Black Static #54 (Magazine)
Edited by Andy Cox
Published by TTA Press
A smaller selection of longer tales make up the fiction salvo in issue 54 of Black Static, and right from the off it’s evident that Steven J. Dines isn’t playing around with his entry, entitled Perspective.
Here, the author enjoys playing with (as per the title) the literary device of perspective, switching the reader between first, second and third person narratives throughout a story that sees a woman by the name of Emily – suffering from psychosomatic blindness following an attack by a brutal rapist – who finds that the unidentified man who attacked her may be stalking her once more.
In the middle here is Emily’s loving but weary husband, David, who comes to believe the person toying with he and his wife is likely to be an unsavoury neighbour by the name of Dullicutt. Answers, however, aren’t to be readily offered; Dines is much more concerned with cementing both his grim tone and the discomforting combination of fear, frustration and anger that roils within his characters.
David, for example, is sympathetic in his rational battle – unsure whether his wife’s suspicions and seemingly outlandish assertions regarding her stalker’s behaviour are actually to be taken at face value. Meanwhile, Emily’s terror rings true as events become gradually more immediate in threat, whilst Dines – in a move that gives a mental image of him rubbing his hands with malevolent glee – places his antagonist’s passages in the second person, speaking directly to the reader about the terrible things they’ve done, and will continue to do.
An exceptionally dark and uncomfortable piece, Perspective is also eminently compelling and marks a great start for the issue.
Next up is Julie C. Day’s imaginative A Pinhole of Light. Tormented by regret following the death of his wife, photographer Geir spends much of his evenings attempting to bring her back from the land of the dead via the one pathway he has discovered: developing photographs on his own skin.
Turning his home into something of a conduit for restless spirits, Geir struggles to manage the demands of his self-mutilating activities with the need to care for his young daughter, Jenny – and as Geir continues to push himself beyond limits, Day’s narrative gradually sheds more light on a marriage her subject’s desires may be imbuing with a wholly unrealistic nostalgia.
In fact, the biggest negative (no pun intended) in A Pinhole of Light is indeed the conclusion of Geir’s fight to regain his lost love – an ending that just about anyone with broader experience in the genre will see coming from the off. This, however, is scant complaint for a story that deftly balances danger and desperation with tenderness, and speaks earnestly to many facets of the human condition – from disconnection and longing through to acceptance and priorities.
Ralph Robert Moore’s Not Everything Has a Name is a story that almost constantly seeks to build expectations and then take a different route. Following an outlandish pool bet from a young man in a bar, hard-drinking widower Ben leaves the establishment with a new prize for the night: an alluring 18-year-old named Sheila.
Sex is, as per the terms of the bet, on the cards for the pair – but in spending a little time to get to know each other, both Ben and Sheila quickly begin to form a bond much stronger than initially expected. As Ben reveals his own pain over his late wife, Sheila exposes a secret of her own: As the result of a curse placed on her mother, she has a strange conjoined twin; a brother whose slack features, rolling eyes and mumbling, baby-talking mouth are embedded in her midriff, right around the navel.
And then things get weirder, as Sheila enlists Ben’s help with breaking the curse.
As a story, Not Everything Has a Name is much more tender and nuanced than the setup initially implies, allowing this unlikely couple to explore their own motivations and find a sense of solace in each other. A dark sting in the tail ensures the story falls firmly within genre territory, as Moore enjoys toying with his subjects’ hopes and, by extension, those of the reader.
Finally, Malcolm Devlin steps up to bat and knocks it straight out of the park with Dogsbody, which proves a thoroughly enthralling and magnificently drawn slice of social commentary. Following the sudden emergence of a disease known as “Lunar Proximity Syndrome” – yes, Lycanthropy – those who once suffered the transformation find themselves looked upon as something of social pariahs.
Protagonist Gil McKenzie was once a high-flying marketing professional, but ever since his in-office bout of LPS and subsequent enforced quarantine, he’s struggled to fit back in. The times are fraught with tension, because even though the transformation was accompanied by a deep sleep that not a single affected person woke up from before the change had subsided, society at large remains afraid that on the upcoming anniversary of the event, those infected will once again change… and they might not stay asleep this time.
Resentful of his new position in the world, Gil spends his days picking up manual work on building sites and lamenting the loss of everything he once had. Devlin takes us along with Gil as he encounters old workmates, deals with his increasing reclusion and navigates an aggressive – if even oppressive – social atmosphere… the question constantly hanging in the air: Is he going to turn into a monster again? If so, will anyone get hurt?
It’s all very low key, but wonderfully so – backed up by an intricate way with words that helps Devlin vividly generate Gil’s surroundings with an impressive economy and depth of character. The result is an absorbing and delightfully off-beat piece of work that plays with just enough mystery to present Gil’s bitterness as both a righteous response to injustice and a self-limiting imposition that may unnecessarily darken his world view. Excellent stuff through and through.
Besides the fiction we do, of course, also have the usual wide range of excellent literary, TV and film reviews, the regular columns by Stephen Volk and Lynda E. Rucker and a Q&A with author Damien Angelica Walters. Once again, Black Static demonstrates exactly why it’s amongst the cream of the crop of regular dark literature publications.
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