Every Crawling, Putrid Thing

Book excerpt: “It would be accurate to say that Busboom’s fiction is a love letter to schlocky, neon horror, peppered with sticky-sweet nostalgia and loving luridity. It would, however, be a mistake to dismiss this work as merely such. There is something deeper in Busboom’s terror, rooted uncertainty. The uncertainty of being a child, of being in love, and the ever-present uncertainty inherent in the dark. “Thoughtful horror, under the guise of gorilla monsters, looming owls and the awful things people do to each other. An outstanding collection from a phenomenal writer.” —S. L. Edwards, author of The Death of an Author and Whiskey and Other Unusual Ghosts In his debut collection, David Busboom presents fifteen tales of dark fantasy and horror, populated by bizarre reptiles, occult serial killers, carnivorous protoplasms, and parasitic worms. A child faces down the giant ape destroying his parents’ marriage. A cheating husband wakes up to find his hand replaced by a mucous-covered tentacle. A Midwestern office complex becomes the setting for a ghastly, apocalyptic nightmare. Within these pages you’ll find strange creatures sliding over dark country roads and twilit train tracks, detectives and swordsmen fighting through occult mysteries and marauding fish-men, a shunned filmmaking prodigy’s deadly magnum opus, and the seductive death of innocence. You’ll find regret, self-destruction, and relationships gone bad. Here, where weird pulp horror meets the darker sides of love and disillusion, you’ll find slime, and stink, and Every Crawling, Putrid Thing.