+++

As usual, this is just raw guesswork based on the synopsis and there’s about a seven per cent chance I might be wrong. Read the book itself just to make sure.

Also I’m a bit drained from doing the Vitiators De-con-struc, so I’m gonna try and make this ‘Other Books’ series a bit shorter e.g. last one I did [Green Fuse Burning] was around 4000 words while the first [Figures Crossing The Field Towards The Group] was about 400.

But I always think this way…then I start typing…and ten pages later there are four alternative endings, with the swamp masquerading as a third vicious infinite!

I’m doing it right now.

This intro in and of itself is already over a hundred words and I haven’t really said anything about the book yet.

I’m even thinking of ways to keep the intro going.

A tangent into The Fold//Deleuze maybe, or a call back to-

+++

SKULL.

SLIME.

TENTACLE.

WITCH.

WAR.

Not sure about the syntagmatic inter-relationship between each of those words, but WAR appears to be the main noun that is being qualified here.

Or is it WITCH WAR?

The SLIME, I suspect, is either coming from or in league with the SKULL, while the TENTACLE must-

TENTACLE WITCH?

The WITCH could have tentacles which would make them a TENTACLED WITCH, which could in turn be shortened to TENTACLE WITCH cos no one notices the ED sound anyway.

So the SKULL SLIME [SLIME coming out from the SKULL, possibly sentient] is up against the TENTACLE WITCH [I’m using singular but I assume there are many of them] and their resentment is drawn out long enough for it to be referred to as a WAR.

Unless all four nouns preceding WAR are individual groups adversarial towards each other?

WITCH vs TENTACLE vs SLIME vs SKULL.

That would make it more complex, more political.

Or all four nouns represent one group?

A WITCH with TENTACLES instead of arms and a SKULL that leaks SLIME when she’s feeling vicious. And that creature is at war with humans. Or its own kind. Or…if this slides into the psychological/metaphysical realm…its own self.

Or maybe there’s another possibility?

None of the above feature in the novel at all and the title is instead referring to a lunatic human who can’t handle the daily grind and walks off into the forest where they eat the wrong berries and start hallucinating a demonic version of The Wind in the Willows?

That would be pretty left field.

The field beyond that even.

But for the sake of keeping this thing under 4000 words, I’m gonna stick to a WAR focused on SKULL SLIME vs TENTACLE WITCH.

Is this absurdist horror?

That’s what the author calls it and, based on the title, it sounds about right.

Is there a line of tolerance for that, a point where the reader gives up/can’t take any more weirdness?

Hard to say. If the whole story is absurdist from the first line to the end then there is the risk that it’ll get a bit tiring. And if the author tries to shift tones within the absurdism, it might not work as the reader feels it’s just set up for a longer joke.

Absurdism is a tough gig.

But there is a way through it.

Just be absurdist in surprising ways. And have one character who is a complete realist that the other characters [TENTACLE WITCHES!! SKULL SLIME!!] can play off of.

Can’t think of any examples of absurdist fiction off the top of my head.

May have to google.

I’m gonna google.

Okay, I have googled and it seems like I had the wrong idea in my head. For some reason, I was imagining Mr. Vampire or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, when I should’ve been thinking of Kafka or Catch 22.

I think it’s the title that disoriented me.

Don’t think Kafka would’ve used it.

But then that doesn’t feel right either.

Kafka seems too serious. Not really horrific enough. [Just don’t go to the castle, K].

What IS absurdist horror?

I’ve now gone to the author’s site and [paraphrasing a bit] he classifies it as a mix of Samuel Beckett and Junji Ito.

Which brings me back to the risks above. What degree of absurdism do you go for [especially in horror when the absurdism could undercut the tension/fear]? Does every environment need to have one, two, seven things that are insane? Do the characters see it as insane or are they accustomed to it?

Can you feel something for characters via absurdity?

I think you can.

Through continual absurdity.

E.g. if the SKULL SLIME sits down to write a novella instead of a peace plan and one of the TENTACLE WITCHES dresses up as an electrician to try and see what they’re writing, and then the fridge opens and Kevin Sorbo walks out in a MALAPARTE t-shirt and the three of them decide to hash out the novella together and-

I think this novel might have a realist foundation.

