Authors: Ryan Harding
Genital Grinder
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All stories copyright © 2011 Ryan Harding
Cover art copyright © 2011 Suzzan Blac
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to all who wanted this collection, in particular Jeff Burk of Deadite and Brian Keene for putting him in contact with me. And to Edward Lee for the killer foreword and just for being a cool guy to me over the years, in addition to consistently raising the disgust quotient of his fiction. The morbid among us find this a true inspiration.
A very special thank you to Bob Strauss, Bill Hughes, and Darrin McDonel (and his dad) for playing archaeologist for me and excavating stories and fragments lost to me for years.
My gratitude to my past editors and publishers—Matt Schwartz (Horrornet), Dave Barnett (Necro Publications), Kelly Laymon and Jeremy Lassen (Freak Press), Eddie McMullen, Jr./Feo Amante, Bill Hughes again (Dread: Tales of the Uncanny and Grotesque), Sandra Fritz (Altered Perceptions), Mikhail and The Meat Socket, Cemetery Dance and all involved with
In Laymon’s Terms
.
To my collaborators over the years—Brent Zirnheld, James Futch, James Newman, Geoff Cooper (duuuuuuuude) and the other co-contributors to Darker Dawning 1 and 2: Regina Mitchell, BK, Mike Oliveri, Mikey Huyck, John Urbancik, and the inimitable GAK.
The YKOF partners in chyme of today and yore—Sam Bizzle/Kill Moe Dee, The Masked Jackal, and Z2K.
And to Harry Bennett, Cherry Brady, Mike Bracken, Bill Connolly, Jay Clarke/Michael Slade, Laura Elvin, Jamey Fiala, Brad Hodson (quim), Ann Laymon, R. Murphy, John Pelan, Will Rahmer, and Travis Reynolds.
In memory of J.G. Ballard, Richard Laymon, and Rex Miller.
Enjoy the Gang Rape by Edward Lee
Genital Grinder: A Snuff Act in 5 Acts
Genital Grinder II: Dis-Membered
First Indications
Aftermath
Quite a number of years ago—at least 15, but my aging gray matter can’t be sure—I was contacted by a fan named Ryan Harding. I’ve always tried to respond to all fan contacts (every now and then, however, you get an obvious clunker, like the ex-con who wrote to tell me The Bighead’s most violent scenes provided him with superb masturbation fodder; or the woman who wanted to know if I’d like to see pictures of her cutting herself—these, yes, are such clunkers. It is advisable for an author
never
to reply to these red flags) and I was impressed as well as flattered by Mr. Harding’s generous words regarding my work; additionally, he bestowed such words in a manner and air which disclosed a formidable command of the language and a most arresting and cogent creative bent. Moreover, Mr. Harding was a positive acquaintance of several friends of mine; hence, it seemed unlikely that he might be hiding “clunkerdom” beneath a clever camouflage and would later stalk me or, say, start murdering people in ways which duplicated the superfluity of murders in my books. So I chose to pursue correspondence with this young, intelligent, and spirited Mr. Harding. He had aspirations of becoming a writer himself, and flattered me further via the declaration that I was an influence of some significance to him. Then, one day, he asked me if I’d care to read some of his song lyrics—he was into Metal as was I, so I said “sure.” The prospect seemed enticing: I was very curious what this bright, new-generation individual might demonstrate in the way of creative verse; indeed, it struck me as an attractive occasion to observe the tenor of such an enthusiast’s muse, and, doubly, I wondered just what might be the
products
of that muse?
Well. Here is an inventory of those products.
Psychosis. Misogyny. Misanthropy. Nihilism. Sadism. Necrophily. Erotopathy. Profanation. Alienation. Blasphemy. And every manner of irreverence, aberrant impulse, and outright
satanism
conceivable and inconceivable.
I’ve long since lost these lyrics (or perhaps I deleted them for fear that their negativity might plunge me into a abysm of clinical depression!), but I recall—and suspect I always will—the final line: “We fucked her good, my knife and I.”
Wow,
I thought,
this guy’s really fucked up in the head,
and then I felt suddenly leery when I appended my conjecture,
Wow, this guy’s even more fucked up in the head than ME.
Gore-house smut, enmity personified, and scatology in grand style proved the common denominators hovering amid Harding’s aesthetic elan, and certainly we’ve seen a
whole lot
of such stuff infiltrating the sub-genre known (among other appellations) as Extreme Horror. Ninety percent of the work is probably worthy of the critical lambasting it receives. Grossness for the sake of grossness. Amateur scribes merely heaping revolting images and disorganized, just-popped-into-my-head scenes of unlikely violence upon the page without any regard to integration, character, story-line. “The bitch screamed as the maggot-ridden zombie rammed its rotten cock into her gaping, reeking pussy and came spurts of pus!” That kind of shit, and personally I’m sick to death of it, as have many readers been for a long time. One time I recall a critic referring to “Extreme Horror” as something akin to a little boys’ circle-jerk club wherein the purpose of each participant is to try to gross the next guy out. I actually quite agree with that (though accurately or inaccurately I
disagree
that I am a member of that self-same club!) because it appears that what Extreme Horror at large lacks most of all is a discipline of craft. It’s just gross-out sex and gross-out violence that the misguided author thinks will gross the reader out. But it
doesn’t
gross the reader out. It
bores
the reader. To tears. And it not only sullies the popular impression of the genre as a whole, but makes the more serious authors out there look just as inept, just as juvenile, and just as I-don’t-give-a-shit.
Which brings us back to Monsieur Harding.
He’s not part of the “club,” folks. He gives a shit-and-a-half about not only the speculative and/or societal points of extreme fiction but also the very
craft
of it. Over time I read much of Harding’s works-in-progress, mostly stories but also some novel partials, and in them not only did I find those previously stated thematic denominators (gore-house smut, enmity personified, and scatology in grand style) but also a nearly “Strunk-and-White” obsession with prose-mechanics, stylistic feature-through-discipline, charactorial integration, and plot dynamics. It quickly occurred to me that Ryan Harding had (and, furthermore,
has
) the tenacity, know-how, and wherewithal to become a very potent practitioner in the field of Extreme Horror. Here’s a writer who regards the venue as something rife with value, relevance, and, indeed, meaning. It’s a gore-house world, folks. Just read the paper. This globe is aswarm with enmity personified. (Did you see Daniel Pearl’s beheading?) Scatology in grand style is as real as the mouse button which clicks interested pervertos and other reprobate scum to websites offering bestiality, sex with the severely handicapped, vid-clips of crack-addicted women eating feces ice-cream cones or consuming fish bowls of semen, spit-fights, nose-blow bukkake, animal torture, galleries of deformed children, vomit-swap buffets, etc.,
ad infinitum.
Ah! The real world!
It’s that same world, too, that Harding’s fiction seeks to delineate in a manner unique unto itself. Some of the stories in this book make notorious writers like, say, Peter Sotos and celebrated madmen as, say, Jeffery Dahmer look like “the veriest tyros,” (to steal a cool simile from Lovecraft). There are times as well when they make, say, Edward Lee, look like, say, a baby in a high chair and making ga-ga noises. Likewise, some of the imagery herein is more disturbing, despair-summoning, and stomach-upheaving than any I’ve read anywhere.