Oddtober 2024: We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula Ashe

Book: We Are Here to Hurt Each Other

Type of Book: Short story collection, horror, extreme horror

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: It’s hard to take me by literary surprise. I absolutely was not expecting what this book delivered.

Availability: Published in 2022 by Nictitating Books, you can get copies here. For the record, I read the Kindle version.

Comments: This book is perfect to start off with for Oddtober 2024. I’ve been on a horror kick lately, and luckily most types of extreme horror lend themselves well to oddness. This book is not in-your-face weird, but rather is weird in that creepy, unsettling way that is often hard to explain. Paula Ashe is a rare writer in her willingness to explore the minds of both the victim and the assailant without sentimentality or a pious morality. Rather, she looks at the human condition with a sharp, focused eye, showing us the will of the victim and the will of the abuser, sometimes blurring the lines between the two without pandering.

Ashe had to defend this approach in her own epilogue. She explains that people actually do take value in the way she presents abuse, saying, “…there are other people who read my work for solace. For understanding. For a bizarre and bitter reprieve.” I am one of those people. As long-time readers of this site may recall, the gut punch from fiction like this was better for me in the end than years of therapy wherein all I was permitted to do was navigate my own suffering rather than build a foundation of knowledge about the human condition. It’s heartbreaking to realize we live in a culture wherein a woman who has written some of the best horror fiction to come across my radar has to apologize for daring to explore the depths and motives behind human evil. Wonderful…

This is a relatively short collection – eleven stories in 133 pages – and you can easily read it in one sitting. I’ve reread the whole of it a couple of times now, and have read two of the stories several times as I attempted to run to ground some of the names and spells mentioned in them. Ashe merges the ancient into the modern and mixes her own horrors with established devils with such skill that I still am unsure if some of her stories are wholly of her own creation or if my research skills have failed me. She inspired me to dig deeper, and even if her prose had fallen short, spurring curiosity beyond the book itself is often worth the price of admission. Luckily, her prose was on the mark, visceral and beautiful. Absolutely savage in some places. She keeps a steady balance between the gloriously cruel and the bitterly hopeful.

One of the many charms of this collection is that Ashe experiments in style and method of story-telling. The story “Grave Miracles” will remind younger readers of “ritual” creepy pastas, wherein an authoritative, omniscient voice gives instructions so the reader can perform a specific series of steps to succeed in paranormal games or endeavors. Ashe constructs her story “Grave Miracles” using such a framework, outlining the startling steps one would take to bring a dead wife back to life and the things that will have to happen to keep her “alive” and flourishing. This story is immediately followed by “Exile in Extremis,” an email exchange between an investigative reporter and her contacts at a magazine. The magazine has published her story about grave robbing, young women coming back from the dead, and an entity known as the Priest of Breathing, and the editor and the magazine CEO need her to reveal her sources. A police investigation was launched as a result of the story and the journalist, Elle, sharp and nearly-unshakeable, does all she can to protect the editor from probing into the story any further. The story manages to be horrifying yet amusing, as Elle deftly uses illegal tactics and the threat of social embarrassment to protect innocent but annoying people from themselves.

Another surprise for me was Jacqueline Laughs Last in the Gaslight. I’m no “Ripperologist,” in that I can’t recite every little bit about the Jack the Ripper killings, but I’ve swam in that true crime lake, reading a lot of non-fiction as well as fictionalized accounts of the Whitechapel murders. I’ve come across a lot of “Jill the Ripper” theories, asserting that Jack was really a woman. This is the best Jill the Ripper story I’ve come across, assigning the protagonist a believable motive and bestowing her with the skills to commit believable violence. I can’t discuss it in any depth without potentially ruining the story, but Ashe both adapts her style to fit what one imagines an omniscient narrator’s voice would sound like as she narrates in 1888, while simultaneously holding on to the earthy, erotic tone the story demands. It’s a delicate balance, and one that Ashe manages marvelously. Describing Jacqueline and her minister husband, she says:

In Whitechapel’s rookery of wastrel the fine pair is as prominent as a hanged man’s prick.

I dare you to write a line more provocative and perfect than this. You can’t do it. You’ll cramp up. If you do try, be sure to stretch out first.

Ashe’s focus ranges from folklore to true crime, ancient history to inter-dimensional time travel. She tackles the horror of what happens when filial evil destroys maternal love and how one woman’s reaction to terrible abuse destroyed the sister she wanted to save. She picks out little, terrible details that, to the right reader, marry together reality and her fiction. A single line from “Carry On, Carrion,” brought to mind one of the more unique details from the miserable story of Tristan Bruebach.* Each story has little details like that, little pieces of horror from real life that make her stories all the creepier because, as we know, the truth is always far more fucked up than fiction.

The final story in the collection, “Telesignatures from a Future Corpse” is likely the piece that is the “price of admission” story for many, and indeed it is a great story. However, I want to discuss the two stories that caused me to spend hours researching old cults and folklore recitations of protection. In discussing these two stories I will likely spoil them some so read on with this in mind.

Blow My Colon #3 by Anthony Vegue

For weeks, I tore up my office, closet and various bookshelves and could not find this ‘zine. I decided to discuss another ‘zine in it’s place, but before I truly committed I finally asked the long-suffering Mr. OTC to have a look. He sauntered into my office and five minutes later came out with Blow My Colon Issue 3 in his hands. I was relieved that he found it for a variety of reasons but not least among them is that in its place I had planned to discuss the 2020 compilation of The Deprogrammer, which is a hoot (and culturally interesting), but, in tackling it before another election involving Trump, I feared it would result in comments threatening to tar and feather or lynch me and I don’t have the time to run risk assessment. Maybe in 2026.

