A Gentle Hell

Book excerpt: A Gentle Hell is comprised of five dark speculative stories of quiet tension and uncomfortable nostalgia, written for deformed children and girls that dream of demons. In "They Promised Dreamless Death" a salesman sells sleep with the promise of a better life, but what dreams lurk beneath the substrate of consciousness for those who take it are stranger than they ever imagined. In "Your Demiurge is Dead," while the world adjusts to the death of God and the new reign of the Triple Goddess, Charles hunts for an Oklahoma murderer and is forced to confront his religious ideals when he encounters a new prophet. "The Dog That Bit Her," is the story of a neurotic young woman who gains freedom from her co-dependent marriage with the bite of a rabid dog. In the semi-autobiographical "The Singing Grass," the artist and the writer converge at a meadow haunted by a carnivorous deer and the burnt monsters that show them the consequences of an artistic life. And exclusive to the print version, a precocious young girl is treated for her developmental disorder with nanite technology in "The Bad Baby Meniscus." However, with a cure comes the death of the self, and her body begins to reject the treatment.