Black Static #56 (Magazine)
Edited by Andy Cox
Published by TTA Press
Scott Nicolay’s The Green Eye makes for a fascinating opener to issue 56 of prestigious genre magazine Black Static. What starts off (and resolves around the midpoint) as an enjoyable yet customary weird tale – replete with fantastical twist at the end – segues into the author’s personal story of the inspiration behind it.
It’s an interesting move, and makes for an equally interesting piece from a pure writing perspective – pulling back the curtain on how the imagination adopts and adapts real-life experiences for creative ends. On the other hand, The Green Eye isn’t particularly unsettling in neither its fiction nor fact, rendering it more of value to those looking to indulge in the pure mechanics of experience and creativity than those looking for chills.
Up next, Eric Schaller ramps up the anxiety with Smoke, Ash, and Whatever Comes After. Here, protagonist Peter’s decision to destroy an old bureau in his daughter Tracy’s bedroom leads down a path of personal regret when certain discoveries within its drawers open up old wounds. Compounding the issue, as Peter is lost in thought his daughter abruptly disappears – leading the desperate father to rush through the streets in an attempt to track her down.
Creating a wholly believable family dynamic surrounding Peter’s painful conscientiousness, Schaller prefers to steer away from the fantastical – the potential for a golem-like doll to play a more in-your-face part being smartly skirted around in favour of the aforementioned anxiety. Said anxiety is palpable as Peter’s angst begins to probe the border of outright panic, before the story rounds out with a nicely played, reality-skewing denouement.
Speaking of fatherly anxiety, issue 56 keeps the same thing going with Danny Rhodes’ Border Country as single father Rob takes his young son, Max, for a weekend camping trip at the old, dilapidated site of Ridge Farm. Once a well-managed campsite, the farm has fallen into a disrepair that mirrors the perennial apathy of its owner following the death of her son.
Death, in fact, seems to surround the place – in the flower-laden memorials next to the entrance’s treacherously winding road and the nearby cave wherein a supposed child-killing witch was summarily executed by ancient townsfolk.
Throughout his tale, Rhodes paints a strong image of Rob – a devoted father, but one who still struggles with the existential elements of his relationship breakdown even if he tries not to show it to his son. Almost mirroring Rob’s internal struggle, the environs of Ridge Farm are a marred landscape – still appreciable in their natural beauty but nonetheless a tarnished representation of what once was before the human contingent withdrew the offer of maintenance. This being a horror story, things obviously don’t work out very well for Rob and Max… and Rhodes’ final punch proves a devastatingly bleak crescendo for the quietly gripping anxiousness that permeates his tale.
Eugenia M. Triantafyllou steps up next with What We Are Moulded After, which takes witchery in another direction with the story of a widow who moulds a clay golem of her lost-at-war husband to keep her company. Told from the perspective of the golem itself, Triantafyllou’s story is packed with existential musings and sympathy for its central creation. Unfulfilled by the presence of her replacement suitor, the bereaved party here seems lost in ennui – simultaneously disappointed in the mute results of her mystical practices and glad that it isn’t a true representation of her brutish, abusive spouse.
Thoughtful and strikingly well written, What We Are Moulded After heads down an emotionally shocking road yet ends on an uplifting note of devotion and humanity derived from a place where little would customarily be expected.
Moving from the loss of others (daughters, sons, husbands), Charles Wilkinson tackles the inherently chilling loss of self in The Solitary Truth. The tale of a perpetually bickering elderly couple, The Solitary Truth sees its subjects navigate their way through daily life with two very opposing viewpoints of reality.
The exasperated husband (our narrator) bemoans his wife’s failing mental faculties – primarily her belief that their cat, Jaguar, is still alive despite his clear memories of burying said feline companion in the garden. Utterly separated from the outside world by their own frailty, and locked in a static experiential box by their bullishness (unable to make the walk into the neighbouring village, the narrator continues to read and cradle a months-old newspaper), the two engage in a battle that doesn’t come to any kind of shocking physical head but rather one of perceptive parallels.
The outcome is shudder-inducing on a human level – a quiet reflection on mental illness, ageing, the definition of reality on a subjective level and the very clear horror that when it happens, we aren’t consciously party to the loss of ourselves… and are thus powerless to address it.
In The Maneaters, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam delivers a metaphorical bent on family values, tradition and the role of individual will in breaking from the supposedly inevitable behaviours informed from such things. Here, the family rite of passage, so to speak, is the proclivity for the female family line to consume the flesh of men.
Prodded by the words and tarot readings of her forceful grandmother, narrator Scarlet recounts the story of her grandmother’s own tragic and blood-soaked history, all the while struggling to pull away from family bonds as the end of her relationship with her boyfriend, Alex, looms.
Absorbing and meaningful, The Maneaters comes to an unexpectedly hopeful conclusion that reminds us little is inevitable – with the right motivation and support, seemingly foregone conclusions may be averted and the chains of tradition need not hold us.
Finally, Ian Steadman introduces us to hard-working immigrant Stan in Stanislav in Foxtown. Employed in a UK fried chicken shop and regularly harangued by his loutish boss, Mr. Sharples, Stan discovers one evening that the dilapidated estate in which he lives also plays home to a group of urban foxes. Bringing home chicken bones, which he piles in his yard at night as an offering, Stan develops something of a pact with the creatures – a personal interaction that brings some much-needed connection into his otherwise detached existence.
Featuring a classically dark finale, Stanislav in Foxtown plays along the lines of revenge fantasy – the kind that in elongated form would likely turn the lion’s share of threat in Stan’s direction around the midpoint. It’s enjoyable, nicely written and conscious of the bleak reality of many socially invisible and downtrodden workers the nation over.
Amongst the film and literature reviews this issue, we have a Q&A with ex-Black Static contributor Stephen Volk and the customary column by Lynda E. Rucker wherein on this occasion she considers the political faculties (and stimulation) of horror as an art form. Stepping in to cover the recent departure of Volk from the publication, author Ralph Robert Moore talks poignantly of perishability – of language, of memory, and of us.
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Magazine
Categorized:Reviews
