Wearing The Horns
Clifford Meth
ISBN: 1-888669-08-X
Aardwolf Publishing
179-9 Route 46 West
Box #252
Rockway, NJ 07866
www.aardwolfpublishing.com
Price: $13.95
Page Count: 109
February 2004
Stephanie Simpson-Woods
Welcome back, kiddies! So glad you swung by. Never mind my dog, Lucky. She always hides out in the corner slurping on a bone. This week I was “lucky” enough to find a human femur hidden behind Diana’s cabin. Lucky just loves a nice, fresh femur. To bad there wasn’t enough meat left on the bone for a good roasting. Marshmallows can get pretty dull sometimes.
Speaking of dull, pry your eyes from that reality T.V. show, would ya? Here are a few spooky reads guaranteed to add a few more frigid bumps to your gooseflesh.
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Wearing The Horns |
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Poor little Herb Fishman. He doesn’t seem to have much going for him.
He is a Catholic who is often misread as a Jew, is religiously confused and
his, well-- member lacks the proper proportions. While hanging with his friends
in Shaky Ed’s Billiard Hall in Danville, New Jersey, he meets his future
wife, Barbara, a woman who thinks she is a Jew, but isn’t considered
one due to her Texas upbringing.
In the long run after much spiritual pursuit, he loses everything: his money
hungry wife who had recently purchased a brand new rack, half of his bank account,
his son Aaron, his faith and is still cursed with an inadequate member. You’d
think this would be the end of the road for Herb, but with his friends support,
he finally finds his own source of sinister satisfaction.
I was thumbing through my bookshelf searching for another book when I came across “Wearing the Horns”. Like little Herb, it was small and stood out from the rest of my collection. When I picked it up, I was instantly drawn to the cover and the amazing illustrations by Dave Cockrum, Patty Cockrum and Mike Pascale. As I dug further into Clifford Meth’s edgy read, I was delighted to see so much humor, intelligence and character packed into one, small novella.
Meth’s raw style of story telling and vivid characters bring the novella to luminous life. His honest and blunt religious views that flow throughout the book made me stop and think about how one sided certain denominations and religions could be, and at the same time I found myself laughing at Meth’s witty sense of humor. Maybe it’s the Jersey theme, but Meth could be described as a literary Kevin Smith, and to anyone that knows me- that’s an instant 5 star rating.
| 15 Serial Killers Author: Harold Jaffe ISBN: 097450310X Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press Hyattsville, MD www.rawdogscreaming.com Price: $13.95 Page Count: 180 |
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Have you ever wondered what goes on in the mind of a serial killer? Sure, we all have. What drives them? What gives them the gusto to do some of the things that they do? Do they have a conscious? If you are looking for the answers to those questions in 15 Serial Killers, you won’t find them. Instead you will find the tremendous imagination of author Harold Jaffe. Harold Jaffe takes fact and blends it with his own fictional take on some of the most publicized serial killers in history: Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson and many others.
Wait, I’m not done. This is far from a dull read. Jaffe has carefully
crafted his manuscript to give the reader a view into these killer’s
minds from many different angles. For example: In the section titled “Dr.
Death”, I became part of an audience for a talk show. The guests: Charo
and Jack Kevorkian. Some of his tales are brilliantly written in first person,
while other’s read like an essay or dialogue.
The constant switch-up of writing techniques gives this book an excellent flow
and left me wanting more at the end of each chapter. Jaffe takes some of the
most terrifying human “beans” as he calls them through out the
book, in history and brings them to life, gives them a sense of humor, and
a personality. In fact, his take is so believable, and the murders are so perfectly
described- it will scare the absolute shit out of you. Certain parts of the
book had me wondering if he was actually there, hanging out with the killers,
sharing a six-pack with them, and watching the way they tore their victims
apart.
15 Serial Killers is a flashback into America’s horrid past, delightfully written so the reader can relate to the fifteen psychopaths Jaffe describes, and sometimes becomes. It will leave you with a few chuckles, many chills, a craving for Spam and Jaffe’s marvelous insight. I would wish for another installment of this incredible book, but then we would need more serial killers.
| Title: Memoria Author: Adam Pepper ISBN: 097291577X Publisher: Medium Rare Books Anaheim, CA www.mediumrarebooks.com Pages: 294 Price: $14.95 |
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The human mind is capable of many things; it controls thought, movement, pain
and pleasure. In Adam Pepper’s debut novel, “Memoria“,
the mind is not only home to our most painful thoughts or happiest memories,
but to something far more sinister than the human brain could imagine.
Dr. Lawrence Osias of The Osias Foundation stumbled upon something extraordinary
when he was but a mere child. Taking after his father and uncle who sought
out a higher power within the human mind, Osias opens a porthole to another
world. A world where the blissful memories of humans are fed upon by what Pepper
describes as the guardians of the Collective Memoria and the victims tricked
into their mind’s submission are stuck reliving the worst their minds
have stored away.
Not only are the victims happy thoughts ripped away from them, but their bodies are as well. What happens to their bodies? They remain on Earth, roaming about as if nothing ever happened, continuing on with their day-to-day lives, and instinct isn’t the only thing keeping their bodies on the move. Like radio-controlled robots, their bodies are ordered to do acts of hate and violence by the one who convinced the victim’s minds to join Memoria in the first place, a very sexually convincing entity by the name of Desiree.
Outside of the Osias Foundation and the dream-like world of Memoria, a jobless and very family orientated Dave Wagoner searches for work. He stumbles upon an ad in a newspaper, requesting volunteers for ongoing research at the Osias Foundation. Hard up to find something to help support his wife and two young boys, he enters Osias’ insane world, and, with the help of Osias, unlocks powers within his mind almost unthinkable to our kind. Not only is he able to heal the common cold by using his brain, something calls out to him, leaving him reluctant to re-join the family he took so much pride in.
Although a brainwashed Dave views Osias experiments as harmless, there is a group of bible-beating people protesting the Foundation, claiming that Osias’ experiments go against God. When one of their own decides to make his way into the Foundation, he ends up under the Doctor’s cold scalpel and is approached by the beautiful Desiree of Memoria; her motive? To keep Osias from closing the porthole he opened.
As you can see, there is a lot going on in Adam Pepper’s twisty novel,
which makes it such a gem. He brings the surreal worlds of his character’s
minds to the reader’s mind colorfully, and has a knack for transporting
the reader into the book with perfectly wound words and vibrant descriptions. “Memoria” being
his first novel, I can’t wait to see what other hypnotic tales he has
to unleash.
If you are searching for something fresh from the horror genre, intelligently
blending the psychological, erotic and the graphically violent, I suggest you
seek it out in “Memoria”