This one took me a long time to read.
Not because it was bad, but because sometimes reading one story was like being hit by a bus, and then I needed a long break before I went back to it. Horror is a reflection of the writer’s struggles, a very open dialogue about the problems that are going on and an intensifying of those problems to make them center stage.
And my guy. This is. Woooof.
Thanks to a lot of tireless (seeming) activists, I’m aware of a lot of the racial problems and history in this book, and the symbolism, and the struggle. But that’s it. I am aware. I don’t have the same lived experiences— although I’m a POC, I’m not Black. I don’t have that behind me. So when I read this, it’s as if they’re putting their fears right into my brain and wiring it in.
Honestly? Highly recommend. Both for people that love horror and people that want to connect and understand the struggles in our modern society when it comes to Black lives. It’s an outline, not definitive, but dude, fuck. Fuck, dude.
The story that still has the most hold on me still is The Aesthete, by Justin C Key. It’s about Art, living beings made to live for the viewing of others. They stream their daily lives through neural feeds and everything is on display. Certainly they have the option to turn it off, but it’s how they make their livings. They’re second class citizens who only exist to entertain. We begin to move through the story from a character who grows tired of it all. Who is Black, but normal, underwhelming, but alive and vibrant and yet jaded. We can feel fate closing in and yet have this longing for them to be free, to be able to do as they please with their body, to be able to live their life… only for them to be reduced to nothing but a show once more. Everything we hoped for is robbed from the characters. They exist only for others to use.
You see what I’m saying here, dude?
Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt because it hit me so hard I cried at work. And it’s not the only story to do such a thing.
