Lullabies for Suffering

For his follow-up to Garden of Fiends: Tales of Addiction Horror, Mark Matthews has once again put together a line-up of indie and small-press horror A-listers for Lullabies for Suffering. This antho features six long short stories and novellas, all of which focus on the theme of addiction. Even though heroin features heavily here, the stories are far from repetitive and the surrounding plots are creative, forceful, and, at times, painfully engaging.

Kealan Patrick Burke kicks things off with two strangers discovering one another on a bridge known for its suicidal jumpers. Calvin is an alcoholic and drug addict with the ability to look at a piece of art and know the story of the artist behind it. His lover, too, sees things and was drawn to him because of it. While “Sometimes They See Me” is a tragic love story about two addicts finding one another, Mercedes M. Yardley’s “Love Is A Crematorium,” is a tragic love story in which addiction divides two young lovers. These two stories make wonderful bookends to the collection with their plays on themes that are both similar and opposite.

In between is “Monsters,” from Caroline Kepnes, a dirty, messed up little story about dirty, messed up people. We’ve got coke addicts and alcoholics here, along with a sexually precocious 12-year-old girl trying to rile up her 18-year-old male babysitter, and all are addicted to misery in one form or another. I loved the human drama in this one and the way these character’s stories zigged and zagged, and I was never sure what direction it would go. I’ve been hearing for a few years now about how great a writer Kepnes is, and this was certainly a hell of an introduction for me.

Mark Matthews’s novella, “Lizard,” deals with Lizabeth, a drug court probation officer, making a home visit to a new addict she’s been assigned. Lizabeth and Becca, a recovering addict, have recently been denied adoption due to their pasts and sexual orientation. Lizabeth, though, has some secrets of her own thanks to a traumatic injury as a child to junkies that left her cranium shattered. “Lizard” is a deeply dark story that pulls no punches, and Matthews doesn’t shy away from taking you into a seedy drug den in search of a high, or illustrating the heartbreaking nature of a child growing up with parents who are addicts. Not being a fan of needles myself, there were a few scenes in this story that made me pretty damn antsy!

In “The Melting Point of Meat,” John F.D. Taff delivers one of my personal favorites of this anthology, as well as probably one of the best story titles ever. This one’s a really cool work of cosmic horror involving a young woman’s addiction to cutting, and the pain she receives from her self-mutilation allows her to see things beyond this realm. She becomes hooked on not just the pain, but whatever the pain is trying to show her, and so she seeks to satisfy these dual needs in anyway possible, through various rounds of self-harm. Taff goes to some dark and extreme places here, leading to some gut twisting, squirm inducing scenes, that left me itching for more. He’s recently announced on Twitter that he’s working on a collection of four cosmic horror-themed novellas, and if this is any indication of what to expect with that book, sign me the hell up immediately.

Gabino Iglesias draws on Lovecraftian lore to tell a crime story about a drug deal gone wrong in “Beyond the Reef.” Sea creatures, paranoia, the competing weights of addiction and fatherhood, and impending violence make this another stand-out entry in an already wickedly strong anthology.

Although the narrators of these disturbing lullabies oftentimes romanticize their addictions, like Adam in Iglesias’s story comparing heroin to “the hand of God inside you, as if he reached his palm into your chest, caressed your heart, and nothing but his good grace and beauty pumped through your veins,” these horror stories most decidedly illustrate the negative consequences and potential for worst-case scenarios in the drug scene. Taff’s Livy possess a keen sense of self-awareness when she tells readers “Everything that becomes an addiction leads to death,” and we experience the full scope of these addictions and the damages that go along with it. As Matthews notes in his introduction, which helps lay the groundwork for the stories that follow, “The ecstasy and dreams become nightmares,” but for the addict, “We crave to hear the siren song as it rips us apart.” Whether self-inflicted or because the addiction is a gateway for monsters, we become privy to the resultant terrors of one’s own body turned against it, or the external manifestations of addiction made real. Lullabies for Suffering presents some gruesome stories of addiction horror, but even in its darkest moments there are still rays of hope to be found for those strong enough, and brave enough.

Mark Matthews returns with seven stories to inflict emotional suffering. His previous effort (Gardens of Fiends) has been recommended to me a number of times. It is sitting on my TBR waiting to be read.

I read this collection over the course of a week, reading a new story each night. Matthews opens up with an introduction and within he says that each tale is novella length, allowing for each author to have the space to let their story grow and develop, which is a fantastic thing. Sometimes in packed collections, the stories feel stifled, unable to breathe.

I’m going to do a quick run-through of each story and then finish with some overall thoughts.

‘Sometimes They See Me’ by Kealan Patrick Burke. I enjoyed this story, but parts of it almost felt subdued. As though Kealan took his foot off of the gas pedal a few times instead of ramping things up. This story follows a pair of addicts as they navigate through a specific stage of life. I wished Burke would have gone super horrific in this, but overall, the story had a nice flow to it.

‘Monsters’ by Caroline Kepnes. This story was one of two stories here that I felt didn’t click. We get two POV’s between an older teen and a younger teen. The older teen is a boy and the younger a girl and the boy is asked to babysit out of the blue one evening. There is a lot to unpack here and Kepnes did a fantastic job of unravelling the ‘other’ parts to this story, but I found some of the internal dialogue stuff jumbled the story a bit.

‘Lizard’ by Mark Matthews. Outstanding story with a thoroughly engrossing narrative. I really dug this one. Matthews filled this story with a ton of emotion and as the story played out, I found myself wanting to yell about the decisions made by the main character.

‘The Melting Point of Meat’ by John F.D. Taff. Great story following an individual who is addicted to the euphoria she experiences while in pain. She connects with a researcher and things take a bonkers turn from there, flying into Barker land with some Lovecraftian landscapes. I think I would have enjoyed this story a bit more if it didn’t remind me in places of Taff’s story ‘Just a Phone Call Away’ that was in his last collection, ‘Little Black Spots.’

‘Beyond the Reef’ by Gabino Iglesias. This story was a lot of fun, even if it felt a bit disjointed between the main characters back story and the ‘twist’ that ratcheted this into creature horror. There was a great emotional element to the story that I felt let me connect with it a bit deeper.

‘Love is a Crematorium’ by Mercedes M. Yardley. If you thought this collection was going to end with a whimper instead of a bang – big time wrong. This story starts out innocently enough and then just grows and grows and morphs and morphs and before you know it you are bawling, your heart hurts and then it ends and you’re just crushed. Just a brutal look at young love. My only confusion from this story was at first I thought the characters were older than they actually were, so once that got sorted in my reading brain, things clicked.

Overall, a really devastating mix of stories that deliver a variety of takes on the theme of addiction. It works well that none of the stories really cover any of the same terrain.

“Lullabies for Suffering” is a dynamite collection of six novellas or novelettes tied together by the central theme of addiction, more specifically, addiction horror. Some are drug addictions, another an addiction to pain, but each one is a deep, dark, maddeningly glittering gem of a tale.

Each entry is compelling reading; I couldn’t look away. Each is terrifying in what happens and is so very, very real. (I started hearing every creak and snap and pop of the house while I was reading Gabino Iglesias’ “Beyond the Reef.”) I don’t feel a 5-star rating for many books and never for a collection before (there’s always a weak sister or two) but this was a solid from the first word. I’m already looking for more from these authors, their backlists, which sounds a lot like the beginning of … an addiction.

I highly recommend this to horror fans and even general fiction readers that enjoy the dark underside of the human experience.