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Pet Sematary by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this one! I think it might be my favorite Stephen King novel that I’ve read to date. I love it despite its flaws and occasional messes, those Kingly tics and excesses that sometimes get in the way of a perfect scene for me, because PET SEMATARY is an exceptional novel. I really enjoyed how it takes its time to set up the Creed family and their interpersonal dynamics, their backstories and aspirations, before the shit hits the fan. It doesn’t rush. It lets you really get to know these characters, which is something I appreciate.

I have only vague memories of the film, which I saw just once back in 1989, but I remembered two things about it: Zelda, and that it was essentially a zombie story. I was wrong about that last one, though. It’s most definitely not a zombie story, despite the theme of unholy resurrection, and that’s something I found to be a very pleasant surprise. There’s much more going on — there’s cursed ground and the Wendigo and things in the woods, and instead of shambling zombies there’s a malevolent and inhuman intelligence at work.

Aside from a few moments where King clearly does not understand cats — when they lay their ears back against their head, it does NOT mean they’re happy — I was fully engrossed in the story from start to finish. Without a doubt, PET SEMATARY isn’t just a horror classic, it’s a genre-defining masterpiece.

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This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Dino Parenti, whose debut collection is Dead Reckoning and Other Stories. Here is the publisher’s description:

An emotional sampler of life on Earth as it once was.

In this collection of sixteen dark, literary tales, disparate characters and their descendants twine and interconnect throughout America from the rural seventies to the post-apocalyptic, stitching together a nefarious mosaic of experiences.

Whether delving into the exploits of a murderous police officer and a lapsing priest engaged in a battle of wills in the sun-blasted dunes of Death Valley, or an anthropologist couple sorting their infertility issues after inadvertently unleashing an Ice Age killer plague, or a mysterious ferry in the Pacific Northwest holding the darkest secrets of a private eye’s final case, or a man so obsessed with touching the infinite that he eagerly volunteers for a one-way mission to preserve the final remnants of mankind, Dead Reckoning and Other Stories ultimately yields a kind of found almanac for human posterity.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Dino Parenti:

Many years ago I saw a news report about a rapid onset infection that mercilessly ate away at a man in Australia. It started as something seemingly benign — a minor nick from a farming implement as he dug a sluice canal from a stream to his crop patch. Within 72 hours, doctors had amputated both his legs in increments, and had started on his arms before he finally succumbed to full-body sepsis.

Years later, I read another similar account, this one in Canada about a woman, scratched by a squirrel she was hand feeding, who was likewise engaged in a race as to what would reduce flesh and bone from her body faster: infection, or the surgeon’s knife. This time I took note of the condition: necrotizing fasciitis.

It’s more common name is the flesh-eating bacteria, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. It doesn’t eat so much as quickly kills the soft tissue. And like a severe burn, the affected area needs to be either quickly treated or pared away before it starts to infect surrounding tissue, which it does at an alarming rate.

After the initial wave of horror and sympathy for these people overcame me, the writer within reared its head and began ticking off scenarios. How can this ghastly condition work itself into a story? Can this condition provide the ticking-time-bomb element in a narrative?

I’m not proud of my muse’s suspect timing, but all you writers out there know well of its fickle and often cold interventions.

The research of necrotizing fasciitis was, in a word (or two), bloody awful. The images of putrefying flesh and flaying skin have not left my mind, even four years since having written it. It was one of the most trying writing experiences of my life. I couldn’t help but imagine how I’d react to seeing these horrific things happening to my own body. But as shocking as it must be to watch pieces of you discolor, leak, shrivel, and blacken — only to then have a surgeon slice said piece from your body — I got to wondering about the psychological toll that must take on the victim. It happens so fast, is there even time to put it all in perspective in the way perhaps a longer-acting affliction like cancer might offer? To craft a coping mechanism to keep you from losing your mind over such a quick turnaround?

