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Post by dem bones on Dec 28, 2021 11:43:51 GMT
George Romero - Clay: (Frank Coffey [ed.], Modern Masters of Horror, 1981). Clearly inspired by the lonesome life and depraved doings of Ed Gein. Tippy, mentally retarded on account of the multiple beatings he took from the boots and fists of his drunken, bent cop father, takes great joy from his weekly visit to the confessional box, relating his bizarre sins to a haggard Monsignor whose faith has long left town. Tippy earns a pittance humping goods by day, before spending the evening with the putty-enhanced corpses of his family and surrogate girlfriend, 'Lucille,' who, frustratingly, invariably falls apart whenever he attempts to perform the "banana trick." If only he could acquire a firm skeleton to hold her together. A story heart-breaking as it is disgusting. Hard not to think of Deranged while reading it.
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 27, 2022 17:00:01 GMT
POOR GIRL by Elizabeth Taylor
At first simply a pen portrait of a lonely Governess, separate from the other servants’ comraderie in the house. But this ineluctably becomes — almost without our or even the author’s volition to to control it — a truly great ghost story. It is as if the author herself is bewitched. Or is it a ghost story at all? Is it sleep-walking, is it suggestion, omosis, a little 7 year old boy’s telepathy with the man he will become, as he bewitches — by flirtation and leaning against her as she checks his sums with the stain of red ink or rouge, or simple evil desires that smell like a scent — his Governess, Florence Chasty, or she unknowingly bewitches him? His mother as involuntary stooge to such shenanigans by thinking she senses them happening? The boy who has within himself the man he will become, a philanderer like his father, or is it his father who enters Florence’s room for canoodling, or is she already a ghost of someone else, i.e. possessed by a woman with green beads as necklace that break and are spilt on the floor of this story? Florence who naively thinks of her childhood home. Yes, a truly great story. The scent of evil infuses every word, innocence, too. Remarkable!
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Post by helrunar on Aug 27, 2022 20:23:14 GMT
I thought "Poor Girl" was about a woman, and a family, being haunted by the future. I loved how Taylor crafted the story. The atmosphere to me was uncanny rather than evil.
H.
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Post by weirdmonger on Aug 27, 2022 20:32:15 GMT
I thought "Poor Girl" was about a woman, and a family, being haunted by the future. I loved how Taylor crafted the story. The atmosphere to me was uncanny rather than evil. H. I think this story can work in different ways for different people. I have been gradually reviewing all Elizabeth Taylor’s stories and this interpretative deception seems true whatever the mood or subject matter.
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