Roland Blackburn's favorite body horror to rot your mind

“This town is contaminated by spirals.”

From such an innocuous beginning, from the first snail shell to the horrifying corruption of an entire town, Ito’s nightmarish black-and-white images are something I can never unsee. Set in a small Japanese fishing village, this story of one person’s obsession spiraling over into infectious madness is gorily beautiful on every page. We all have our little manias, and the degree to which this one defiles led me to some deep introspections. As the insanity spreads, the visuals are stunningly imaginative, the plot insane and unrelenting. Ito never lets the reader look away, and with every new iteration of spiral I was dragged further and further down.

You can never claw your way back up again. A must-read.

A dark hole appears in the floor of an apartment storage room. But where does it lead?

There’s nothing about this book I don’t love. Koja’s scrambling punk-rock prose and wholly unlikable/lovable characters straight out of my backyard are completely relatable and tear to the heart of this central mystery as they seek to explore the Funhole, a physical anomaly that leaves anyone who’s entered its orbit fundamentally changed. A story about toxic relationships, sick obsession, and transformation, the two frenemies are upsettingly relatable, and once they enwrapped me in their sickness, I can never let them go. Brutally short on exposition but spilling over with momentum, the plot bleeds forward with inevitable gravity from the first page until the shocking end. 

The intoxicating language of Koja and the fundamental unreality she grounds so well still haunt me. Anything could be a gateway. Your washing machine. Your glove compartment. Your kid’s toybox. Eventually I’ll be able to open my closet without wincing again.

Crawling with cockroaches, mold, and touching moments, this dark love story of a protagonist unable to move on and his neighbor whose boyfriend is so controlling he’s stitched himself to her is a bizarro classic. I’ve lived with both pretty abhorrent apartments and breakups, and the grotesque escalation of the novel as both the protagonist and their dwelling fall apart get under my skin in the best way possible. Full of nightmarish yet recognizable characters (maybe this says a lot about me), the plot propels itself forward through so many twists and turns that the ending is a true surprise. Slater’s ability to fascinate and repulse in equal measure is on full display as he explores the nightmare side of relationships, and I can’t help but sympathize with the protagonist as their heartbreak causes a brutal and irrecoverable decay.

You can’t know where this one is going. Even as the cockroaches try to lead you.

The alternate title really says it all. Necrophiliacs: A Love Story.

Full of splatterpunk angst and memorably depraved characters, the tale of two serial killers meeting in 90s New Orleans and the couple they crash into swings for the fences from the very jump, and I have to admit that on my first read I wasn’t prepared for it. Stylistically strong, with memorable characters and a South so real you can taste it on every page, the author never lets you look away from the depraved side of obsession and the dark symbiosis relationships can foster. As things began to escalate, I couldn’t look away, even as the outcome became horrifically inevitable.

What’s the worst thing you’ve done for love? What would you be willing to do? The gorgeous prose delving into the grotesque made me ask myself this, again and again, even as atrocities are trotted out again and again across the page. A book so dark the publisher under contract wouldn’t touch it, Brite’s third novel is a true classic.

Beyond pleasure. Beyond pain.

Who doesn’t remember the Cenobites? The box?

My introduction to Clive Barker was, probably like many people, through the Books of Blood, but this novella forever set the bar for one of the godfathers of body horror. A sadomasochist convinced that he’s had all the pleasures the earth might offer strikes a diabolical deal to go further with a clan of mutilated, agonized torture demons. When inevitably the man comes to regret it, he tries to resurrect his existence with his brother’s wife, who has carried a torch for him all these years. An evocative novella exploring the dark side of passion and fetishism, Barker never blinks through the grotesque imagery, the violent eroticism, and exploring what truly rests beneath our human skin. The plot is economic, the language simple but spellbinding, and the story charges forward like the spray of a ruptured artery right up until its flesh-rending conclusion.

I read this one at a young age (too young?) and some of the scenes and images are forever carved onto my consciousness. Not for the squeamish or the faint of heart, the novella nonetheless truly has such sights to show you.