Chandler Randy(Editor) - Years best hardcore horror. Volume 2

"...glutted with graphic scenes of torture, dismemberment, evisceration, and pornographic sex."

Publishers Weekly

ALSO BY RANDY CHANDLER

EDITOR:

Year's Best Hardcore Horror Vol. 1
Stiff Things: The Splatterporn Anthology

NOVELS AND COLLECTIONS:

Bad Juju
Daemon of the Dark Wood
Devils, Death & Dark Wonders
Dime Detective
Duet for the Devil (with t. winter-damon)
Hellz Bellz

EDITED BY CHERYL MULLENAX

Year's Best Hardcore Horror Vol. 1
Stiff Things: The Splatterporn Anthology
Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror
Sick Things: Extreme Creature Anthology
The Death Panel: Murder, Mayhem and Madness
Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror
Deadcore: 4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas
Deadlines: Horror and Dark Fiction

Diabolically dedicated to all the hardcore and extremepublishers, editors, and authors.

E xtreme horror. You know it when you see it, right? The hard stuff. Be it extreme in theme or with gore galore, you know hardcore.

Its the explicitly graphic stuff its creators delight in showing you after ripping your eyelids off, right before slamming your naked face into the disgusting goo.

Its the gushy stuff, as a prolific living-legend once called it.

Hardcore comes in many shapes and guises. It may be torture porn, body horror, erotic splatterporn, or virtually any sort of horror tale imaginable, from low-keyed but no less disturbing psychological horror to the hardest prurient pervo stuff laid bare simply for shock value. Of course the best hardcore is more than the gore on the floor, the needle in the eye, or the deadly instrument hitting the vital organ. Much more, and thats why a precise and satisfying definition is not easy to come by.

Remember the parable of the blind men and the elephant? A small group of blind men are asked to feel a different part of an elephants anatomy and then recount what they think an elephant is. Naturally each has a different idea of what the thing is. The guy who touches the tail thinks its like a rope, the one who touches the trunk thinks the thing is like a tree branch, the dude who touches a leg believes the elephant is like a great pillar, the one who fingers the ear thinks of a big fan, and so on. The allegory is used to illustrate various abstract concepts having to do with subjective experience, truth and the nature of reality.

Okay. Now give this ancient folktale a hardcore horror twist and boom! The elephant suddenly goes wild and unleashes an avalanche of very loose poop on the blind man holding his tail, grabs another up with his trunk and smashes him into the ground and then impales another with a deadly tusk. Finally the creature stomps away, trampling another man as he goes. The lucky few that survive the elephants mad rampage still cannot agree on the precise nature of the awesome power theyve just experienced but they can agree that it was nasty, brutal and horrific. Not to mention malodorous as hell.

Ask any number of horror readers to define hardcore horror and youd probably get just as many definitions, even though they have all seen the elephant.

What were getting at here is that the stories in the pages ahead might be said to represent various parts of horrors extremities. Yes, there will be blood. Lots of it. Gore galore and plenty of the aforementioned gushy stuff. But youll also find tales less graphic but with hardcore attitudes or extreme themes, transgressive stories youre not sure you should be reading, stories showing you things you shouldnt see.

Recently we asked a group of horror writers to define hardcore horror, Wrath James White came up with what we think is the best response: Hardcore horror epitomizes the axiom Show. Dont tell. It does not leave the sex and violence to the readers imagination. It shows the reader whats in the writers imagination. No ideas, themes, plots, or images are taboo. It is born of the taboo. Awww, hell. Let me just write it.

As if we could stop him, even if we wanted towhich we dont. Write on, Mr. White. Write on.

The stories and poems within these pages represent the best hardcore horror of 2016. They are, in fact, the best we could find. Its not possible to read everything published but of all we did read, this is the bloody cream of the creepy crop.

Now a word of warning before we turn you loose. You will find no safe spaces here. If you are easily offended or of delicate sensibilities, youd best not enter. If you do forge ahead, you will see the elephant. Pray the elephant doesnt see you.

Cheryl Mullenax & Randy Chandler
January 13, 2017

From:
555 Vol 2: This Head, These Limbs
Editor: Joseph Bouthiette Jr.
Publisher: Carrion Blue

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E SCALATOR

The teeth munch my left foot just as I step onto the escalator, the steel chewing my ankle. I struggle, but no one notices as I am swallowed by the sinking steps at the bottom. I flip into a topsy-turvy mall where organic items shop for people stuck in the rotator like a shooting gallery.

CHAINSAW

Unlike most killers, chainsaw murderers dont care much about the clean-up afterward. Thats why they use a sloppy lopper in the first placethey love a bloody good mess. I can appreciate that, and I dont fear losing a limb. Its just a terrible way to find out I forgot to booster my tetanus shot.

RUN OVER

Theres a difference between being run over and hit by a car. Run over is what happens when your body folds under the bumper and is torn apart by the automobiles undercarriageyour brains smeared on the exhaust system and flesh spit out like mud from spun tires. Its the next car that hits you.

TASER

Dont tase me, Bro! Dont tase me, Sis! Dont tase me, Mom. Dont tase me, Pap. Dont tase me, Grandpap. Dont tase me, Grammygoo. Dont tase me, Uncle Charlie. Dont tase me, Auntie Sue. Dont tase me, Buddy. Dont tase me, Boss. Dont tase me, Mister President. Dont tase me, God. God! Dont tase me!

AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE #1: THE SWINGER

The Swinger spins and our playground seats catch wind, angling sideways as we accelerate too fast for such weak fabric and chain.

STOP! I cry.

The carny obeys, and the sudden stop sends all the swings twisting into each other, wringing the rusty metal and children off the ride like crud from a bloody mop.

ENNUI

I hate the kissy face I make when I say ennui. I trim my lips off with a nearby razor. Enn-eee, I say. Still too French. I slice out my tongue, slippery as a fish in my sloppy mouth bowl of blood. Uhnnn Nopeyour turn, teeth.

I smile at my gory mirror face: Eeee!

CHEERLEADER PYRAMID ACCIDENT

I probably deserved it when the pyramid of sweaty cheerleaders toppled upon me, crushing my rib-cage in a flurry of bone and scrunchies and tartan up-skirtsso many plastic pompoms pummeling my face and crushing my throat from the weighta mass of perky prettiness screaming in that way that is sort of still cheering.

BURIED ALIVE

The intrepid beach comber lazily waves his metal detector until it beeps so loudly he tosses his headphones.

He brushes sand and exposes my skull.

My jaws, full of tokens: a tiny top hat. A small Scottish Terrier. A baby battleship. Dice.