Larocca This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80336-665-4
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

Winner of the Spatterpunk Award for Best Collection, four intense, claustrophobic and terrifying horror tales from the Bram Stoker Award® finalist and author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. THIS SKIN WAS ONCE MINE When her father dies under mysterious circumstances, Jillian Finch finds herself grieving the man she idolized while struggling to feel comfortable in the childhood home she was sent away from nearly twenty years ago. Then Jillian discovers a dark secret that will threaten to undo everything she has ever known about her father. SEEDLING A young man's father calls him early in the morning to say that his mother has passed away. He arrives home to find his mother's body still in the house. Struggling to process what has happened he notices a small black wound appear on his wrist. Then he discovers his father is cursed with the same affliction. ALL THE PARTS OF YOU THAT WON'T EASILY BURN Enoch Leadbetter goes to buy a knife for his husband to use at a forthcoming dinner party. He encounters a strange shopkeeper who draws him into an intoxicating new obsession and sets him on a path towards mutilation and destruction... PRICKLE Two old men revive a cruel game with devastating consequences...

Eric LaRocca (he/they) is the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of the viral sensation, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. A lover of luxury fashion and an admirer of European musical theatre, Eric can often be found roaming the streets of his home city, Boston, MA, for inspiration. For more information, please visit ericlarocca.com.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Larocca, Eric

Leseproben

OCTOBER 12, 2021

I’m lying naked on my stomach in bed. I’ve wrapped bedsheets around my waist as if they were Grecian robes.

Hovering over me with a paintbrush and an angelic smile is my lover, Pia. She’s naked, too, her alabaster skin glowing hot in the dim candlelight.

Pia leans over me. My flesh—her canvas.

I watch her as she guides the tip of the paintbrush about my shoulder, delicately printing each letter of a short poem she has written.

She’s also embroidered small, colored flowers about the verse of cursive lettering.

Music plays softly throughout my apartment.

“People stare at me because they think I’m a monster,” I tell her. “And they’re right. I am one.”

“You’re not,” Pia says.

I roll my eyes at her. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”

“What’s that?”

I stir beneath the sheets, gentle.

“You’re supposed to tell me, ‘Yes. You are a monster. You’re my monster.’”

“Hold still,” Pia says, drawing the corner of a letter along my shoulder.

“Why don’t you ever say that to me?” I ask her.

“Because—I’d be lying,” she says.

“That I’m a monster? Or that I’m yours?”

Pia looks as though she doesn’t want to answer. She does anyway.

“Both.”

“I could be,” I tell her. “If you wanted.”

“Just because two strangers share the same bad habits, doesn’t mean they belong to each other,” Pia tells me.

“But we’re not strangers,” I say to her.

Pia doesn’t look convinced.

“We are when we’re dressed,” she says. “Didn’t you want it that way?”

For the past forty-five minutes I’ve been careful enough to keep my hand hidden from Pia. When I stir again, the neon-colored Band-Aid wrapped around my wrist flashes at Pia like a warning light.

“More of these—?” she asks me.

I try to disguise embarrassment with laughter.

“You’re starting a collection,” she says.

I sense my lips tighten. I’m quiet for a moment.

“I don’t feel like a monster when I’m with you,” I tell her, giggling at the obscenity of the thought. “I feel like a—swan.”

Pia looks as though she were desperate to change the subject, her eyes avoiding me at all costs. Her labor has become more vigorous, earnest for any kind of distraction.

“Why a swan?” she asks.

“Because,” I tell her, “that’s what my dad always calls me.”

“You see him much?”

Pia’s question feels like a heated iron stirring in my gut. I wince a little.

“He sends a letter once a month. Tells me how much he loves me. How proud he is.”

“He lives far?”

“Two-hour drive,” I explain.

“And you still don’t think to see him?” she asks me.

I close my eyes, wishing I were far away. “I—can’t.”

“Don’t want to?”

“My mother—doesn’t want me there,” I tell her. “She said if she ever saw me again, she’d kill me.”

Pia’s paintwork comes to a halt.

She tucks some of my hair behind my ear with a tenderness that perplexes me for a moment.

“Jay,” she says.

“I can’t pretend to be angry with her. They’ve given me everything I could’ve wished for. First-class education. An apartment without rent. A brand-new car every two years. Just as long as I keep away from them.”

Pia squints at me, obviously trying to comprehend. “Why?”

I take a hit from the joint on the ashtray beside the bed.

“She doesn’t want me there.”

“She didn’t like having a daughter that liked girls?”

“She still doesn’t know, probably. She sent me away to boarding school when I was nine.”

“You haven’t seen her since then?” Pia asks.

But I don’t answer.

“Not even for holidays? Christmas?”

I close my eyes, shaking my head as she exhales a wreath of smoke.

