VCO: Chapter 18

"VCO" image

Chapter 18

Last weekend; Friday after lunch.

Morgen walked ahead with her gun barrel aiming at the ground while scanning the horizon and sweeping the tall grass with a killer’s intensity. All morning I’d been worrying how to operate this gun. I’ve never held or used one before. It seemed pretty simple. You pump it. You point it. You make something explode like a nanoscopic Big Bang Event.

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From “Origin Story”: An Excerpt From “The Ill-Fitting Skin”

"The Ill-Fitting Skin"

We’re pleased to present an excerpt from Shannon Robinson’s new collection The Ill-Fitting Skin, out this week from Press 53. Danielle Evans had this to say about the book: “Robinson shifts seamlessly between approaching the world with a visceral clarity and building fantasy worlds that illuminate the strangeness of our own.” This excerpt is taken from “Origin Story.”

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Academic Horrors, Visceral Landscapes: On Matthew Cheney’s “Changes in the Land”

"Changes in the Land"

More horror fiction should have footnotes. Bennet Sims’s A Questionable Shape has forever connected the footnote to the concept of the undead, and I seem to recall a few turning up across John Langan’s nestled narratives. Matthew Cheney’s Changes in the Land features a few as well, which is understandable given that one of its characters is, in fact, an academic. “A horror novel with an academic at its core?” you may ask. “What’s so frightening about that?”

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