Blow My Colon Issue 3 holds few qualms in that regard because the target audience of this ‘zine are too tired to give a crap. BMC3 is the delightful “Clerks” edition. It was released in 1996, when Kevin Smith’s 1994 Clerks was still experiencing a lot of social cache and word of mouth. Back then movies could remain in the public consciousness for years. It was a simpler time. When I bought this, I had just quit managing a shoe store in Dallas, a job that left me feeling utter contempt for my fellow man and a new understanding of what causes workplace violence. I departed from that job with an angry nihilism combined with an almost-psychic ability to peg an aggressive asshole or condescending classist in an instant. At the end of the job, a thief could have come into the store with a Red Flyer wagon, dumped the contents of the cash register and half the purse displays into it, and walked out and I would have robotically told them to have a good day.

But this ‘zine reminded me that things could always be worse.

This ‘zine is devoted to the men and women who staff gas stations and convenience stores, especially the night shift heroes who get to deal with drunks, bathroom shit-smearers*, and counting the cigarettes. Always counting cigarettes. Even with the massive change in technology we’ve experienced since 1996, these three issues still plague the lives of the convenience store clerk. This ‘zine tells the stories of the people who work these jobs and the derelicts and deviants who make their lives miserable.

And right about now I feel that I need to warn readers that if you are easily offended or angered, stop reading now.

I think you have to have cleaned a bathroom on Christmas Eve after a person with questionable hygiene had violent diarrhea while everyone else is at home, cozy and drinking eggnog, to fully understand the human experience. The stories of these brave men and women are sobering but mostly hilarious, though a bit gross at times.

For example, take Dave, who worked at a gas station in Erie, PA. He got the job just to stretch out his unemployment benefits, showed up absolutely stoned for every shift but was still praised for picking up the job details faster than anyone else in the store. The only way to make the job more challenging was to get even more stoned. When “massively high,” he’d work slowly, causing the line to pay to become very long.

That’s where it was helpful to wear a hat – keep that bill pointed down, never look the customer in the eye, laugh maniacally to yourself.

Dave also goes on at length about his coworkers and the more annoying customers who treated him like a therapist or vented their repellent political opinions at him.

Scoth from Indianapolis mentioned the three things that are present in almost all accounts of late night convenience store or gas station jobs. Free coffee, which a clerk must drink until their hearts began racing so quickly there was no discernible time between beats. Second, relentless theft, by employees and customers alike. Third, the cigarettes. Always counting cigarettes.

Josh from Oregon elegantly summed up the customer service experience:

Unless you’ve lived it, you can never fully understand the total impact of this hell on earth. I gained thirty pounds, an additional chin, and bags under my eyes that could pack a family of four. I worked graveyard so my bitterness is perfectly understandable.

He describes a terrible customer who threw milk at him and the utter indignity that waited for him:

He threw the milk jug at me on the way out. I don’t think the dude knew just what that meant to me. Not only was I forced to get up off my lazy ass and clean up the fuckin mess, but I was left with an over-ring. But worse than all the fucking pricks like that was counting those goddamed cigarettes every morning.

Adam from Santa Fe confirmed a lot of things many of us suspected about those in such service jobs:

Sometimes now I piss in the window cleaner. Then I watch all those dumb fucks wash their windows with it all day.

Even worse:

I spit everywhere. Coffee pots and ice machines and in the sandwiches we sell.

And, as always:

The worst thing about this fuck job though is counting the cigarettes.

Such jobs alter the way your brain works, as explained by Joe Gallo from New Jersey. One night when a seventeen-year-old girl accidentally drove through the front of the store, nearly taking out a line of people waiting to buy Lotto tickets, Joe’s reaction was interesting:

First thing I said: “Holy shit!” Next thing I said: “Awesome!”

Someone helpfully laid out their usual work tasks.

Also hilarious were the product reviews:

Waxie’s Gelled Rite-Away

Ok, this shit claims to remove “graffiti within 6 hours.” Sounds great if your graffiti is lipstick. Or erasable pen. Or a pencil, Or better yet, a piece of paper with “Chaka” sprayed on it, taped to the wall.

Since the clerk knew his boss would “shit a horse” if he saw some painted graffiti on the wall, he booked it to the stall with Waxie’s Gelled Rite-Away and when he was finished, the white paint was stripped down to the metal but the graffiti remained.

The ‘zine also includes a nice list of films from the eighties and nineties that depict the clerk experience, the weird gum you can find at convenience stores, shopping cart racing, a helpful list of ‘zines to read on the clock (featuring Fringe Ware Review, which is worth mentioning because I am almost certain I purchased this at the old FringeWare store on Guadalupe), and many humorous observations about cops.

And in case you were wondering, yes, the clerks frequently have sex in the store. Or at least they did in 1996. I suspect it is more difficult but if the coolers in back are not surveilled, you can probably bank on the fact that if you are waiting five minutes for a clerk to ring you up at 3:45 am, chances are he or she is in the cooler or a random storage closet expressing their love for their partner in a physical manner.

The nineties were the last time when people could be free to engage in compensatory retaliation. Yeah, yeah, spitting everywhere is unsanitary** and “you’re getting paid to work you communist” but I don’t care because being micromanaged with cameras on you from every angle as you spend half-an-hour with a religious fanatic Protestant, who is upset that you are selling Catholic glass canister candles, begging her to give you her credit card so you can charge her so she can leave, is worth a stolen six-pack or a furtive blow job under the counter. Cutting off the working person’s ability to blow off steam at work is probably why we as a nation are ready at a moment’s notice to kill each other. This ‘zine reminds me that I’m kind of old these days, but it was fun remembering the activity that radicalized me more than any politician or religious figure could – working the register.

Unfortunately finding a copy of this ‘zine will prove to be difficult but sometimes just knowing something this incredible exists is enough.

‘Zine September now comes to a close. I may do this again, especially if I get some good ‘zine recommendations. I also have some ‘zines I want to discuss in October. Except next month is ODDtober, where I hope to discuss creepy and frightening ‘zines, music, books and films.

