(Un)common Horrors

It’s summer and the beer keeps flowing down our throats, the music echoes from a club and every now and then we walk out on the terrace to catch a breath of air free of smoke, to meet someone and start something new, and if it doesn’t happen, we go back inside and shake at the dance floor, at the bar. And when we get bored, we walk out again and look from someone.We give up before the end, before sunrise, because we cannot stand the dawn that will reveal our impotence, we stumble and laugh along as if we’ve won a trip to the heavens in which no one lives, we give everything we’ve got to remain in this good trance, we imagine what we’d do if she weren’t such a cow that got hooked on that good-for-nothing, and, after all, don’t you think good girls always end up with the likes of him, we’ll never understand it. Comfort is good, but not good enough to put an end to this night, to peacefully collapse into our bed next to the open window and fall asleep as if love exists, and tonight we jus...

Probudila nas je vatra. Sestra i ja užasnute smo ugledale bakinu kuću lutaka kako gori u kutu naše sobe. Nekako smo jastucima uspjele ugušiti požar pa poput dvaju uznemirenih divova provirile unutra. Plamenovi su zacrnjeli šarene tapete, a ostaci namještaja stršili su kao kostur pougljenjene ptice. Kašljale smo sve do stuba. Prazne oči ogledala zrcalile su samo trag od pepela koji je lebdio u zraku, pa smo malim prstom razvalile vrata spavaonica na drugom katu, strepeći od onog najgoreg. Usamljena porculanska stanarka, udovica otkad joj je suprug sestri nespretno ispao iz ruku, visjela je s lustera svoje spavaonice. *Češljat ću te kad god me to budeš tražila, govorila je ružna blizanka lijepoj, prihvaćajući ulogu služavke osuđene na sjenu. Lijepa je blizanka voljela slušati pseći dah svoje sestre, znati da je budna u olujnim noćima i da bdije nad njezinim mirnim snom. Zabranjujem ti da spavaš, govorila bi joj, ne smiješ zaspati prije mene, a ako dođe čudovište, neka prvo pojede tebe, i...

In one of the numerous negative reviews, Michael Hann described singer-songwriter Morrissey’s debut novella, List of the Lost (2015), as “an unpolished turd of a book, the stale excrement of Morrissey’s imagination,” yet from a queer perspective, it is pioneering. This article explores Morrissey’s innovative engagement with Gothic horror, building on his explorations of the mode during his musical career. Throughout the novella, Morrissey subverts numerous Gothic staples, from curative maternity and reproductive futurity to monstrously fragmented subjectivity to condemnations of Catholicism – the latter of which he retains, though to entirely different ends to his Protestant literary ancestors. Through such devices, Morrissey participates in Teresa Goddu’s concept of ‘haunting back,’ turning hostile Gothic tropes on their head to carve out a new space for queer experience within the mode – historically conservative as often as it is transgressive – and reveals the true specter of socie...

This paper examines the role of narrativization as a form of improvised trauma treatment in the first six seasons of AMC’s The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead explores a modern America that has been decimated by a traumatic event. This event, a zombie apocalypse, results in the permanent loss of infrastructure and social services. What remains in this unpredictable landscape for survivors is a reliance on Christian narratives, expressed through pious characters and burial rituals that strive to provide meaning and purpose in the new world. Survivors perform burial rituals to preserve a connection to the pre-apocalyptic world and to narrativize trauma, both personal and collective. This paper contends that The Walking Dead uses the context of cultural trauma not to reflect on or critique nationalist agendas and ideologies but to identify the past as a robust repository for the future.Keywords: The Walking Dead, trauma, narrative, emplotment, Christianity, burial

The night has put the village to sleep, the streets are empty, the gates are locked. Only Nana Sofija sits in front of her house, looking at the sky. The moon is as big as a balloon of milk ready to pop. It looked the same that night, a long time ago, when she and Milica sat in front of the house. It got so close to the ground that it seemed it wanted tickle the crowns of the trees. They giggled, took turns laying down in each other’s lap, talking. Before going to bed, Sofija went to the outhouse bathroom to wash. She lathered her body eagerly, thinking about the jokes they had told. She stroked her breasts, her belly, her upper arms. She spread her legs to reach what women quietly called down there. A flickering image of Milica’s warm eyes came to her, it was as if she was still there. She felt a weird jolt. She spread her lips, then looked left and right to make sure she was alone. Her fingers kept moving. The blood inside boiled up with lust. The moonlight burst over the fields. So,...

Radovan Carves a Coffer Hail arm, thou art highly favored / you are the body’s sole savior if a man’s right arm turns traitor/ left must handle the shock labor From the dark streets of Vienna, we travel back to our sunlit lands, telling the tale of Radovan’s right arm. Among other things, its very palm will touch Gila, so even the reader will get to feel the young healer’s white hair and the delicate pallor of her cheeks. Radovan’s right arm woke up in pain. A ripping sensation started in the area around the elbow and radiated up the arm to the shoulder. It both tingled and prickled, migrating from shoulder to elbow, elbow to hand, coiling around the forearm, then stung the shoulder and sank into the blade bone. Worse yet, no matter what position it tried, nothing helped relive the pain. Clenching, stretching, lifting up or resting by the side, the pain was just as intensive and relentless. Even as the time passed nothing changed, it wouldn’t go away, wouldn’t fade, wouldn’t age, persi...