be leading another human being to willingly destroy themselves. Every story in this collection is dark, but this is perhaps the darkest as for the most part it feels incredibly real. It's easy to imagine the drive for new, more extreme experiences leading someone to do terrible things, and is a theme that isn't new to horror. It's not hard to pair this story up with something like the cenobites from Hellraiser, of monsters pushed to the extremes of physical sensation, and as with those stories, it will likely leave you feeling shocked and sickened in unique ways.
The final story, 'Prickle', is perhaps the more simple of the bunch, and feels much more straightforward compared to the others. It tells the story of two older men who have a special game, whereby they go out of their way to ruin other peoples days. It doesn't sound that bad on the surface, but the simplicity of the concept hides some truly awful acts that occur across the story. The story escalates as the two old friends compete against each other, leading to an ending that will leave you reeling; and on reflection might be the perfect way to round out the collection of stories.
Eric LaRocca has a mind that frightens me. A lot of people who aren't into horror assume that those that are, and those that create it, must be twisted people, with minds filled with awful ideas and darkness. And of course, that's complete rubbish. But LaRocca is one of the few horror creators who makes that sentiment come to mind for me. I wonder what dark and twisted things are lurking in his mind, and what stories are yet to come; stories that leave me feeling sickened and shaken, yet that I can't wait to read.
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