A collection of four intensely dark horror stories that turns a mirror on the human body and transforms it into something truly disturbing. It takes the complexities and nuanced nature of interpersonal relationships only to dissect it and see just how deeply these relationships can infect our minds, how they can become addictive or obsessive in dangerous ways - each story offering a chilling version of human connection that turns dark.
In our title tale, This Skin Was Once Mine, Jillian’s father dies mysteriously and she returns to the home she’s been exiled from for the last two decades but his death reveals secrets about his past that may make everything she knows a lie. In Seedling, a young man returns home after his father tells him his mother has passed to find her body still laying on the floor with a strange black mark on her wrist, one that is now on his father too. Our third story, all the parts of you that won’t easily burn Enoch is purchasing a knife for his husband to use at a dinner party but meets a strange shopkeeper who lures him into a dangerous and intoxicating new obsession. And our final story, Prickle sees two old friends recount a cruel game from their past and revive it for one last set time with deadly consequences.Although each individual tale offers a new perspective, a new characters voice, there is a quiet, careful and poetic style of storytelling that moves throughout each title with such vivid, rich detail and settings that almost felt like secondary characters themselves even with the stories being so short.
Intense, uncomfortable but hauntingly beautiful - this is the kind of horror that doesn’t need ghosts and ghouls because it knows we can find plenty of nightmares in the real world.
- This Skin Was Once Mine will be available from 2nd April with Titan Books. I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for a review.
- This title contains subjects that may be upsetting including gore, infant death, and violence.
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