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Split Scream #6
Split Scream Volume Six
The SPLIT SCREAM series goes to its darkest corners yet with these twin novelette odes to horrible parents.
COME TO DADDY by Ryan T. Jenkins
A damaged man endeavors to put the pieces back together after a lifetime of destruction; to reckon with his wife and son leaving him; to attend to the dreams of his dead mother’s well-manicured hand scuttling around at night; and the impossibly large garlic bulbs growing in his backyard; and the haunted movie poster of a B-list actor coming to life before his eyes.
It’s time, now, to confront how his marriage of eighteen years went to hell, all because of a trip to the store to buy avocados for his son’s college going-away party…or was it something more?
There’s nothing more punk rock than being a deluded, strung-out, forty-four-year-old dad forced to face the helter-skelter truth. Distilled from the classic Gothic haunted house narrative comes this twisted ode to punk rock and fatherhood.
MOTHER IS COMING HOME by David Corse
When Otis discovers an undulating, flesh-like portal near his barn, he believes he’s finally found a way to escape his hometown and travel the world. All he has to do is sell the oddity to the highest bidder and leave home for good.
His plans crumble when, during a drunken argument, he tosses his sickly and cruel mother through the portal. The momentary elation is brief, and quickly swallowed by a gutting reality. Otis must rescue his mother and protect the strange opening from prying eyes, no matter the cost. The lengths he will go to to hold onto hope are endless in this tale of toxic relationships, failsons, and cowardice.
COME TO DADDY by Ryan T. Jenkins
A damaged man endeavors to put the pieces back together after a lifetime of destruction; to reckon with his wife and son leaving him; to attend to the dreams of his dead mother’s well-manicured hand scuttling around at night; and the impossibly large garlic bulbs growing in his backyard; and the haunted movie poster of a B-list actor coming to life before his eyes.
It’s time, now, to confront how his marriage of eighteen years went to hell, all because of a trip to the store to buy avocados for his son’s college going-away party…or was it something more?
There’s nothing more punk rock than being a deluded, strung-out, forty-four-year-old dad forced to face the helter-skelter truth. Distilled from the classic Gothic haunted house narrative comes this twisted ode to punk rock and fatherhood.
MOTHER IS COMING HOME by David Corse
When Otis discovers an undulating, flesh-like portal near his barn, he believes he’s finally found a way to escape his hometown and travel the world. All he has to do is sell the oddity to the highest bidder and leave home for good.
His plans crumble when, during a drunken argument, he tosses his sickly and cruel mother through the portal. The momentary elation is brief, and quickly swallowed by a gutting reality. Otis must rescue his mother and protect the strange opening from prying eyes, no matter the cost. The lengths he will go to to hold onto hope are endless in this tale of toxic relationships, failsons, and cowardice.
192 pages, Paperback
Published November 12, 2024
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 19, 2024
I've loved every book in this series I've read and they keep getting better and better. These two novelletes are no exception as they take on parenting with horrifying results.
In the first one, a thirty something year old man still lives with his overbearing mother. One night he finds a portal of sorts in their backyard. He comes up with a plan to finally be free of his horrid drunk mother. But things are not going to end well.
The second novellete is a punk rock ode to a middle aged man going through a horrible divorce. He moves into a dilapidated house and finds a poster of Elijah Wood from an obscure horror movie hanging on the wall in one of the rooms. While quirky and weird at first, things are going to get brutally gut wrenching at the end.
This series never disappoints and I highly recommend it.
In the first one, a thirty something year old man still lives with his overbearing mother. One night he finds a portal of sorts in their backyard. He comes up with a plan to finally be free of his horrid drunk mother. But things are not going to end well.
The second novellete is a punk rock ode to a middle aged man going through a horrible divorce. He moves into a dilapidated house and finds a poster of Elijah Wood from an obscure horror movie hanging on the wall in one of the rooms. While quirky and weird at first, things are going to get brutally gut wrenching at the end.
This series never disappoints and I highly recommend it.
October 21, 2024
Compelling and beautifully paced, David Corse has a knack for that all-important balance of dread, humanity, and delightfully visceral goo. With touches of bizarro, sci fi elements, and an unflinching look at generational trauma, Corse quickly earns his place as an auto-buy author."
November 12, 2024
Disclaimer: I received an ARC copy by the publisher.
