No Further Messages by Brett Alexander Savory

Brett Alexander Savory’s style comes through from word one in No Further Messages, his new collection of twenty-one short stories from Delirium Books. The first tale, “Messages,” is an immediately collection-defining one, about a woman who recovers manuscripts written by people in fugue states which supposedly contain messages from some higher power. Whether she is on the “good side”—those who see the manuscripts safely to the people in power in the world so they can use the information in them for the benefit of humankind—or on the “bad side,” which edits the manuscripts before handing them over, is left vague. Purposefully so. Emma finds herself more restless as time passes and knows that she wants out. But it’s not her organization which is about to end the age-old battle over the manuscripts.

“This is not, and never has been, about you. Any of you.
This is not, and never has been, about good and bad.
This makes no sense to you, I know.
I have taken all who are worthy.
There will be no further messages.”

The last message from the fugue writings, this passage encompasses the style and theme of the story, this collection, and of Savory’s writing.

Most of the tales here are presented as a series of scenes, feeling at first as though Savory used too much restraint, hiding major plot points from the reader. The characters are not only the most important elements, they define these stories, building whole new realities from their musings and narration. Nothing is hidden at the end, and the feeling of restraint serves to set the proper mood rather than trying to surprise readers with some obvious, but hidden, knowledge. Dark and hopeless, each of Savory’s subjects suffers differently, privately, though they sometimes intersect with the rest of the world; Savory weaves moody, atmospheric pieces, highly original and disturbing without relying on familiar horror tropes.

The stories, while certainly different in some aspects, are all stamped with Savory’s recognizable style and an overlapping theme of true madness.

In “Scenario B,” Gronk is injured by a thug who has been supplying him with black market body parts. With the police on his tail, led by someone who once protected Gronk but never professed to be a friend, Gronk struggles during the last moment of his life to finish his “Scenario B” and set his life right.

“Apology” is short and vicious—the thoughts of a man bleeding to death in an alley after being shot by another man full of accusations and anger. Brief and startling, it packs a powerful punch.

“Freshets” is the explicit, sex-charged tale of a person standing on the shaky ground of remembering, who throws himself into a sexual compulsion rather than face the pain of his loss. The title is a metaphor for the moments of remembrance and tears that come before the narrator loses themselves to the sexual hallucinations that are both hated and needed in order to feel safe from the harshness of reality.

“Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event” tackles the problems left behind by abuse—controversially so, showing the mindset of a man who comes to his father’s house every year on the anniversary of his death and writes letters filled with hate, accusations, and a desperate desire to be loved by a man blamed for everything that’s wrong with the character’s life. But the ghost of his father, ignored for so long, has a few things to say about being the only one shouldering all the ills in his son’s life.

“Jimmy Dale” is almost the opposite of “Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event”—a violent tale, but one of forgiveness. Jimmy is a man, quite obviously insane, living in an asylum after he brutally killed his wife. Jimmy killed others, too, but the people keeping him don’t know about those. They just know how very, very unbalanced he is. Doomed to die in the institution, Jimmy will also find something all the treatment in the world hasn’t been able to give him: understanding and absolution.

“Jewels” tells of Julie, a woman who always attract the wrong sort of person, who’s lost in a compulsive, morbid world of her own making, remembering only what her mind will let her, and only how it lets her perceive events.

“Water-song” is almost romantic. Darkly atmospheric, the slow drowning of a woman has an almost positive, peaceful end.

In “Danny Boy,” Savory tackles the subject of violence by children. A psychologist attempts to unravel the case of an eleven-year-old boy who brutally murdered his whole family&mdashparents, grandfather, and siblings. The boy’s memories are somewhat different, so the question remains: is he a victim of violence or the source of it?

“Slipknot” turns depression into a solid, feeding thing and features some absolutely breathtaking prose:

“Shadows dripped. Silhouettes of emotions stretched themselves languidly against the pitch background of Edward Curtis’ dreamscape. They wrapped themselves in his psyche, dispelled myth, eschewed logic, creating a template for their work.