*I once worked at a Half-Price Books. Best job of my life, I loved it but I was seasonal, and I would work there again in a moment, even taking into account the bathrooms. The women’s bathroom was a nightmare. Twice in my brief time there, someone smeared shit all over the ladies’ room stalls. The manager of the store was a rock star of a woman and and felt it was her responsibility to clean up when that happened but the second time I did it. I volunteered to do it because the manager had just learned she was pregnant. The ladies’ room also suffered from women not using their Diva cups with consideration for their fellow man, leaving period blood smeared on the doors and faucets, and one time, a defiant woman left huge blood clots clogging the bathroom sink.

But the best bathroom cleaning experience came from the men’s room. Someone had peed all over the wall outside of a regular stall, as well as all over the inside of the stall itself. As I was mopping up, I noticed sneaker prints on the back of the toilet – the store was old so the toilets were the sort you find in homes, with a tank with a lid and a regular flush mechanism. Smallish sneaker prints. I am not a forensics expert but I am reasonably sure a pre-teen boy stood atop the toilet tank and just peed all over the bathroom. I could not even be mad at it. I could just feel the degenerate glee that kid must have felt as he soaked the place in piss and wished him well in his future job in finance.

** If you’re eating gas station-prepared food anywhere but Buc-ees, some stoner spitting on your sandwich will be the least of your problems.

10 Best Revenge Movies Written by Women by APac

I ordered this ‘zine recently because it was bundled with some interesting horror film ‘zines, but I am a sucker for these sort of top ten lists because I generally end up with at least a couple of pieces of new media to check out.

There are so many revenge movies that have female protagonists who seek vengeance for terrible things done to them, notably I Spit on Your Grave, The Brave One, and Ms. 45. I tend to thinkCarrie is as well. However, those films were directed by men and this list focuses on those directed by women, which ensured I would find a few films new to me.

Of the ten films, I have seen only three. One is Prevenge, directed by comedian Alice Lowe, which features a pregnant heroine seeking to kill those whom she holds responsible for the death of her romantic partner. I enjoyed it quite a bit, so much so that I watched it three times. My favorite scene is when the protagonist and one of her future victims burst out singing Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good.”

Another is Violation, directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer. I really disliked this film because I disagree with the essential premise. Should a perpetrator who misinterpreted sexual signs, who believed he had consent, be tortured and brutally slain because he got it wrong? None of this was helped by how unlikable the heroine was, because her behavior was so unpleasant that I almost walked away with the belief that she wanted to destroy her sister’s happy life and succeeded in spades. I’m not condemning her by implying she is a “bad victim” but rather stating that her aggressively sexual behavior with her partner and overall behavior with her sister made me think initially that she seduced the man she killed so she had an excuse to kill him. When we saw her perspective later and realized she did feel violated, I was surprised, which points in the direction of inconsistent characterization. If you loved this film, tell me why because I don’t get it but am willing to see other points of view

The third is She-Devil, directed by Susan Seidelman. This is one of the worst films ever made, taking a very serious novel with well-used black humor and turning it into a terribly unfunny slapstick comedy starring Roseanne Barr, Meryl Streep and Ed Begley Jr. I suspect the semi-positive reviews were down to Streep’s presence in the film. However, it was a delight finding it on this list anyway because the screenplay was “based” on the novel The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon. Though I have not reviewed any of her work on this site, I’ve mentioned her often, and it was painful seeing her work so terribly degraded because I am serious when I say the film adaptation sucks a’plenty.

Excuse me as I begin to go off on another tangent somewhat unrelated to the ‘zine in question.

But the book the film was based on is resplendent. No one handles revenge better than Fay Weldon did. In fact, critic Regina Barreca included Fay Weldon’s work in Sweet Revenge: The Wicked Delights of Getting Even. It would be a near-book length entry to discuss the things that happened to Weldon that caused her to seek revenge in her often autobiographical books, but she took some outrageous slings and arrows of fate and turned them into amusing, startling and provocative books. In the actual novel, Ruth, the fat and unattractive protagonist, loses her husband Bob to a beautiful romance novelist, Mary. Mary schemes to break up the marriage and succeeds and Ruth disappears with little more than the clothes on her back. She spends years making connections, earning money, and setting the stage for her ultimate revenge. Brick by brick, she disassembles Mary’s perfect life via her behind the scenes machinations and the coup de grace was several years of surgeries that left her looking identical to Mary. She even had lengths of her leg bones removed to reduce her height. Looking exactly like her defeated rival, she swoops back in to regain her husband who has been so broken by events that one is not sure if he understands he is now with Ruth, and we leave the novel wondering how much Bob is going to suffer for his callous cruelty and abandonment of his loyal wife.

Snerting at two of the three films in this ‘zine isn’t a slight against the list or those who compiled the list. Though these films are touted as the “best” ten revenge movies directed by women, the fact is that there are not that many films that meet the criteria. There are a couple of films on the top ten list I want to see, namely Promising Young Woman because I initially thought that it was based on the Caroline O’Donoghue novel, Promising Young Women. It isn’t but I adore Clancy Brown and the reviews seem good so I am eager to check it out. There are others in there that seem worth watching but I won’t spoil things further and instead encourage you to check out these ‘zine makers. I will be discussing another ‘zine from APac for Oddtober.

Though this list didn’t necessarily ring many “best film” bells for me, the creators took the time to search out films that weren’t immediate ringers that many have seen. I know they were trying to present more obscure films because they placed three of the most famous revenge films women directed in a sort of “honorable mention” list. I’ve definitely seen Baise-Moi, Monster and Jennifer’s Body, and excluding them ensured I got to know about more films I hadn’t seen. I appreciate the attempt to introduce the reader to something new. Also extremely helpful is a master list of all the movies they considered for this list and I was pleased to see that Carrie 2 was on it.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to redirect people from the terrible She-Devil to the darkly delightful Lives and Loves of a She-Devil.

Hawk & Handsaw by Max McNabb

I met Max McNabb when he sent me this ‘zine. I was so excited about finding a fellow traveler in Texana and the weirdness that is so often present in our homeland that I intended to discuss it immediately. However, I kind of got lost posting over here for a while and that didn’t happen until now but I recall bonding with him on Facebook over the Josiah Wilbarger case. We both appear to have encyclopedic knowledge of the man who was scalped by Comanches and left to die. Sarah Hornsby, whose husband was a friend of Wilbarger’s, had repeated dreams telling her he was still alive, as well as where he was, and she finally persuaded a search party to go back out to find them (she called them cowards and goaded them until they finally took her seriously) and sure enough he was exactly where she said he would be. When he recovered he spoke of how his sister Margaret, who was far away in Missouri, had appeared to him and told him to be calm and that help was on the way. He later found out that Margaret had died two weeks before the scalping. Wilbarger somehow lived for over a decade after being rescued. I photographed the place where he was scalped and wrote an article about him, but I would need NASA to comb through my hard drive to find it.

Regardless, Max and I have a remarkable overlap in interests: Texas, ghost stories (preferably set in Texas), high weirdness, conspiracy theory, folklore and alternative looks at history and politics. All are present in Hawk & Handsaw, which takes its title from Hamlet:

I am but mad north-northwest. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

This is a delightful ‘zine, covering a wide array of topics, among them: Texas tales of cryptids, ghost lights and UFOs, an attempt to correct common misconceptions about the Boston Tea Party, an interview with author Max Evans, a list of lesser-known Bob Dylan songs, and an original poem and comic strip. But the topic that interested me the most was a single page where McNabb presents hobo glyphs.

If you are unfamiliar with hobo glyphs, they are symbols that rail riders would carve into train trestles to relay information about the general area to other travelers. Hard-nosed sheriffs, unfriendly townsfolk, guard dogs and more all had their specific symbols so that hobos would know when to step lightly. There were positive symbols, as well, including depictions of people who would give them money to get out of town, towns that served alcohol, and hobo friendly churches.

The symbol that is most important to me is the symbol for “kind hearted woman.” It’s an image of a smiling cat and it indicated that a kind woman lived in a home near the tracks. It isn’t listed in the symbols McNabb presents in his ‘zine, but as I hope I have shown throughout this long look at ‘zines, a good ‘zine often causes these sorts of tangents. My grandparents lived next to a rail line in Lawn, Texas. That train track played a huge role in my mother’s life as she often played near the trestles. The train track was so important in her life that part of my mother’s ashes were spread there. So of course I heard a lot about that train track when my mother felt nostalgic (and I will note that even though she basically roamed the ranch, rode pigs, and wandered all over the train tracks, often barefoot, she didn’t permit me to leave my grandparent’s front yard when we visited).

My mother’s stories may not always come from a place of objective absolute truth because family legends can get garbled – she told me we had a lot of American Indian blood but 23 & Me begged to differ – but I recall her telling me that the trestles near her childhood home bore hobo glyphs, including the image of the smiling cat that represents the “soft hearted woman.” That glyph specifically meant that nearby lived a woman who would be willing to offer them food if asked. I was a child when my grandmother died, and she was very sick during my life, so my main memories are of her being very unwell. However, I know my grandmother exhibited the type of generosity one often saw in people who survived the sort of extreme poverty that the modern American mind has a hard time understanding. If she had food, she would have offered any she had if a hungry person showed up on her porch. I recall her once scraping off table scraps for the feral cats that managed to survive the coyotes, cementing even further the association of my grandmother with happy cats. She made sure my favorite food of hers was on offer every time I visited – her creamed corn was such a family favorite that we’ve all tried to recreate it, but to no avail.

Her influence was seen very clearly in my mother’s approach to food, and in mine, too. My mother loved to cook for people. I would come home from working my after-school job at Michaels to find members of my high school debate team hanging out with her and her husband. They came over because they knew my mother would cook them all kinds of indulgent foods. Fried chicken and mac and cheese were popular but sometimes they would just raid the fridge for leftovers, to her absolute delight. I show similar tendencies, especially with holiday baking.

To see the kind hearted woman pin in more detail, click this image.

The kind hearted woman symbol has carried a lot of weight with me throughout my life, and when I saw a pin that depicted the symbol, I bought it and now keep it with the handful of my grandmother’s remaining possessions I have displayed behind glass. I did not expect to break down in tears reading McNabb’s ‘zine, remembering those lost to me and the stories that are a part of my family legend, but here we are.

I haven’t seen much from Max McNabb across the social media sites where we are “mutuals” and I suspect the social conflagrations of 2020 that degenerated into identity political witch hunts on both sides of the political spectrum may have affected him the way it affected me. I hope he is doing well, and I hope he sees this and knows the unlikely effect a simple graph of glyphs had on me. I don’t see that Hawk & Handsaw is available for sale but there is a “contact me” section on his website where you can reach him to see if he has any copies to spare.

Murder Can Be Fun, the Naughty Children Edition by Johnny Marr

I was hoping this black cat hovering over this ‘zine would create an air of menace. It didn’t work.

The Murder Can Be Fun ‘zines were my favorite ‘zines from the nineties. I let people borrow copies, never to get them back, and now all I have left is issue #17, which handles the topic of children who kill.

I believe I purchased this copy at the old Fringeware store on Guadalupe sometime in 1997 or 1998. At the time I was a walking, talking, fretting true crime podcast, though podcasts had yet to be invented, and when I saw this edition of my favorite ‘zine, I had to purchase it. (As an aside, talking about Fringeware, the alt.culture in Austin that began to die shortly after we moved here, the delightful feeling of finally finding people with similar interests on late nineties message boards, are my version of “I remember when you could see a movie for a dime and could leave the front door unlocked at night.” They are memories of a halcyon time when suddenly information became available and only a few of us knew it was out there.)

This ‘zine set off a maniacal attempt to find as much information about a youthful killer as I could. The only mention she has in Murder Can Be Fun #17 is in the quotes section, a sort of “Child Killers Say the Darnedest Things” where Marr collected some statements by killer kids. There were two quotes from an eleven-year-old girl named Mary Bell but she isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the ‘zine.

I’d like to be a nurse because then I can stick needles in people. I like hurting people.

and

Murder isn’t that bad. We all die sometimes.

There is a famous picture of a little girl who survived life in a concentration camp who is told to draw her home. She drew frantic, jagged circles and her thousand yard stare cuts viewers deep. Mary Bell had the same stare.

For the next two years I scoured the earth for mentions of Mary Bell. I was unable to find much but eventually tracked down a book by investigative journalist Gitta Sereny, who spoke at length with Mary when she was freshly convicted. Long out of print, I could only get a copy from the UT law library but after killer culture become much more popular, Sereny released another, updated book about Mary. Sereny said that Mary Bell endured some of the worst child abuse she had ever seen or heard of, and in general had a lot of sympathy for Mary.

Mary, with a friend named Norma Bell (no relation, strangely enough) strangled two boys to death. Mary was eleven and Norma was thirteen but Mary was the dominant of the two. Mary deliberately lured the two toddler boys to their deaths and wrote odd notes left in a nursery school taking responsibility for the murder of one of the boys, Martin Brown.

The most puzzling note Mary wrote said, “I murder so that I may come back.” Mary and Norma had a history of attacking small children, and after they killed Martin Brown, they enjoyed tormenting the family as they mourned. They took turns asking Martin’s mother if they could see him. When Martin’s mother gently reminded them her son was dead, Mary replied that she knew he was dead and wanted to see him in his coffin. At age 11 years and six months old, Mary was the youngest convicted murderer in the UK, a record she still holds.

Mary escaped confinement at least once but she was eventually let go from prison when she was 23. She had a baby, a little girl, in 1984 and lived in relative peace and without further offenses but in 1998, the press discovered the new name she was given upon release and outed her and her teenage daughter. Mary had to be relocated and given a new name, and Mary fought very hard to ensure her daughter was able to maintain anonymity.

I keep harping on this point, but the beauty of most ‘zines for me is the potential for larger conversations or to fall down rabbit holes. Mary Bell became a years-long rabbit hole for me because of two quotes in a ‘zine about murderous children.

This ‘zine covers several killers whose names may not ring bells with even the most seasoned true crime fans. The most “famous” of the children discussed was the terror Jesse Pomeroy but few others have much name recognition, like Hannah Ocuish, a mixed race child who lived in miserable poverty in the late eighteenth century, and she slashed another girl’s throat over an argument about stolen strawberries. Much of the book discusses “trends” in childish mayhem, like the amusing pastime of derailing trains and strange drownings. Very interesting to me were the stories of children who were executed for their crimes. Hannah Ocuish appears to be the youngest person executed in the United States, but there were two slave boys who were not too much older when they went to the gallows for murder. The youngest murderer recorded in the USA? In 1921 in Rhode Island, a three year old boy deliberately strangled his playmate because he didn’t like her anymore.

This is a fact-packed ‘zine, and though it is hard to find a copy, should you find one that is affordable, you could do worse things with your money.

Reflection by Compact Squirrel

If this were Instagram, there would be endless comments about how Basic Bitch my perfume tastes are.

Reflection is another artfully folded micro-zine that feels like someone is sharing both their talent and their passion directly to readers. It has the same level of intimacy I found in I Got That B-Movie Autism, and it has the same ability to provoke conversation. The drawings in Reflection are quite pretty, and the message is one that matters less and less to me but is an important one for young women (and possibly men, too) who are grappling with identity and how their appearance shapes their prospects in life. It can often feel like we have to take off our real selves and put on a new appearance as easily as we change clothes and this little ‘zine focuses on that issue in a visually appealing but creepy way.

This is a conversation that each new generation of women is forced to have, for a variety of reasons. It can be easy to place the blame for female self-image problems on social media, the male gaze, relentless marketing that makes young women feel as if they need to change their appearances to achieve what the current arbiters of beauty decide is the new standard. We are currently seeing a cultural shift in how American woman are supposed to look and women who made drastic changes to themselves will find it hard to meet new standards. For example, women who received brazilian butt lifts are out of luck as the thinner silhouette is gaining ground again, and over-filled lips are being replaced by more defined cupid’s bows. What will happen to all the women who got buccal fat removal when it becomes chic to have chubby cheeks?

It’s not lost on me how violent this image is. It reminds me of the skin suits Jame Gumb made in Silence of the Lambs.

However, while culture influences this sense that our appearances are coats we should shed as the world sees fit, the fact remains that what women experience today is what women experienced two thousand years ago. Makeup, hair dye, body henna, altering body shape with clothing, different hair styles from one generation to the next… It almost seems as if pursuing continual changes in appearance are an innate part of the female human experience.

Remarkably, I recall where I got this ‘zine and why I bought it. I got it from Compact Squirrel’s Etsy store and I bought it because the title and the artwork were appealing to me. I’m an Elder Hag so the beauty standards have little significance in my own life, but I’m going to tell you something strange about me: I don’t look like me. And don’t ask me to explain it because I’m not entirely sure what that means. When I talk about it, people assume I am describing some form of body dysmorphia or a lack of face recognition. Neither are at play for me. It’s just that I intuitively know that when I look in the mirror, the face that looks back at me isn’t quite right. Part of the problem is that I look so different from photo to photo that even if I did not have this “problem” I still wouldn’t see the “real” me in photos. But the main issue is that I have what seems like a memory of a face that is like the one I have now but different somehow so every time I see myself it’s startling. It’s not because I am aging because I recall thinking this way when I was a teen. I wonder if other women feel similarly and find it just as difficult to speak about it coherently. Perhaps my bizarre reaction to my face is secretly common and fuels youthful body and facial alteration. Probably not, but you never know until you speak about it.

Also I feel I need to mention that ‘zine authors are notoriously generous about sending fun freebies with a ‘zine purchase. Along with the ‘zine, Compact Squirrel sent me some tentacle stickers and what appears to be a glow-in-the-dark tooth sticker that I gave to Mr. OTC. Good times!

BeastMeat by Seth Goodkind

Today’s look at ‘zines is going to be a short one, by necessity because it’s an art/comic ‘zine with very little in the way of dialogue.

Let my crankiest cat show you what is what with BeastMeat by Seth Goodkind.

“Do you see the beast? Have you got it in your sights?”

BeastMeat is a fun and fairly nasty mini-zine/comic hybrid. It’s a little bit of gross horror that is meant to be enjoyed for its grossness, but, believe it or not (believe it because I will explain myself shortly), I was able to associate elements of this ‘zine with a recent presidential candidate’s struggles.

BeastMeat consists of black and white drawings of a man who has some sort of worm in his head, speaking gibberish to him and driving him to madness. He shoots himself in the head to rid himself of the worm – I have no idea why I immediately thought “planarian” but suspect it’s just high school biology rearing its less-than-helpful head – and the worm tries to escape, only to be caught by a goat-looking creature. The goat, whom I assume to be the “Beast,” engages in a struggle with the worm and then the man, and I assume they are the “Meat,” but I’m sort of old and have no real idea what is happening. Then the Beast lays or craps out some sort of larvae sac into the man’s neck. The End.

Meet the Beast. Irritate a cat. Make unlikely associations with politics.

But here’s why I absolutely had to discuss this ‘zine. A man has a wormish creature crawling around in his head, shouting nonsense and driving him to madness. He rids himself of the worm but a Luciferian goat comes and makes things even worse with a nastier worm-thing. Is there anything in this comic that reminds you of some current politician? If the Beast had been a bear or a whale, would the association I’m making be clearer?

This comic ‘zine was created in 2014 but I think we all know that Seth Goodkind looked into the future, saw Robert F. Kennedy’s worm-infested brain and his struggles with political darkness and drew this comic to warn us. And the upside to this totally coherent analysis is that you can assign members of the political right and left to the role of the Beast, which means you don’t have to leave me angry comments accusing me of being a Soros-funded degenerate or a Russian Trumpette asset.

I have absolutely no idea where I got this ‘zine but Seth Goodkind still sells this comic ‘zine in his Etsy store. He also has an interesting-looking Instagram account. He appears to be a tattooist, and has inked a card from the Edward Gorey Fantod Pack onto someone’s arm. This means he is awesome and I will send a Fantod Pack to the first person not married to me who knows what Edward Gorey character I have tattooed on my own carcass and posts the answer in the comments. Contest open until someone wins or we all succumb to the brain worm and become BeastMeat or succumb to BeastMeat, the comic wasn’t clear.

Lady Killers by Sian Dunn and Arinn Westendorf

Two ladies killing me because they won’t let me make the bed.

Lady Killers pretty much does what it says on the cover: it discusses several women who killed. Sian Dunn handled the text, while Arinn Westendorf created stylized drawings of the murderous women. It’s a mini zine, but the content is pretty detailed. The only downside to this ‘zine is the small font size, necessary for the author to be able to include so much information on what is essentially a quarter of a sheet of regular typing paper.

While this ‘zine doesn’t really bring a new concept to the table, it’s very clearly a labor of love for the two creators, a collaboration between friends who really enjoy true crime content. Yet even though the concept isn’t fresh nowadays, what with all the true crime content saturating the media landscape, the authors still managed to discuss two women I had not heard of before.

The cases discussed in the ‘zine are the Pauline Parker-Juliet Hulme case from New Zealand, Sada Abe from Japan, Elizabeth Bathory from Hungary, Madame Popova from Russia, Leonarda Cianciulli from Italy, Christine and Lea Papin from France, and Juana Barraza from Mexico. It seems as if the creators wanted a more global representation of feminine mayhem and I really appreciate the deviation from the usual North American and English fare of Aileen Wuornos, Karla Homolka, Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Susan Smith or Casey Anthony.

I had not heard of Madame Popova, a murderess for hire who killed off abusive husbands for her female clientele. She was executed in 1909 at the age of thirty and it’s believed she killed off at least 300 men. Equally unknown to me was Juana Barraza, a young professional wrestler from Mexico who killed old women as a stand-in for her abusive mother who literally sold her into sexual servitude in exchange for three beers. I really appreciate it when people who create true crime media actually go out of their way to find topics that may be lesser known or obscure. If I never again hear the names Jody Arias or Lori Vallow, it won’t be a moment too soon.

The creators of this ‘zine filter a couple of the cases through a feminist lens, so it was a bit surprising to me that the case that calls out the most for such a lens was overlooked. There are some among us (hi!) who think that Elizabeth Bathory never killed a single village girl, but rather was the victim of the King of Hungary. The king owed Elizabeth Bathory a tremendous amount of money and did not want to repay her. Bathory was a wealthy widow, and without institutionalized male protection, was easy to malign with impunity. With Bathory accused of having the largest female serial killer body count in history, it was far easier to seize her land and wealth. But this isn’t a widely-held opinion and we’ll never know exactly what really happened. Plus even if it is true, it’s not like it will ever tamp down the imagery that the Bathory case has made ubiquitous. Aging but still beautiful women bathing in the blood of young virgins to remain young infests horror imagery and will die hard.

All in all, this was an unexpectedly novel look into serial killer lore with an eye to presenting new or lesser known cases. Sadly, I do not recall where I got this ‘zine and cannot find a link so that readers can get their own copy. But such is the way of the ‘zine and one of the reasons I want to share some of the ‘zines I found stashed away. I suspect that before too long the majority of the ‘zines I discuss will be unavailable for purchases so best to record their existence so future generations will want to look into the life of an Italian grandmama who turned her friends into soaps and cakes.

I Got That B-Movie Autism by @frankenart13

Mirabelle loves to curl up with a good ‘zine.

It’s a small relief to discuss another single-page ‘zine after Chris Mikul’s much longer, research-heavy ‘zines. I Got That B-Movie Autism is the work of an artist who goes by the moniker frankenart13 across various social media platforms. I really enjoy little ‘zines like these. They are artfully folded, reminding me of passing notes in school or carefully constructing cootie catchers so my friends and I could hopefully determine who we would marry or if we would be rich when we grew up. There is an interesting intimacy to these small ‘zines that draw me in, and I have a lot of them. I hope to one day find all the ‘zines I’ve stashed all over my shelves and stuck in drawers and behave as if I am collecting these little ‘zines rather than haphazardly accumulating them.

This ‘zine has a very specific mission:

If you’ve ever wanted to be recommended 3 obscure and amazing cult movies by an autistic queer dude, then this is the zine for you!

The three movies Frankenart13 wants to share are Reanimator, The Devil’s Carnival and Repo! The Genetic Opera, and I won’t spoil why he wants to recommend them in case you want to buy a copy for yourself.

I will, however, note that The Devil’s Carnival and Repo! The Genetic Opera are both directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. I enjoyed both films when I saw them, years ago, and had no clue who directed either, let alone that it was the same man, though it shouldn’t be surprising because the two films are clearly siblings with similar aesthetics and style.

I know about Darren Lynn Bousman because I became very interested in the Saw franchise last spring. With the exception of Saw 3D, also known as Saw 7 (because, shockingly, it was the seventh Saw film in the series) and Spiral, I found all of the Saw movies strangely compelling and compulsively watchable. I had dismissed the films as being little more than torture porn, and in a way they aren’t much more than that, but the character arcs, the plot twists and the grimy visuals ensured that even when the films were bad, they were still sort of good. I found myself watching tons of YouTube videos about the franchise, ranking the best and worst traps, best and worst deaths, best and worst characters, etc.

Saw II, Saw III and Saw IV were directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. Chris Rock brought him back into the fold after seventeen years away for Spiral, which was the worst film in the franchise, in my opinion, and I am unable to express exactly why it didn’t hit me the same way the other films did. Others tended to agree with my puzzled dislike. But Bousman’s miss was offset by Saw II, a film that some horror aficionados consider the best horror sequel ever made. They may be right, as I can’t currently think of a sequel that was as good as or better than the first movie. Saw II was pretty good, with interesting character development, some really grody traps (Shawnee Smith in that needle pit…), and some excellent twists. Bousman is a director with a very specific style that I never would have associated with The Devil’s Carnival or Repo! The Genetic Opera. I want to rewatch both and then rewatch Saw II for the umpteenth time and see if I can pick out details that are Bousman-like in all three.

Not all ‘zines will cause this cascade of reaction but it’s always fun when they do. This ‘zine is, in the end, just a piece of artfully folded paper but because of it I’m likely going to spend six hours watching films in a search that has nothing to do with the original content presented in I Got That B-Movie Autism. Good times!

Biblio-Curiosa No. 6 by Chris Mikul

There are a lot of reasons to read Chris Mikul’s work. He’s erudite and has a fondness for the strangeness that is the backbone of this site. He is able to look at terrible literature with a kind intellectualism that I would do well to emulate (there are a couple of books I eviscerated on this site that I want to revisit and see how they read with a more generous, less pedantic eye). He’s introduced me to some amazing books, not the least among them The Pepsi-Cola Addict by June Gibbons, which I’ve had in my possession for a while but have yet to read because I’ve wanted to read it for so long that I feel a weird sort of sorrow at the prospect of losing that feeling of joyful anticipation.

One of the best reasons to read him is his deep knowledge of writers who have more or less been lost to time. There are so many excellent and interesting books that for various reasons slip away from the public eye, and Mikul finds a lot of value in researching such books and the authors behind them. His articles that feature books that are lost or nearly lost to modern readers are fascinating, and at times maddening because I can seldom find copies of the books to read for myself.

There are five articles in Biblio-Curiosa No. 6, and I am limiting myself to the cover story, but bear in mind that the remaining four articles are very much worth reading, especially the analysis of William Nathan Stedman, a poet very much in the running for the worst poet ever. I’m discussing the cover piece exclusively because it is such an excellent example of Mikul’s research chops as well as his affection for the topic as he ferrets out information about forgotten authors and their works.

Few know the name Frank Walford these days, and that is a shame because his books were both ahead of their time in terms of content and because the content itself was often completely lunatic. Mikul’s article focuses on Twisted Clay, a delightfully batshit and sordid book about a psychopathic teenage lesbian. This book was initially published in 1933, and contains violence and sexual implication one does not expect to find in pre-WWII literature.

I’ve noticed that people interact with my work more when there is a cat involved. So here’s Mikul’s ‘zine atop my baffled cat, Calliope.

Twisted Clay is narrated by its protagonist, Jean Deslines. She lives in New South Wales with her father and grandmother. She is, as Mikul points out, “sexually precocious,” and at age twelve was already behaving in a very provocative manner, swimming nude in front of neighbors and attempting to seduce the clergyman her beleaguered grandmother asks to speak to her about her exhibitionism (and it sounds like she very nearly succeeded). Jean is primarily sexually attracted to women and sleeps with the housemaid Jenny, and one wonders how her grandmother felt about having two lesbians in her prim household. Later, Jean’s cousin Myrtle, herself a lesbian, tells Jean that she doesn’t like men so she will likely never marry. When Jean pushes her for more details, she tells the fourteen-year-old Jean to look it up.