While this is the first of the Split Scream Volumes I’ve read, I absolutely adore it! It takes a fascinating genre of literature (the humble novelette), pairs two of them together with a similar theme and creates an incredible enjoyable reading experience for fans of short horror. These novelettes also manage to take what makes horror short stories so good and removes the fact that many horror short-stories are sadly too short, instead straddling the line between underdeveloped and dragging out perfectly. The pacing in both stories was outstanding and I never found myself bored. Both stories manage to built the worlds we are exploring well, give deep (and personal) insights into the main characters and their struggles and create a deeply uncomfortable dread running through it all.
If you are interested in stories exploring fraught family relationships, hauntings, creepy portals, dissociation and trauma and to do so in an afternoon (or in my case two, one for each novelette), I would really recommend you read these collections and I will certainly check out the other Volumes now.
Mother is Coming Home
A son taking care of his aging ailing mother. There is more than some bad blood between them and as resentments rise a strange glowing orb in the barn is the last thing they need. Or is it?
This story explores the horrors of family, how being forced into a caretaking position can cause resentment and how far some sons might go to finally be free. It is written in an utterly haunting fashion and I especially adored the inescapable dread throughout it.
Tw: domestic abuse, parental abuse, murder
Come to Daddy
Featuring a very unreliable narrator, this story follows a recently divorced dad, who dwells in his punk past and excessive drug use after his family life dissolved. And then there’s also this creepy Elijah Wood horror movie poster that the previous owners left up, that he somehow can’t get off the wall (or off his mind) either. Very intriguing look into a completely disassociated life and a gruesome, heartbreaking ending.
Tw: drug use, self-injury, gore, unsanitary
While this is the first of the Split Scream Volumes I’ve read, I absolutely adore it! It takes a fascinating genre of literature (the humble novelette), pairs two of them together with a similar theme and creates an incredible enjoyable reading experience for fans of short horror. These novelettes also manage to take what makes horror short stories so good and removes the fact that many horror short-stories are sadly too short, instead straddling the line between underdeveloped and dragging out perfectly. The pacing in both stories was outstanding and I never found myself bored. Both stories manage to built the worlds we are exploring well, give deep (and personal) insights into the main characters and their struggles and create a deeply uncomfortable dread running through it all.
If you are interested in stories exploring fraught family relationships, hauntings, creepy portals, dissociation and trauma and to do so in an afternoon (or in my case two, one for each novelette), I would really recommend you read these collections and I will certainly check out the other Volumes now.
Mother is Coming Home
A son taking care of his aging ailing mother. There is more than some bad blood between them and as resentments rise a strange glowing orb in the barn is the last thing they need. Or is it?
This story explores the horrors of family, how being forced into a caretaking position can cause resentment and how far some sons might go to finally be free. It is written in an utterly haunting fashion and I especially adored the inescapable dread throughout it.
Tw: domestic abuse, parental abuse, murder
Come to Daddy
Featuring a very unreliable narrator, this story follows a recently divorced dad, who dwells in his punk past and excessive drug use after his family life dissolved. And then there’s also this creepy Elijah Wood horror movie poster that the previous owners left up, that he somehow can’t get off the wall (or off his mind) either. Very intriguing look into a completely disassociated life and a gruesome, heartbreaking ending.
Tw: drug use, self-injury, gore, unsanitary
July 22, 2024
Special thanks to Tenebrous Press for the ARC copy they provided.
Hgfgh! It feels like just a second ago I was reading Split Scream Volume Five (Oh wait, it WAS only a second ago…), and now here I am, writing my review for volume six. Tenebrous sure knows how to pump out the books, and make all the books high quality.
Split Scream Volume Six gripped me and immediately made me mad. In the best possible way. I related to the main character in David Corse’s Mother Is Coming Home and the situation he found himself in almost had me putting my Kindle down in disgust. But that is 100% what you want a story to do. Make. You. Feel. Shit.
And by shit, I mean emotions.
And Split Scream Volume Six is packed with emotions. Frankly, I found the end of Mother Is Coming Home terrifying, more terrifying than the most gruesome of slasher flicks, more disturbing than the goriest body horror. Why? Because of the utter lack of way out.
Terrifying.
And Come to Daddy? Ryan T. Jenkins’ tale of a man falling apart was both soft and appropriately deranged.
In the end, I devoured this book in the space of a day and went looking for more. Sadly, there was no more, and I’ll have to wait for the next installment of this delightfully grim series.
waits impatiently
Hgfgh! It feels like just a second ago I was reading Split Scream Volume Five (Oh wait, it WAS only a second ago…), and now here I am, writing my review for volume six. Tenebrous sure knows how to pump out the books, and make all the books high quality.