As in the world of the SKULL SLIME and TENTACLE WITCH will have a sense of order to it, a rules based system that seems absurd only to us, the reader. Either a human transported via portal or a dissident/chaos agent will be the MC.

Actually, I need more info for this – setting, MC, main premise etc. – otherwise my speculation is gonna be way off.

Here’s the plot synopsis/summary/whatever it’s called:

[blank]

Yup, I’ve just realised this book isn’t out yet [June 1st 2024 release date], so there’s no synopsis on Goodreads. But there are some blurbs, like the following:

‘What a fucking wild ride. Claypool’s world of Moon mutant mayhem is a vivid satirical cartoon doused in Brownish Soda, like a darker, moldier Adventure Time or an absurdist Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. The mutants are depressed, the adventures are surreal, and the satire is biting. Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War is as bonkers as its title suggests. You absolutely need to read it.’

So, what I can glean is: it’s set on a moon, there are mutants, something is getting satirised…Adventure Time perhaps…and the mutants themselves are depressed.

I’m starting to doubt everything I wrote previously.

Is there actually a WAR?

Is the SKULL SLIME TENTACLE WITCH one character/race of mutants?

Where’s Kevin Sorbo?

I’m looking for sense in absurdism.

Maybe the wrong strategy?

Okay, I’m almost at 1000 words, time for some discipline.

Mutants, moon, satire…go.

+

Spec: The story starts with either Kevin Sorbo or a clone of Kevin Sorbo arriving at a hotel on the moon and going straight into the shower. While fiddling with an old Cheetara doll, a tentacle creeps in and rips off his scalp. Ignoring the screams, the owner of the tentacle, a witch mutant called YAH, asks the scalp if it knows anything about the pink room. The scalp does not respond. Visibly annoyed, YAH takes Kevin Sorbo’s credit cards and dolls and leaves via the window.

Elsewhere, a mass of SKULL SLIME is lying on a blowfish-shaped waterbed with another TENTACLE WITCH. They talk about having sex, but there is no bubble wrap for afterwards so they put down the cream and stare at the cyborg smut film projected on the ceiling. The film is not magnetic. The ceiling has cracks in it. Sighing like a pro, the SKULL SLIME slides off the bed and puts on a jacket that somehow stays on its body/core…then seeps instinctively through the hotel room floor to avoid the poison-tipped tentacle shooting towards their head body torso-like thing.

‘This is WAR,’ they transmit telepathically back up through the ceiling before absorbing themselves into twenty-seven more floors and escaping onto the streets of Moon City 7.

In a mutant arcade, which also doubles as a milk powder facility, YAH is alone in the corner, trying to finish her very first novella. It is a pornographic horror called Yah, The Hunter From the Future. The TENTACLE WITCH fortune teller [who got their powers via a bad batch of milk powder] prophesised that this novella would lead the TENTACLE WITCHES to gain control of the moon they claim is indigenous to them i.e. the moon created itself around and on top of their ancestors, and, through that control, get rid of at least 80% of the SKULL SLIME population, who have the counter claim of a tattered receipt which shows their great great great something purchased the moon from invisible aliens who emigrated long ago to star systems with better real estate.

‘Can’t go on,’ YAH mutters to herself, using one of her tentacles to swat a microphone out of another TENTACLE WITCH’S hand when they start singing badly. ‘I’ll go on.’

Suddenly, something absurd happens nearby [Sorbo’s scalp explodes?], and there’s a massacre. A lump of SKULL SLIME slithers out of the shadows, glowing bright pink, spouting nonsense about folding themselves into the pink room.

Just as they’re about to finish off YAH, a blue light zig-zags around the arcade and hits the SKULL SLIME in a place vital enough to kill it.

‘Looks like WAR,’ says LADY LAKEFLUX, a human woman with a plastic bag instead of legs, who strolls in with her private army of cyborg-kale behind her, ‘unless you can take out a series of targets spread out over the entire system before Friday?’

‘I don’t have time for this,’ replies YAH, gesturing towards a piece of paper that has FUCK YOU PORN-HOR NOVELLA written on it.

‘Those fucking SKULL SLIME pests don’t read. And they want this moon bad. Me? I don’t give a shit. I only saved you cos we finger each other now and then. But those SKULL SLIME. They’ve already murdered several of your kind and barbequed the tentacles for the leopard district. And you’re gonna sit there and write a novel.’

