About Little Mutilations:
Three Body Horror novellas by three Ladies of Horror.
“The Night Belongs to Us” by Jess Landry: When Laura arrives in an unfamiliar city in search of her missing mother, Mary, the last thing she expects to find is trouble—but after countless trips to different places to bring her addict mother home, she should expect nothing less. Laura discovers a hopeful saviour in Cee, a haunted woman that the residents of the city streets fear… But is it too late?
“Acid Bath” by Sofia Ajram: Best friends Priya and Luca strike it lucky when they are both found eligible to be healthy human subjects in a high-paying clinical trial. But as the weeks pass, bizarre side effects begin to kick in, and the two friends find themselves unable to reach the trial doctors. Worse yet, gruesome and deranged deaths are cropping up on the news featuring participants they recognize from the same trial. As rivalries and resentments bubble up, Priya and Luca must discover if there is something sinister lurking within the medication they've been taking that will tear their friendship apart before it all spirals out of control.
“Your Next Best American Girl” by Nadia Bulkin: All Veronica’s ever wanted is to be crowned Miss Americana. When she wakes up with three strange sores on her arm, she thinks it’s a problem for her dermatologist. But when the sores keep getting worse—deeper, bigger, all over—she realizes she’s being sabotaged. Now Veronica needs to figure out who’s responsible before she misses her shot at the crown or her body falls apart completely—whichever happens first.
Excerpt:
ACID BATH
Sofia Ajram
I
The guy’s going matcha-green staring at the needle drawing up her blood like it’s a hand grenade. He tells us he’s an army sergeant. What a man like that’s doing at a clinical drug trial is beyond me; guess he can handle a good bullet but not a little prick? Priya gives me that look, the vampiric one that says bingo! We’ve found our guy, ‘cause she delights in fucking with first time piggies and these things have their ups and downs—you have to get your jollies where you can—so I launch right into the spiel.
“They ever tell you about the theralizumab drug trial?” I ask.
His gaze flicks between Priya and me. He shakes his head.
“Of course, they wouldn’t.” Priya flashes her teeth at him; grim smile. “It happened in ‘06, an in-human study designed for leukemia or whatever. They supposedly administered a dose five-hundred times lower than the safe dose in monkeys, but all of the volunteers—the non-placebo ones, anyway—ended up in the hospital for multiple organ failure.”
“One guy straight up looked like the fucking Elephant Man,” I say. Tsk, tsk.
Priya nods. “Yeah, he was a good looking guy before that. TX406 was way worse, though.”
“Oh, fuck—” my eyes wide now, for dramatic effect. “Remember that? Injected the group, four days later and BOOM! One guy’s dick literally fell off. Full-on detachable penis.”
“And then there’s the Van Gogh…”
“Yeah, yeah.” Solemn nod. “The Van Gogh. That’s the one where they sever your ear and stitch it back on for 5 g’s.”
When the army sergeant faints, we all get a laugh. Vasovagal syncope, Priya says when he rises, dejected and rejected from the trial. It happens to the best of us. Better luck next time. One could always try the fertility clinics or do sleep studies. Those aren’t so bad if you’re down with the pay cut and competition.
Me, Priya, and eight more make up ten in the waiting room; meat-puppets spawning like fulgurating spores. From straight edge weenies to neo-hippies, all walks of life show up here eventually. Hard to tell how many are involved in the drug study since they stagger the intakes. This one’s been inundated with applicants because the stats on paper look good; proper compensation for outpatient research is such a rare drop I’ve never seen such a myriad of faces, this little ant-line of potential subjects walking to the intake room like peons in a strategy game, over and over, so many times that I can barely remember who’s a patient or a nurse anymore. This one guy sitting next to the door, shaking like a shitting dog, told us he was in here to put food on the table for his kid. When the nurse called his name, “Gilbert McNutt,” to the intake office, Priya and I set off cackling like crazed hyenas and spent the rest of the hour churning up name stupidities like Bart Simpson.
For we few who make it through, there’s the blood draw, the EKG, the battery of questions, some tiresome, others flat out stupid. An inane game of Never Have I Ever with a forty-one paged stack of paper. Describe your sleep habits. Describe your eating habits. Do you partake in recreational drug use? Do you smoke; drink? Have you ever considered harming yourself? Do you look at your own shit before you flush? Yep, and I kiss it goodbye, too. Tearing down the list checking Nope, nope, nope. Answer in a range that’s normal. Who’s gonna know you smoked catnip at four o’clock in the morning, already high on amphetamines once? That shit’s not going to show up on a piss test.
Amazon
About the Authors:
Sofia Ajram is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal. Prior publications include The Arborglyph in the anthology Lost Contact. Their latest project, Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror (serving as Editor) releases April 2024. When they’re not writing, they can be found goldsmithing at Sofia Zakia or moderating the Horror forum on Reddit. Find them on Twitter @sofiaajram.
Jessica Landry is a Canadian screenwriter, director, and Bram Stoker Award-winning author. Her collection, THE NIGHT BELONGS TO US, is being released by Crystal Lake Publishing; she co-edited the Bram Stoker Award-, Shirley Jackson Award-, and British Fantasy Award-nominated anthology THERE IS NO DEATH, THERE ARE NO DEAD; and has an original story in ALIENS VS PREDATOR: ULTIMATE PREY, released in March 2022. Her original horror feature, MY ONLY SUNSHINE, was accepted into Whistler Film Festival’s Screenwriters Lab in 2020 and is in development with Jessica set to direct. She was accepted into the CFC/Netflix Project Development Accelerator with her original horror/comedy series, CATASTROPHE QUEENS; as well as NSI’s Series Incubator Program with her original limited drama series, GHOSTS OF LAKELAND. Jessica has written several MOWs alongside Neshama Entertainment, including LIST OF A LIFETIME, which was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award for Best Made for Television Movie. She’s also worked in the development room for the CBC show STRAYS; has written on FAMILY FIRST, a sitcom with Eagle Vision; 7TH GEN, a factual series with Eagle Vision and APTN; A DANGEROUS GAME, an original MOW with Vortex Productions; HEARTLAND HOMICIDE, a true crime series with Farpoint Films; BENNY, a WWII biopic feature with Sir Harry Films; and is currently adapting the novel APRIL RAINTREE as a limited series, among other projects in various stages of development.
Nadia Bulkin is the author of the short story collection She Said Destroy (Word Horde, 2017). She has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award five times. She grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia with her Javanese father and American mother, before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska. She has two political science degrees and lives in Washington, D.C.
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