Crawling out of Your Skin

"Crawling out of my skin and I've been doing just fine.

Gotta Gotta be down, because I want it all."

-not Mr Brightside by The Killers

+++++

So here's a stupid thing, just a fun fact about the idiot writing this blog post; I did not know the name of the song Mr Brightside for seven years. I loved the song, I sang it plenty in the shower and on the school bus and on the long walks home from school, even when the moths flew directly into my mouth whenever I opened it. Never knew the name, didn't know the words, just patched in what made sense. "Of course you're crawling out of your skin, its the cost of being a person."

Hmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Anyhow, a hundred miles, five new genders, and a bachelor's degree later, I'm a little less uncomfortable with existingTM but some things haven't changed. I still love books, I still love games, and I still love Horror, who is perhaps the patron-saint-genre of discomfort. You've heard it before, Art is meant to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, and that truism grafts awfully well onto the subject of horror, where we go to be uncomfortable so that we can talk about uncomfortable things. 

Body Horror is a subgenre within that genre that I find myself talking a lot about these days, as it is probably best poised to contemplate aging, identity, disability, and belonging. The paranoid snowball starts off: Are you your body? Are you what your body can do? What happens when your body or your abilities change? Does that mean you change? Will you be you after you're done changing? Will you ever stop changing? Will you miss or mourn the you you were? Will others accept you? What happens if they don't?

What have you become? 

Maybe your brainpans aren't sizzling with these questions, but for plenty of folks these are everyday specials for the fry-cooks of their souls. At least five of them, actually, since today I'm serving up five Body Horror Recommendations courtesy of myself and some of the bodied horrors that I court. If all of that sounded fun, get ready to play cultural anxiety bingo as we present to you...

 

BRAINWYRMS by Alison Rumfitt

When a transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, sleeping with strangers, pushing away her friends. Then, she meets Vanya. Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya.

The two hit it off immediately, but as their relationship intensifies, so too does Frankie’s feeling that Vanya is hiding something from her. When Vanya’s secrets threaten to tear them apart, Frankie starts digging, and unearths a sinister, depraved conspiracy, the roots of which go deeper than she ever imagined.

MANHUNT by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate.

Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics--all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO BE HUMAN by Andrew Joseph White

Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.

Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.

THINGS HAVE GOTTEN WORSE SINCE WE LAST SPOKE by Eric LaRocca

Sadomasochism. Obsession. Death.

A whirlpool of darkness churns at the heart of a macabre ballet between two lonely young women in an internet chat room in the early 2000s -- a darkness that threatens to forever transform them once they finally succumb to their most horrific desires.

What have you done today to deserve your eyes?

TRANSMUTED by Eve Harms

Her doctor is giving her the body of his dreams... and her nightmares.

Isa is a micro-celebrity who rarely shows her face, and can't wait to have it expertly ripped off and rearranged to look more feminine. When a successful fundraiser makes her gender affirming surgery possible, she's overjoyed-until she has to give up all her money to save her dying father. Crushed by gender dysphoria and the pressure of disappointing her fans who paid for a new face, she answers a sketchy ad seeking transgender women for a free, experimental feminization treatment. The grotesquely flawless Dr. Skurm has gruesome methods, but he gets unbelievable results, and Isa is finally feeling comfortable in her skin. She even gains the courage to ask out her crush: an alluring and disfigured alchemy-obsessed artist named Rayna. 

But Isa's body won't stop changing, and she's going from super model to super mutant. She has to discover the secret behind her metamorphosis-before the changes are irreversible, and she's an unwanted freak forever.

+++++

Ben Doane has been a member of the Pandemonium Team since 2019, and has been playing wargames, rpgs, and tcgs since 2004 and earlier. When not blogging, Ben runs the wargames and mailing departments, and also puts together the store's newsletters. Her current favorite book is MOLDMOLDMOLD.