That became the challenge and thrust of my story, “Tooth,” contained in my collection, Dead Reckoning and Other Stories.

A college student named Clara, prideful of her looks and audacity, and freshly ensconced in a new relationship, is suddenly faced with having pieces of her quickly lopped from her head-to-toe. In the crafting of the story, it was soon made manifest that no intricate plot threads were required, no ticking-time-bombs or last minute recoveries as artifice. Rather, Clara’s challenge of dealing with her rapidly looming death became the thrust. The horror of resolving all your life’s fears and existential trials within a span of hours instead of decades, this as you’re being physically reduced in volume each day you still manage to remain alive. It became an obsession in a way, allowing myself to steep in the idea that this microscopic thing inside of you that few antibiotics in the world can tame is killing you through a kind of insidious, inside-out digestion. The thought suddenly reduced more grander external horrors — torture, burning alive, wild animal attack, plane crash, home invasion — to child’s play in comparison. Your own body failing you as the ultimate horror.

I now diligently wash out every little nick and cut before smothering it under a thick bead of Neosporin.

Dead Reckoning and Other Stories: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound

Dino Parenti: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

Dino Parenti is a writer of dark literary and speculative fiction. He is the winner of the first annual Lascaux Reviewflash fiction contest and is featured in the Anthony Award-winning anthology Blood on the Bayou.  His work can be found in Pantheon Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Pithead Chapel, as well as other anthologies. He is a fiction editor at Gamut Magazineand a member of the HWA. His short-fiction collection, Dead Reckoning and Other Stories, was just released with Crystal Lake Publishing. When not purging his soul into a laptop thanks to a far-too-early exposure to Stephen King, Scorsese movies, and Camus, he can be found photographing the odd junk pile, building furniture, or earning a few bucks as a CAD drafter. He lives in Los Angeles.

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We play fucking metal! I don’t want to sing about your sad feelings! I want dragons.”

Grady Hendrix’s WE SOLD OUR SOULS may wear the skin of a road-trip horror novel, but at its heart it’s a love letter to metal, music, creativity, and never selling out. It’s heartfelt and, at times, as brutal as any modern horror novel, yet it’s also filled with in-jokes and references for readers who listen to the right kind of music. (Not all of it is metal. If you’re a fan of Joan Jett’s early band the Runaways you’re in good company here.)

I can’t speak highly enough about how authentically Hendrix has written about being in a band and, more poignantly, the bleak period that comes after, when you’re no longer making music and are forced to take crappy, low-skilled jobs and move back in with your parents. The dark side of the rock-and-roll dream — what happens when you don’t make it big — is rarely explored in fiction, but in Hendrix’s novel it cuts like a knife. The supernatural elements are compelling and smartly underplayed, but horror fans will still love it. So will metal fans. But WE SOLD OUR SOUL’s true strength lies in its character study of Kris Pulaski, the guitarist who almost made it big but, right on the cusp of greatness, lost everything. The other members of her band, Dürt Würk, are also extremely well drawn, but this is Kris’s story, and Hendrix brings her to life so well I felt like I’ve known her for years. WE SOLD OUR SOUL is a fun novel, but it’s also special one for anyone who has ever faced the trials and frustrations of trying to be a creative artist.

By the way, Dürt Würk’s TROGLODYTE sounds like a great album, and I would absolutely listen to it if it were real!

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This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Lisa de Nikolits, whose newest novel is Rotten Peaches. Here is the publisher’s description:

Rotten Peaches is a gripping epic filled with disturbing and unforgettable insights into the human condition. Love, lust, race and greed. How far will you go? Two women. Two men. One happy ending. It takes place in Canada, the U.S. and South Africa. Nature or nurture. South Africa, racism and old prejudices — these are hardly old topics but what happens when biological half-siblings meet with insidious intentions? Can their moral corruption be blamed on genetics — were they born rotten to begin with? And what happens when they meet up with more of their ilk? What further havoc can be wreaked, with devastating familial consequences?

