Four devastating tales from a master of modern horror...
This Skin Was Once Mine
When her father dies under mysterious circumstances, Jillian Finch finds herself grieving the man she idolized while struggling to feel comfortable in the childhood home she was sent away from nearly twenty years ago by her venomous mother. Then Jillian discovers a dark secret in her family's past--a secret that will threaten to undo everything she has ever known to be true about her beloved father and, more importantly, herself. It's only natural to hurt the things we love the most...
Seedling
A young man's father calls him early in the morning to say that his mother has passed away. He arrives home to find his mother's body still in the house. Struggling to process what has happened he notices a small black wound appear on his wrist-the inside of the wound as black as onyx and as seemingly limitless as the cosmos. He is even more unsettled when he discovers his father is cursed with the same affliction. The young man becomes obsessed with his father's new wounds, exploring the boundless insides and tethering himself to the black threads that curl from inside his poor father...
Prickle
Two old men revive a cruel game with devastating consequences...
All the Parts of You That Won't Easily Burn
Enoch Leadbetter goes to buy a knife for his husband to use at a forthcoming dinner party. He encounters a strange shopkeeper who draws him into an intoxicating new obsession and sets him on a path towards mutilation and destruction...
Eric LaRocca's distinctive literary voice is a welcome addition to queer horror. I look forward to seeing his legacy grow.-Poppy Z. Brite, author of Exquisite Corpse
Eric LaRocca keeps getting better. Grotesque, heartbreaking, and deeply unsettling, this is the kind of transgressive horror that exposes the vulnerable human heart, that reminds us of our shared pain. Just the byline on his work- by Eric LaRocca'-should be considered a trigger warning. You know going in that it's going to hurt. Caveat lector.-Christopher Golden, author of The House of Last Resort and Road of Bones
Eric LaRocca distorts spaces, both internal and external, creating new cavities within our bodies, fresh chasms in our minds, and flooding them with nothing but absolute terror. This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances makes for exquisite suffering and confirms LaRocca's mantle as the heir apparent to Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite. Glory be to the new king of Horror.-Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters
Eric LaRocca is a singular talent, who writes ruthlessly, beautifully, bravely about brutality, who challenges readers to find their humanity, and ultimately hope, in the face of such horrors.-Rachel Harrison, author of Black Sheep