“You’re her child,” Pia says.

I can sense tears webbing in the corners of my eyes.

“She told me that she never wanted me,” I say. “She said I’m a monster.”

I hide my face from Pia in a pillow, my soft sobs becoming muffled.

Just then, Pia pecks my neck with a kiss.

I turn to look at her, surprised by her sudden tenderness.

“You are,” Pia says. “The most beautiful monster I’ve ever seen.”

I can feel my face warming with joy. I’m startled and then suddenly anxious for another. I purse my lips for Pia’s mouth, but Pia pulls away.

“You’ll ruin the paint,” Pia says.

“Have you finished?” I ask.

My eyes beg Pia to reach for the hand mirror on the nightstand.

Pia holds the mirror in front of me and angles it so that I can see the lettering she’s printed along my shoulder.

“Read it to me?” I ask.

Pia’s breath is gentle on the nape of my neck. Her fingers follow every letter she’s printed with agonizing care.

“Little stars hang in an ocean where you and I will never dream. I wonder if they smell like cinnamon or lilies floating on a stream. I watch them bloom in fiery showers, smeared and dripping there like morning dew. I’ll never know what they smell like, my love, but I can only imagine they smell as sweet as you.”

I can scarcely speak, delirium paralyzing me.

“For—me?” I ask her.

“Who else?”

I smile at her. “It’s—perfect.”

“I haven’t finished writing it yet,” she tells me.

“I’ll never want to wash it off.”

Pia falls into the bed beside me. She lights a cigarette.

“Don’t be stupid,” she says.

“I promise.”

Pia sits in the uncomfortable silence for a moment. She takes a drag.

“I didn’t write it—”

Suddenly, I’m worried. “For me?”

“For you to keep forever,” she says. “Nothing lasts that long.”

“It’s something I love,” I tell her. “Everything I love, I keep.”

Pia’s breath whistles as she opens her mouth to speak. There’s a sentence heavy on her tongue.

“Jay—”

Just then, my cellphone begins to chirp.

I stir beneath the sheets, reaching for the nightstand.

“I’ll turn it off.”

“No. Go ahead.”

I glance at the screen and notice a number I do not recognize. I slide my thumb across the display and hold the phone to my ear.

“Hello—?”

A brittle-thin voice greets me on the other end of the line.

“Is this Jillian Finch?” the voice asks.

“Yes.”

“This is Ambrose Thorn. Your mother’s nurse. I’m afraid I’m the bearer of unfortunate news.”

I straighten. I can sense my face flushing with dread, my heart pounding in my chest like a hammer against the head of a nail. It’s not that I was expecting this call. However, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I have considered this moment again and again.

“What happened—?” I ask him.

“It’s your father,” Ambrose says. “I’m afraid he’s passed.”

The words do not register at first. Everything around me starts to blur.

“It was all very sudden,” Ambrose tells me. “We’ve already begun making arrangements for the funeral. It’ll be held next week. Your mother has requested your presence. She’s wondering if you’re able to come?”

I swallow hard, my esophagus burning. It feels as though someone has emptied a canister of gasoline down my throat.

“Yes,” I say to him. “I’ll come. Thank you for letting me know.”

I end the call and stare at the wall for a moment. Out of my peripheral vision, I can see Pia glaring at me and wondering what’s happened.

“Jay—?”

More tears bead in the corners of my eyes.

“My dad died,” I tell her.

Pia lifts her head. “Jay.”

“That was my mother’s nurse,” I explain. “They’re making arrangements for the funeral next week.”

“Jay, I’m so sorry,” Pia says, her eyes lowering.

For a moment, I’m quiet. My mouth opens with muted words. Then I regard Pia.

“Turn the light off,” I tell her.

“What for?” she asks me.

I’m already ripping off some of the bedsheets and touching myself. “We can go again. I want to.”

But Pia throws the sheets off her. She’s stamping out her cigarette and on her feet at once.

“I—can’t,” she says.

My eyes search her for a semblance of an explanation. “Why not?”

Pia’s already searching for her clothes, hoisting the jeans about her waist and fastening her bra.

“I just can’t, Jay,” she tells me.

“You said you would stay the night last time,” I remind her. “You promised.”

Pia shakes her head at me. “Please don’t hate me for doing this.”

I’m on my feet now, too. I try hiding Pia’s shoes from her. But Pia’s growing visibly impatient, and she snatches the shoes from behind my back.

“Have a bump,” I say to her. “We’ll smoke and open another bottle of wine. It’ll be fun. I promise.”

“I just have to go,” Pia tells me. “Please don’t ask me again. Don’t make this harder for me than it already is.”

Silence falls over the small room and threatens to undo the invisible tether that had fastened us for most of the evening. I can already see the wire beginning to fray.

“P. I need you,” I say to...