“Once the canvas was created, the medium was selected. It was always the same; guilt. It sucked the black from the darkest part of his heart and vomited its core between his flashing synapses. Guilt.”

“Silica” is possibly the most disturbing story of the collection. Here, the tragedy of a lost child overwhelms a sane mind, turning it into something violent and uncontrollable. The pain of his daughter’s loss drives a man to visions of her ghost and a helpless devastation that demands that something, anything be done to atone.

“A Diamond of Skin and Love” is a voyage in brutality. More difficult to handle than some of the other flavors of insanity, it opens with a man walking in on his wife and her lover as the lover calmly finishes killing her. Harder to grasp, the overall theme of deserved death, immortality, and beauty through mutilation and victimization make this one quite frightening.

“Subliminal Messages,” while short, is almost too far-reaching for much plot. It examines the nature of humanity and man, then pops the reader into the head of the First Man, who can read the future in the flow of time and silently mourns the direction his world is heading in.

Dipping into conspiracy theories, in “The Collective,” a man is being robbed at gunpoint. He muses that all evil, all crime is a collective—one he’d rather join than suffer from.

Characterized by lovely prose and a storyline that slips through the fingers, “The Time Between Lights” is a semi-urban surreal fantasy about a creature that can slip between the worlds and enjoys dwelling in our shadows, spooking people when it can. Until it runs into other shadowy creatures, the top hats—those who have been forgotten.

Where “The Time Between Lights” edges into fantasy, “Running Beneath the Skin” takes a brutal step into science fiction. Henry is one of a handful of people who can take an incredible amount of physical damage and pain and be healed as good as new mere hours later. Outcasts in the hospitals they often end up in, Henry and his kind are caught up in a nightly quest to actually get shot because every bullet they take brings them closer to being 100% lead—and the promise of the godlike state 100% is rumored to bring.

Capturing the essence of being drunk or drugged, “Marching the Hate Machines into the Sun” tells of an underground organization that makes the cold decisions for our race. Gathering the most selfish, evil individuals from among us, it parades them in silver ships to the sun. While easy to sum up, any synopsis would fail to capture the emotions Savory conveys.

“Landscape” is a bizarre examination of and a wild commentary on the constant state of flux that we live in. Conveying the mood of confusion of a world changing, the feeling of standing still while everything else evolves, it invites readers to leave sanity behind and follow the madness.

“Wall,” metaphor-like, slowly parallels the cracking and breaking down of mental walls and the eventual letting-in of the evils and dangers of the outside. Everyone has walls, for good or bad, and here, a man’s isolation is violated and broken down—with peculiar results.

Finally comes “Bottom Drawer.” With the feel of a parting shot, it steps back onto more solid ground, on the surface at least. Reading this tale of a man who hides alcohol, weapons, and eventually his hopes and fears in his desk drawer, one can easily see the desperation of a person with problems wanting to be found out, to be helped. As its final punch, “Bottom Drawer” reminds us that for all the minds lost to madness in this collection, there remain those who suffer under a guise of seeming normalcy, who go through life desperately hoping someone will discover their deepest secrets and help them.

No Further Messages is a voyage through madness. Making a comparison between Savory’s tales and other fiction is all but impossible. Savory’s unique voice creeps into the letters themselves, letting readers know that while they may have read stories about dark creatures and minds barely holding a grip on reality before, they haven’t read ones like these. Each offering in this collection is a powerful story of human darkness and insanity, likely to leave the reader breathless and searching the shadows for what might be lurking within. But they should be read slowly, savored individually. While the theme is solid throughout, the stories, read too quickly one-after-the-other, can blur together, like different sides of the same creature.

Publisher: Delirium Books (November 2007)
Price: $12.71
Paperback: 228 pages
ISBN: 1929653875