Grue
Summer/Fall 1996, 96 pages
$5 from Hells Kitchen Productions, Inc.
P.O. Box 370 Times Square Station, New York, NY 10108-0370
Editor Peggy Nadramia

This is a heavy issue of Grue -- heavy with sex-related violence. It opens with probably the tamest tale of the bunch, a story of a weregirl gone AWOL from her incestuous father to the big city. Scott Dixon offers this story of "Food Is The Enemy," which is filled with images of anorexic regurgitation of the prior night's overfeasting, among other pleasantries. Jack Wainer's "Scars" is the meanest read here: in it, Jim/Jazz is enticed by a coquettish book store customer to join her in taking pictures of fight/accident victims. It's not too long before they're creating their own victims. How/why a seemingly mild-mannered narrator is enticed to horrible lengths of masochism/sadism in the blink of a long eyelash isn't really explained to any satisfactory level but...it is grue-ish. Dennis Jordan contributes an inner city voodoo tale that straddles the gross/amusing line: "The Stumblebum" finds an egocentric yuppie sucked into a voodoo war of rival drug lords. Said yuppie has to bring back the head of "Red" with the help of another self-serving drug runner (who is magically merged with his body). Disembodied heads turn up frequently in this one.

Kevin Roice's "Screaming from Beneath The Headstones" is probably the most original work in this issue. Roice tells the sordid tale of James, who gets his kicks by lying atop graves and psychically torturing the souls that, until he came along, slumbered beneath the ground. Rick Kleffel's "The Evictors" treads on similarly sicko soil. It tells the story of Marek, a street person who works with a low-life eviction company. His mission in this story turns ugly when he and the group of evicting derelicts have to toss a couple of naked, bloody human waste products out of a home that is literally caked with shit and blood. Don't read this one during dinner. The issue closes with a lusty take on how to suck in a spirit to do your bidding in "Borne Limb From Limb" by Michael Ryan Zimmerman. Again, sex plays a good role, and honey doesn't hurt either.

There are some less-than-exciting entries in this issue as well: Wayne Allen Sallee contributes a go nowhere vignette about a serial killer whose cravings revolve around sex and dreams in "It Was Only A Dream." And Brett Bogart's "Owlslinger" is a bit of oblique horror-fantasy fluff wherein a boy who sleeps outside for a night following a funeral is inexplicably turned into a carrion-eating creature of the forest. But overall, this is another good (read: can induce a skin-crawling sensation) issue of Grue.

Copyright © 1996 by John Everson. All Rights Reserved.