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Lisa de Nikolits:

It’s 3a.m. in the morning. I am alone on a farm in South Africa, three hours north of Johannesburg. Three armed men are on their way to rape and kill me. They are armed with knives, hammers and metal pipes. They aren’t wearing balaclavas or trying to hide their faces in any way.

They have planned this down to the last detail, the lock on the panic room door is destroyed, the bolt rendered useless.

No one knows I am here. I came back without thinking or planning. I returned to my childhood home in haste and anger and I will pay the price with my life.

That’s a scene from Rotten Peaches. And you might think it was the scariest part to write but it wasn’t. It gave me goosebumps for sure and I felt every blow of the battle as if I were there and I was filled with utter exhaustion when it was over.

But I had faith in my protagonist to hold her own — in that instance.

Rotten Peaches has two protagonists and they are both damaged and dangerous women. Bernice and Leonie. There’s not much that scares them but at certain points of the book, they both lose control of their actions and that, for me, was the scariest part to write.

Being in a dangerous situation is one thing but when you are emotionally weakened and you let things slide away from you — well, that’s what scares me!

Bernice, protagonist #1, is conned out of a million bucks by her no-good lover. She’s down in the dumps (understandably!) and she decides to leave town. She’s drinking in an airport hotel bar and the barman asks her if she’d like to party and, on a whim, reckless and angry, she agrees.

She leaves with him in his broken down car, with no idea of where they are going. She smokes a joint and the world starts to spin out of control. They get to the party, a wild affair with fires burning in oil drums and naked people leaping in and out of the pool, with palm trees swaying in the wind and she takes more drugs, spurred by her anger. She wants to punish those who have hurt her by hurting herself even more. She loses sight of the bartender and she ends up alone. How will she get back to her hotel? This is Johannesburg, you don’t just call a cab. Plus she has lost her purse with her phone. She is surrounded by a bunch of drunk strangers and she’s stoned out of her mind. She is at her most vulnerable.

Leonie, protagonist #2, is betrayed by her lover. He left her to marry a sugar granny and her heart is broken. Leonie works the trade show circuit, selling cosmetics. She’s also a kleptomaniac with a penchant for self-medicating and she takes one too many Xanax to drown out the pain of having to see her lover with his new wife. Hardly able to walk, she accepts a security guard’s offer to escort her to her hotel room.

When there, he tries to rape her. How does she rally? I don’t want to give the game away!

I guess those are my own worst fears — that I could end up in one of those situations. One generally associates those sorts of things happening to kids but it can happen just as easily to adults. You get tired, right? You want to let off a bit of steam, or you’re hurt or angry and you just want to escape from reality for a while. But you may suffer devastating consequences.

My writing is all about catastrophic what-if consequences. My novels have been called angst-filled reading and Flare magazine said (of Rotten Peaches) that “you can’t look away” which is exactly my goal! Hook the reader in so that they can’t look away! And if I, the writer, don’t find the scenes scary, then no one else will — I am the first reader who has to be convinced and moved by the power of the prose!

Thank you very much for having me as a guest here today Nick, and I hope readers will enjoy this post!

Rotten Peaches: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound / Inanna Publications

Lisa de Nikolits: Website / Facebook

Originally from South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits has lived in Canada since 2000. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy and has lived in the U.S.A., Australia and Britain. No Fury Like That, her seventh novel, will be published in Italian, under the title Una furia dell’altro mondo, in 2019. Previous works include: The Hungry Mirror (winner 2011 IPPY Gold Medal); West of Wawa (winner 2012 IPPY Silver Medal); A Glittering Chaos (winner 2016 Bronze IPPY Medal); The Witchdoctor’s Bones; Between The Cracks She Fell (winner 2016 for Contemporary Fiction); and The Nearly Girl. Lisa lives and writes in Toronto. Her ninth novel, The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution, is forthcoming in 2019.