‘Novella.’

Spitting out something weirdly green onto a nearby arcade screen [and getting a ‘hey, that’s expensive’ from one of the massacre survivors], LADY LAKEFLUX pulls out a padd and throws it on the table. ‘Here’s the target list. You know the SKULL SLIME. In times of WAR, they separate their generals and communicate through the old Hotmail chain. I suggest you find a couple of reliable comrades who won’t stab you in the back and get started on finding the slippery fuckers. General ARRRRGHNOTYOU under the launderette seems like a good warm up mission. And no, I’m not coming along. I’ve got my own wars to fight. Called Alimony. No, you can’t have my kids. I don’t even want them. They glitch a lot. All the fucking time if I’m being honest. God, am I still here? I hate socialising. Arcades too. Vanish, you clown. Exit.’

Before YAH can say novella again, her sometime lover has gone and all that’s left is an arcade full of massacre victims. Some of them still alive and moaning in pain.

‘I will not go to any scuzzy launderette,’ she yells at her novella.

‘Yeah, you will,’ answers the title.

Cut to: a street of launderettes, each one with a suction machine at its entrance to pull in semi-curious customers, robot hookers, those with a poor grip on the pavement etc.

Inside the one labelled ‘NOT THE BEST, DON’T BOTHER’, GENERAL ARRRRGHNOTYOU is scolding their youngest secretion for trying to date a duplicitous TENTACLE WITCH in a time of WAR. This is in fact the same blob of SKULL SLIME from the hotel room scene earlier.

‘But I didn’t, we hooked up before the WAR started,’ they counter, flashing lilac to indicate a lie. ‘Or before I knew that the WAR had started.’

GENERAL ARRRRGHNOTYOU stretches out an extra long bit of slime past the battle plans on the washing machine and is about to slap some sense into their youngest secretion when, without warning, they disintegrate into pale blue ash.

‘Mum?’ whispers the SKULL SLIME son, too shocked to wobble.

‘What the fuck?’ comes from the door at the side, YAH standing there in a pizza delivery uniform [with no pizza box], gawping at the remains of her first target.

‘You!’

‘Is that real ash?’

‘Die, TENTACLE WITCH!’

I’m too tired to write out a confrontation scene, and the rest of the plot, so I’ll just say that the SKULL SLIME and YAH form an unlikely team to find the real killer, pulling in a depressed hand towel as a side character, as well as a depressed cyborg-kale, and a smoke machine that wants to be human.

However, the WAR gets out of control and a third of the moon is blown up via the pink room at the end, leaving YAH and SKULL SLIME completely adrift physically, spiritually and psycho-kinetically.

They do not fuck.

In fact they make a pact to kill each other after killing the real villain of the piece…the cyborg-kale who joined their team as a ruse to spy on them!

But that cyborg kale has run off to Uranus and now lives under the protection of supreme Empress KANTOPOP, who has been running a cult there for over two hundred years.

Depressed and hopeless, YAH starts working for LADY LAKEFLUX as a pretend-hologram while SKULL SLIME shacks up with a micro-resonator that can no longer resonate.

In the final scene, the two meet up again, make a cheap clone of the cyborg-kale, beat it to death, then argue over who takes what they think is the scalp.

THE END.

+

Obviously, one or two details might be a bit off, but, overall, I think my spec’s gotta be pretty close.

Highlights?

I really like the idea of the clone beating at the end. And the scalping of Kevin Sorbo at the beginning.

It does qualify as absurd.

But would there be enough closure for the reader?

That’s the crux of it.

Do you keep the absurdism in the confines of a traditional plot/story, or do you spread it out so it can infest everything?

Wouldn’t true absurdist horror strip the characters away too?

Obliterate the terrain?

Maybe.

But then it’d be experimental absurdist horror, a whole other sub-genre.

And experimental to what degree?

Oh no I’ve gone over 2000 words.

I also wanted to talk about how the author has another book called Leech Woman Lives which may be a riff on the Puppet Master films, but if I start doing that then I’ll never stop cos I loved those films when I was eleven.

So I’ll stop.

As mentioned somewhere above, SKULL SLIME TENTACLE WITCH WAR will be available on June 1^st, 2024 via Anxiety Press.