Withersin, Death 1.3

Withersin Magazine wraps up its first year of publication with Death 1.3, completing a thematic series that began with Birth 1.1 and continued with Life 1.2. If their tagline is any indication, their next season of Flesh, Bone, and Dust will be just as “dark, different,” and “pleasantly sinister.” And strange. This is one weird magazine. It’s not simply a journal of dark fiction, it’s a collection of morbidly fascinating reviews, interviews, artwork, and tidbits of information. Death 1.3 offers a list of strange and scary tourist stops, a sample of sinister substances, and a brief history of anthropomancy—the art of reading and interpreting (preferably living) human entrails—by M. Awren Grey. Gross.

Which leads to the first piece of fiction, “Internal Affairs” by David J. Sakmyster. The narrator in this first person military horror story explains the process by which he has come to engage in the ancient practice of anthropomancy. War is hell, they say, and combat stress will wreak havoc with one’s psyche. But this soldier was already deranged before heading to Iraq, and the author expertly shows us a mind devolving before our eyes. Graphic and scattered with vulgarities, this story is definitely adult in nature. The ending, while somewhat expected, is satisfying in an appalling sort of way.

Another first person narrative is “Squirming Eyes” by Ezekiel Clark, a hardcore horror confessional that borders on the obscene. If you are into splatterpunk, the urgent distress of this piece will slake your thirst for short, raw fiction. If you are not, you’ll simply have nightmares and be grateful the mayhem stopped when it did.

“The Perfect Foot” by Chet Gottfried is an absurdist and horrific story that is both base and entertaining at the same time. The middle school setting of this piece, along with the inclusion of guns, bombs, and hostages, obviously plays to the expectant fear and panic of our post-Columbine culture. In this story, while one teacher faces death, the assistant principal frets over his collection of shrunken pinkies that he serendipitously purloined from his students when he was a shop instructor. Now he’s contemplating collecting feet. Some might find the treatment of this subject flippant and offensive, and rightly so—the nature of such random threats to body and soul is both. But the author handles well the juxtaposition of sanity and lunacy in a darkly humorous and descriptive tale that startles the reader with the tragic reality of life.

Mark Allan Gunnells mixes horror, religion, and a bit of erotica in the creepy tale “Ours is a God of Anger.” Chad is on assignment in South Carolina, capturing small-town color by photographing quaint and quirky church marquees. Spotting one that sounds a little more sinister than “If God is Your Co-Pilot, You Need to Switch Seats,” Chad stops to find out if he can discover more about this angry God. And he does. When he meets the preacher’s son, he definitely finds out more than he bargained for. While the ending is not strikingly original (the monster-awaits trope is well trod territory), the writing is crisp, and the characters have some depth despite the brevity of the telling.

Before I review (what I believe is) the final short story, I should mention that some of the items in Withersin Magazine seem to meld fact and fiction so that the reader has a hard time distinguishing between the two. Case in point, “Demented Dreamscapes,” a column that evidently features guest authors who describe their demented dreams. In “Not Delilah” by Aaron Gudmunson, the reader is treated to a series of scenes that tie the author’s visions of 1996 to his malaise of 1999. While the connection may be clear in the writer’s mind, it remained elusive for me, and I was left wondering if there was any story here at all. Just in case it was fiction, I wanted to include it in the review, however weak my comments are regarding it.

Now more to my liking, and what I might term mainstream horror, is the fifth clearly fictional piece of the issue. “The Little Guy” by David Bain is vaguely reminiscent of The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson. Dean hears that his supervisor, Guy, got the pink slip, and so he heads to the corner office to see if the rumor is true. The conversation reveals that Guy has been chronically belittled (literally!) by his boss and is obviously on his way out. What’s a friend to do? When faced with the messy reality of office politics, Dean can step up in defense of his boss or step on him and advance up his own career ladder. The outcome is a mystery until the very end. In this suspenseful tale, the author provides some insightful social commentary on corporate culture without overwhelming a simple, but solidly told, thriller.