Jean reads the sexual arbiters of the time (think Freud and Havelock Ellis) and realizes she is a lesbian and is so appalled by this information that she seeks out a boyfriend, sleeps with him and promptly becomes pregnant. Her father arranges an abortion but this does not change Jean much. In fact, she begins to dress in a manner meant to attract men, and it succeeds, because when her Uncle Harry and Aunt Gabrielle come to visit, Uncle Harry develops a sexual attraction to his young niece, a situation that drives her aunt to despair as she tries to make Jean aware of the situation. Jean toys with the woman, fully aware that her uncle wants to have sex with her, but pretends she doesn’t. When she finally feigns understanding, she immediately accuses her of having a dirty mind. When everyone comes to see what the matter is, Jean adds fuel to the already incendiary situation and her aunt and uncle leave the next day.

Jean’s father speaks to the family doctor, Dr Murray, and they discuss what needs to be done with Jean. Insanely, the doctor recommends that she receive a sort of ovary operation to encourage more feminine behavior, as well as psychotherapy. Jean is thrilled at the idea of psychotherapy because she can “mystify the operator by relating imaginary dreams and fictitious incidents!” She is less enthusiastic about the operation, thinking it would kill her personality and that she would be justified in killing her father in defense to avoid such a death. And this is how this strange girl tries to dissuade her father from forcing the surgery:

“Daddy!”

“Yes, Jean.”

“Dr. Murray said, if he owned me, he would thrash me. Why don’t you thrash me, to see if it should do any good?”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re too old to thrash.”

“I’m not, I’m not! See, here’s your walking stick. Beat me with it, beat me hard!”

“Go to bed, child, and don’t talk nonsense.”

With a quick jerk, I stripped off my pyjama trousers, standing before him nude to mid-thighs, clad only in my dangling pyjama coat. “Beat me, Daddy, beat me hard, beat me till the blood flows. I want you to.”

Okay, so by now it should not surprise anyone that some of Frank Walford’s books got banned and that this book is unlikely to end well for anyone involved.

To avoid going to Europe for the surgery, Jean fakes interest in a grave site in which someone will be buried later that day. Jean’s father takes her to see the grave and she takes him out with a hatchet to the head and pushes him into the grave. But this was a “from the frying pan into the fire” sort of situation because Dr. Murray is given guardianship of her. Jean, once again with her back against the wall, decides to set up Dr. Murray. She senses he is attracted to her so she tries to seduce him and arranges for a policeman to see the good doctor throw himself at her. Alone finally, her father’s ghost appears to her telling her no hard feelings for killing him, but later she hears a voice that tells her she must go to the grave, dig her father up and wrap up his broken skull. She does so but realizes that she didn’t secure her father’s corpse, which could implicate her, so she pretends that she dug her father up because she had overheard Dr. Murray murmur something about killing him. This causes the town to consider Jean a heroine but the voice again speaks up, wanting her to return to bind his wounds a second time. This time Jean’s luck runs out and the police catch her in the act and arrest her. (The plot makes perfect sense if you don’t think about it.)

Sent to a mental asylum, she escapes and turns to prostitution to support herself. She is disgusted by the men she sleeps with but earns a lot of money. Later the voice comes back and tells her to start killing the men who lust after her, and yet again she does what the voice tells her. She runs into cousin Myrtle again, they resume their sexual relationship, but the voice tells her to kill Myrtle, too, and she obliges. Later Jean opens a beauty salon and a gangster takes a shine to her and wants her to join his criminal pursuits. She does and later finds that she is attracted to the gangster and becomes a sort of moll. Life is going as well as it can when one of the policemen who arrested her for killing her father sees her, follows her and manages to get a sample of Jean’s fingerprints. She kills the police officer, but this last murder has her feeling contemplative. She muses about suicide:

Life was not so attractive that I desired to cling to it like a limpet to its rock. I had tasted almost everything but death. Should I…? Why not?

Why not indeed? I leave the reader to wonder what she ultimately does.

This book sounds like a hoot, but the fact that the author was a hoot as well is the icing on the odd cake. Frank Walford was born in Australia in 1882. He was a gifted amateur boxer who could have gone pro had a horse not kicked him in the face, breaking his cheekbones and knocking out a few front teeth. He then decided to purchase a boat and traveled along the Australian coastline and three months later came back to land but the rough company he kept caused him to lose a job with a bank. He then returned to sailing again, and made money fishing and shooting crocodiles. (It’s right about here I need to mention that I am not making any of this up.)

Walton was pretty good with a knife and gun and got to prove his mettle with a knife after a man with a grudge stabbed him in the back, right in his kidney. After he recovered, he challenged the man to a knife fight and severed the tendons in his elbows, ensuring the man would never again stab a man in the back.

He eventually married and had children and began to write. He became involved with a group of writers who called themselves the Blue Mountaineers. Interestingly, the only other member of the group who had some success writing penned a novel that featured an atypical heroine who thinks about suicide when life got too boring. His novel Silver Girl sounds absolutely lunatic. It features a passage wherein a side character realizes his wife gave birth to the protagonist’s child. When the protagonist comes to visit with his new wife, the side character grabs the infant and uses it as cudgel to beat the protagonist’s wife to death.

During WWII, Walford served in the Voluntary Defense Corps and became an avid anti-Communist and continued to write. Mikul observes that it is very difficult to summarize Walford’s style.

He could be coarse…, morbid and willfully perverse, but when he chose to, he could write with great sensitivity and feeling. He had a journalist’s eye for detail, and the settings for his stories are always vividly imagined, no matter how wild the plots became.

I can’t help but marvel that Walford’s work was published, especially Twisted Clay. He really was pushing boundaries, and even now, it seems very likely social media would have come for him and cancelled him had his books been released today. I’ll probably spend the weekend looking for copies of his books and pray they are affordable if I find any.

Check back tomorrow for another Mikul ‘zine before I pivot back to non-Mikul content. Should you decide to purchase a copy, contact Chris at chris.mikul88@gmail.com.

ETA: Holy crap, it turns out that Amazon carries Twisted Clay!