Black Static #48 (Magazine)
Gareth Jones
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Edited by Andy Cox
Published by TTA Press
Backed up by some seriously freaky photo-realistic artwork by Joachim Luetke, Jeffrey Thomas’ Distinguished Mole kicks off the fiction in issue 48 of Black Static. Telling the tale of Dr. Bendo Tin, a skilled physician passing his days in a Far Eastern health centre and lamenting the consistent lack of respect and recognition that his work receives, Thomas’ story takes us on an icky ride into existentially-tinged body horror.
Resentful of treatment by his peers, Dr. Tin decides that what he really needs is an impressive mole on his face – a cultural sign of mental and spiritual wisdom gauged by the size of the mole and the hairs that grow from it. Chance comes in the form of a mortally wounded monk who is wheeled into the operating theatre – sporting a gloriously distinguished growth on his chin.
Utilising his scientific know-how, Dr. Tin creates a tonic of sorts using cells from the monk’s mole… but he is in no way prepared for the surprisingly gruesome results.
Distinguished Mole is a speedy and very easy to enjoy nugget of body horror which takes a pleasantly unforeseen detour into a little bit of existential exploration for the final stretch. Most striking about it is the sense of place, which Thomas admirably creates not through focus on physical description or geographical details, but rather the cultural and local social attitudes revealed by his protagonist’s thoughts and character interaction.
Stephen Bacon’s Bandersnatch is up next. Our narrator, Lawrence, is currently in the midst of a pleasant walk alongside his sister, Michelle. Having just been reunited after a decade apart – owing to the death of their mother – the both of them find themselves working back into the familial groove.
Lawrence gets on just swell with Michelle’s dog, Roscoe… but not so much with her boyfriend, Scott. And let’s just say that Scott’s worries aren’t unfounded. Lawrence is one seriously twisted piece of work – a fact that Bacon gradually lays out for all to see, with excruciating inevitability that’s as calculated as his narrator’s grim intent.
Bandersnatch is uncomfortable stuff. Black as night and superbly unfolded throughout its short length, this is well-tuned human horror that will make you squirm.
In The Suffering, author Steven J. Dines introduces us to his narrator, Julia, a bereaved mother tortured by not only the memories of her beloved daughter’s death but by regular visions of her. As Julia sits nightly and looks from the window of her home, slicing and eating apples, she witnesses her young daughter run for her life – or afterlife, as it may be – from a demonic entity that stalks her though the woods behind the house.
The Suffering feels incredibly personal – reeking with an authentic sense of grief that works on one hand, but tends to drag the proceedings into something of a dirge on the other. The sense of hopelessness seems exactly the point, however, and Dines’ imagery is top notch, including a fearsome-feeling antagonist in the form of the creature – an otherworldly construct of rotting flora and fauna.
Up next, Andrew Hook’s Blood for your Mother is a lovingly old-school kind of family-ties shocker that keeps its revelatory punch for the finish. In it, Miriam Hubbard returns to the home of her all-but-estranged elderly parents in order to care for her father on what appears to be his deathbed.
Struggling with her inability to properly take care of the frail old man – owing to her own commitments elsewhere in life, and the refusal of the social services to intervene without her father’s permission – Miriam discovers a horrible truth about what’s going on beneath the roof of her old home.
And it’s a cracker. Consistently intriguing, all the way to the eye-widening finale, Blood for your Mother feels straight from Tales from the Crypt and would make for an excellent candidate for short film adaptation.
The lengthiest entry in this issue, Cate Garnder’s When the Moon Man Knocks rounds out the fiction with its fantastical approach to grief. Here, recently widowed Olive finds her life turned upside down when she gets an unsolicited phone call from Hector Wynter – The Moon Man – who wants to deliver her a particularly strange bit of news: that the dead live on the Moon, speaking to him by way of messages written on origami birds… and Olive’s deceased husband, Ben, has a message for her.
It’s certainly an inventive premise, and Gardner builds the drama admirably with the introduction of another woman with whom Ben may have been having an affair – putting the two ladies and Hector at a triangle of loggerheads whilst the supernatural tension also grows. With paper birds suddenly being received by all of them, and the actions of said birds becoming ever more autonomous and forceful, everything seems to be building to more threatening intent than Ben’s initial messages proffered.
Unfortunately Gardner does take a little too long building up to the final bombastic set-piece, so that When the Moon Man Knocks often threatens to lose its grip amidst the meandering dramatic threads. The author’s presentations of Olive’s grief and the confusion and denial that accompany the revelation of infidelity are well rounded and authentic, however, and manage to provide a solid anchor through to the darkly poetic finish.
Elsewhere this issue we have the usual wealth of film and book reviews to help you fill up your “to buy” list, along with a great Q&A with author Simon Kurt Unsworth, and columnists Stephen Volk and Lynda E. Rucker continue to uphold their usual high standards – the former assuredly tackling the advance of technology and hyper-reality bleed of film at once via the themes of classic sci-fi thriller Westworld.
All in all, here’s yet another excellent issue for Black Static. The threaded theme of grief and familial fracture makes it a heavy one… but it’s more than worth inviting the darkness in.
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Magazine
Categorized:Reviews
