Christian Wallis, whose popular tales on Reddit’s NoSleep are spoken of in hushed tones, invites you into a world where the unseen has teeth. Stare into its terrifying maw and you’ll see…
A family fun center hides a bottomless pit where reality breaks down and a dark secret awaits.
A man’s strange task of painting a wall in the desert leads to something that lurks beyond human perception.
A couple’s night out becomes a nightmare where humanity fades and dolls take over.
At a black site, the pursuit of forbidden knowledge breaks down the line between science and blasphemy.
Prepare yourself. These tales and others will take a bite out of you, leaving a permanent scar!
“Most stories follow a rhythm. Most. Some…raise profound questions. Others aren’t really stories at all, so much as nightmares just waiting for the next victim.
This world is full of hidden needles waiting for probing hands.”
(Wallis, Christian. More Teeth: Stories of Horror and the Supernatural with Bite (Where Nightmares Dwell) Velox Books.)
With this second anthology, Christian Wallis raises profound questions, but also leaves no doubt that he is a compelling new voice to watch in modern horror fiction.
Wallis blends the raw immediacy of NoSleep-style first-person storytelling with the vast unease of cosmic horror, all backed by careful research and layered, immersive worldbuilding. His writing shows a strong, confident grasp of genre conventions, and a sharp instinct for when–and how–to break them. Over the past several years, his work has grown markedly in both structural complexity and thematic nuance–a progression that shines in More Teeth.
This collection, like its predecessor, With Teeth, features traditional reprints of his popular r/NoSleep short stories. The anthology thoughtfully explores the inherent horror of current social and ecological issues, using the genre as a lens to examine subjects like factory farming, predatory (in more ways than one) housing markets, climate change, and mental health.
In Clay, his engagement with classic Abrahamic mythology is both unsettling and daringly original, reframing familiar Old Testament theology through the frigid lens of eldritch indifference. Do Not Pray to the God in the Desert takes us even further back, delving into prehistoric religion and a malevolent, enigmatic entity that, somehow, seems to have an unsettling amount in common with an industrial chicken farmer.
That same daring originality can be seen in his exploration of familiar, seemingly mundane settings, like the ball pit in Bottomless Fun, a story that leans into camp and backrooms-style surrealism, but also highlights Wallis’s knack for making the seemingly ordinary feel utterly, skin-crawlingly sinister. The final story, Play Pretend, is the second half of a two-part “Roleplay” narrative that began with Pretend Play in Wallis’s first anthology. Equal parts uncanny, darkly funny Freudian parable (safe words really are essential) and gut-wrenching dual-POV exploration of toxic intimacy, it follows two incompatible people reshaping themselves to hold each other, every moment they stay together pulling them closer to the inevitable monster.
In terms of critique, there are a few minor typos and the occasional wayward Anglicism ("torches" as opposed to "flashlights" in an American-set story), but I’m not taking that into account with my rating, as I consider that to be on the publisher, not the author, and it doesn’t detract from the overall creativity and quality of the storytelling.
Perfect for fans of John Langan and Laird Barron who are looking for a fresh voice and a distinctly contemporary edge.
I found this lovely author from Creep Cast. I highly recommend watching any of their videos covering his works since it’s always so fun hearing Hunter and Isiah bring the characters to life with voices. However Christian Wallis does such an amazing job and I’m so happy to have found his works. I read With Teeth about a year ago and this new one did not disappoint. I definitely got super spooked out and had to take some much needed breaks to come back down to earth lol. Lovely lovely short stories and really fun to just digest and then move on. Can’t wait to read more!
Another excellent collection of horror shorts. These stories are imaginative and original. I read a lot of horror so I do not find too many very scary but several of these were quite frightening. You will have to have read the final story from the first collection, "With Teeth" for the final story of this collection to make sense.