The Sex Toys of Slimy Tentacled Beasts

J. Manfred Wish Weichsel’s Gruesome Futures (Tales to Make You Vomit Book 4)

A while back I decided that I was going to review a lot more independent work, so this afternoon after cleaning my house, I poured myself a glass of wine and spent about an hour reading through Weichsel’s latest horror sci-fi anthology Gruesome Futures (Tales to Make You Vomit 4,) a short story collection made up of three short pieces of varying quality. The book is a quick read and the best way to describe it is if you took Tales From the Crypt and let a middle-aged, porn brain addled, Bevis and Butthead write a few episodes.

The collection’s three stories are framed by a horror anthology narrative tale where a team of astronauts land on the Moon and encounter a female zombie Librarian, a Cryptkeeper homage, that forces them to play a game where they read disgusting books without vomiting or she destroys the Earth. Frame narrative is a staple of horror television and literary anthologies and this one was decent, if a bit over the top with the current year satire.

But on to the stories.

---

IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I SWALLOW by Misha Burnett

The collection opens with the best upfront, Misha Burnett’s It Only Hurts When I Swallow, a grotesque bit of spiteful body horror torture porn where a man is punished by being fitted with a mouth prosthetic tube and forced fed by his ex-wife and her new partner. I’ve read a lot of Misha’s writing and consider him one of the most accomplished independent short story authors in the scene, but this one, while well written, with a few gross uncomfortable scenes, doesn’t tread any new ground. It’s the Human Centipede with a feminist world-coded antagonist, good read, but nothing mind-blowing. I recommend picking up any of Burnett’s short story collections, this guy can write and is often the highlight of any issue or anthology, this one included.

---

THE RAPE AND ANNIHILATION OF BABE BABALONIA by Max Gunssler

A super sexy bikini-clad lifeguard deathmatch wrestler gets defecated on and raped by tentacled sex-starved alien monstrosities, robots, and other wrestlers, then she gets raped and raped some more, and she somewhat enjoys it, then she gets raped, raped, and on and on and on and I had to skip a bunch of pages because this story was boring as shit. It reads like the masturbatory fantasy of a middle schooled brained 40-year-old whose brain has been addled by extreme gore porn trying to write the most shocking stuff imaginable. The biggest crime of this story isn’t the extreme rape and violence, is that it makes extreme rape and violence boring. I’m willing to give it a few points for riveting post-modern ironic lines like “The blonde prisoner was frightened at the prospect of being the sex toy of a slimy, tentacled beast. She was also excited at the prospect of being the sex toy of a slimy, tentacled beast. Wet and aroused…” but honestly it went on for way too long. Boring.

---

THE SECRET ON SUBFLOOR 82 OF SERENITY STATION by Todd Love

Todd Love’s story is the straightest out of the threesome, a sci-fi piece about war criminal convicts taking over a space station that is part prison part habitat. A quick proficient tale with a few bits of ultraviolence thrown in, a strange alien lifeform, and some nihilistic musing about humanity. Not bad, but nothing new and exciting, and thinking about it I’m not sure why a space station housing genetically modified soldier convicts would also have a bunch of women and children onboard, but I don’t care.

---

Let me be honest, this collection didn’t do it for me but being a lit-fic snob I’m not and never will be the target audience, just like I don’t like splatter horror, torture porn, or any of that sort of thing. I always found the whole GWAR metal aesthetic corny as fuck, even the darker Marylin Manson-era stuff made me cringe. But, I know a lot of people who are into this sort of thing and Weichshel delivers. One has to give him the highest level of respect, putting out stuff that would never be published otherwise due to the sensibilities of the industry.

What I would like to see is a dark, brutal, collection of horror along these lines that takes itself seriously, I have a low tolerance for edge pushing because in our porn-addled, violence-saturated, extreme world, being edgy requires a more thought-out approach, otherwise, it comes off as trying too hard and corny.