Split Scream Volume Six gripped me and immediately made me mad. In the best possible way. I related to the main character in David Corse’s Mother Is Coming Home and the situation he found himself in almost had me putting my Kindle down in disgust. But that is 100% what you want a story to do. Make. You. Feel. Shit.
And by shit, I mean emotions.
And Split Scream Volume Six is packed with emotions. Frankly, I found the end of Mother Is Coming Home terrifying, more terrifying than the most gruesome of slasher flicks, more disturbing than the goriest body horror. Why? Because of the utter lack of way out.
Terrifying.
And Come to Daddy? Ryan T. Jenkins’ tale of a man falling apart was both soft and appropriately deranged.
In the end, I devoured this book in the space of a day and went looking for more. Sadly, there was no more, and I’ll have to wait for the next installment of this delightfully grim series.
waits impatiently
November 19, 2024
The Split Scream series is all about pairings, about building out a double feature of literature that is both bingeable and yet still profound. And Volume Six of this series, combining a terrifying and gross and severely uncomfortable story about a man's strained relationship to his mother and a story of a pathetic loser dad and his strained relationship to his son, might be the most delectable pairing yet.
Corse's story is absolute pathos, featuring a pathetic loser you both want to win and also can't root for. It's a gross story, with fabulous symbolism, exploring the ways in which family sometimes just can't help but hurt one another. There's layers to unpack as regards psychological trauma, making it an enriching reading even if the story is nothing but anxiety, dread, and resentment for its protagonist.
In stark contrast is Jenkins's story, featuring a pathetic loser you both want to win and also can't root for. It's darkly funny, a total head trip cramped up in the mind of a character completely incapable of self-reflection. It had some absolutely laugh-out-loud moments, coupled up with an absurdist's voice.
These two stories can be consumed quickly but deserve longer periods for digestion, layered with meaning and a rich contemplation of our human inadequacies and vices. Each presents a very different picture of vulnerability and mortality, packed with fear but in distinctive ways. Credit to editor Alex Ebenstein for seeing the value in how these stories talk to one another--and to the authors for finding beautiful ways to explore the ways we fail each other.
Corse's story is absolute pathos, featuring a pathetic loser you both want to win and also can't root for. It's a gross story, with fabulous symbolism, exploring the ways in which family sometimes just can't help but hurt one another. There's layers to unpack as regards psychological trauma, making it an enriching reading even if the story is nothing but anxiety, dread, and resentment for its protagonist.
In stark contrast is Jenkins's story, featuring a pathetic loser you both want to win and also can't root for. It's darkly funny, a total head trip cramped up in the mind of a character completely incapable of self-reflection. It had some absolutely laugh-out-loud moments, coupled up with an absurdist's voice.
These two stories can be consumed quickly but deserve longer periods for digestion, layered with meaning and a rich contemplation of our human inadequacies and vices. Each presents a very different picture of vulnerability and mortality, packed with fear but in distinctive ways. Credit to editor Alex Ebenstein for seeing the value in how these stories talk to one another--and to the authors for finding beautiful ways to explore the ways we fail each other.
February 5, 2025
The Split Scream series continues to deliver. I highly recommend them.
Mother Is Coming Home by David Corse was very unsettling and exquisitely weird. Featuring a flesh like portal and a strained (to put it lightly) mother-son relationship, this one really shines.
Come To Daddy by Ryan T Jenkins is part weird, part bizzaro, part humor, part horror, and all kinds of punk rock. Featuring a frightening amount of Elijah Wood this was a unique story about a less than stellar husband/father coming to terms with his family leaving him and reflection on his past self. An excellent read
Mother Is Coming Home by David Corse was very unsettling and exquisitely weird. Featuring a flesh like portal and a strained (to put it lightly) mother-son relationship, this one really shines.
Come To Daddy by Ryan T Jenkins is part weird, part bizzaro, part humor, part horror, and all kinds of punk rock. Featuring a frightening amount of Elijah Wood this was a unique story about a less than stellar husband/father coming to terms with his family leaving him and reflection on his past self. An excellent read
December 17, 2024
Mother Is Coming Home is top notch weird horror. Relatable, gross, surprising, and utterly Freudian, this novella will suck you in like a wet, slimy portal to what the hell. David Corse is at the top of his game right out of the gate. I can't wait to see what he cooks up next. Do yourself a favor and pick this up, especially if you have mommy issues, but even if you don't.
December 29, 2024
Have you ever considered babying your son more than is traditionally healthy? This will have you thinking twice…
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews