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Eric the Pie
Description taken from Masterton's official site:
Your chance to read the story that was responsible for the demise of horror magazine, 'Frighteners.' The story of a boy who thought he was a pie... or a pie that thought he was a boy... or... well, you decide!
Your chance to read the story that was responsible for the demise of horror magazine, 'Frighteners.' The story of a boy who thought he was a pie... or a pie that thought he was a boy... or... well, you decide!
10 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1991
104 people want to read
About the author
Graham Masterton
423 books1,984 followersGraham Masterton was born in Edinburgh in 1946. His grandfather was Thomas Thorne Baker, the eminent scientist who invented DayGlo and was the first man to transmit news photographs by wireless. After training as a newspaper reporter, Graham went on to edit the new British men's magazine Mayfair, where he encouraged William Burroughs to develop a series of scientific and philosophical articles which eventually became Burroughs' novel The Wild Boys.
At the age of 24, Graham was appointed executive editor of both Penthouse and Penthouse Forum magazines. At this time he started to write a bestselling series of sex 'how-to' books including How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed which has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. His latest, Wild Sex For New Lovers is published by Penguin Putnam in January, 2001. He is a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, Woman, Woman's Own and other mass-market self-improvement magazines.
Graham Masterton's debut as a horror author began with The Manitou in 1976, a chilling tale of a Native American medicine man reborn in the present day to exact his revenge on the white man. It became an instant bestseller and was filmed with Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, Michael Ansara, Stella Stevens and Ann Sothern.
Altogether Graham has written more than a hundred novels ranging from thrillers (The Sweetman Curve, Ikon) to disaster novels (Plague, Famine) to historical sagas (Rich and Maiden Voyage - both appeared in the New York Times bestseller list). He has published four collections of short stories, Fortnight of Fear, Flights of Fear, Faces of Fear and Feelings of Fear.
He has also written horror novels for children (House of Bones, Hair-Raiser) and has just finished the fifth volume in a very popular series for young adults, Rook, based on the adventures of an idiosyncratic remedial English teacher in a Los Angeles community college who has the facility to see ghosts.
Since then Graham has published more than 35 horror novels, including Charnel House, which was awarded a Special Edgar by Mystery Writers of America; Mirror, which was awarded a Silver Medal by West Coast Review of Books; and Family Portrait, an update of Oscar Wilde's tale, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger in France.
He and his wife Wiescka live in a Gothic Victorian mansion high above the River Lee in Cork, Ireland.
At the age of 24, Graham was appointed executive editor of both Penthouse and Penthouse Forum magazines. At this time he started to write a bestselling series of sex 'how-to' books including How To Drive Your Man Wild In Bed which has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. His latest, Wild Sex For New Lovers is published by Penguin Putnam in January, 2001. He is a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, Woman, Woman's Own and other mass-market self-improvement magazines.
Graham Masterton's debut as a horror author began with The Manitou in 1976, a chilling tale of a Native American medicine man reborn in the present day to exact his revenge on the white man. It became an instant bestseller and was filmed with Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, Michael Ansara, Stella Stevens and Ann Sothern.
Altogether Graham has written more than a hundred novels ranging from thrillers (The Sweetman Curve, Ikon) to disaster novels (Plague, Famine) to historical sagas (Rich and Maiden Voyage - both appeared in the New York Times bestseller list). He has published four collections of short stories, Fortnight of Fear, Flights of Fear, Faces of Fear and Feelings of Fear.
He has also written horror novels for children (House of Bones, Hair-Raiser) and has just finished the fifth volume in a very popular series for young adults, Rook, based on the adventures of an idiosyncratic remedial English teacher in a Los Angeles community college who has the facility to see ghosts.
Since then Graham has published more than 35 horror novels, including Charnel House, which was awarded a Special Edgar by Mystery Writers of America; Mirror, which was awarded a Silver Medal by West Coast Review of Books; and Family Portrait, an update of Oscar Wilde's tale, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was the only non-French winner of the prestigious Prix Julia Verlanger in France.
He and his wife Wiescka live in a Gothic Victorian mansion high above the River Lee in Cork, Ireland.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
May 22, 2023
As extreme/disturbing horror goes, this short story os better than a lot of them. I can see many modern authors padding this out to novel length, whereas Masterton manages to cram it all into 10 pages
January 27, 2020
"You are what you eat."
That sentence will disturb me for the rest of my life.
I marked Eric the Pie as a "good recommendation outside my comfort zone", but I need to make it clear: this is outside ANY SANE PERSON'S comfort zone. Read at your own peril, preferably on an empty stomach.
That sentence will disturb me for the rest of my life.
I marked Eric the Pie as a "good recommendation outside my comfort zone", but I need to make it clear: this is outside ANY SANE PERSON'S comfort zone. Read at your own peril, preferably on an empty stomach.
November 1, 2016
extraordinary gross!
October 10, 2016
You are what you eat.
March 17, 2017
Рядко брутален и шокиращ разказ.
October 19, 2019
The life of a true psychopath. A mutilating, torturing, turned-on, raping psychopath.
Graphic descriptions of animal torture. Graphic descriptions of human torture.
I like my horror a little more subtle.
Graphic descriptions of animal torture. Graphic descriptions of human torture.
I like my horror a little more subtle.
March 14, 2015
This short story was cutie at first then it got really dark to the point I was twitching a bit.
November 15, 2025
Good god what the hell did I just read
January 17, 2020
Graham Masterton is grossly underrated. It's almost criminal. Eric the Pie is exactly how you do splatterpunk/exploitation, it has amazing prose that really makes you shift in your seat. A lot of shock value stuff just goes for the cheap shitty gross-out attempts but Masterton hits it from a different angle and actually somehow makes reading about vile subjects, enjoyable!
March 6, 2021
In italiano [lo potrete trovare su Monster Masters della Cut-Up] il titolo è: Sei quello che mangi. Uscito nei primi anni 90 sul primo numero di Frighteners in Inghilterrra, questo racconto di appena 14 pagine ha provocato talmente un tale scandalo da obbligare la rivista a ritirare le proprie copie dalla vendita. 14 pagine pregne dello splatterpunk più gore che ci sia. Astenersi stomaci deboli.
June 21, 2023
"You are what you eat." You are what you do to other people. You are your own actions. What you do defines you. And karma gets you in the end and you truly "become what you eat".
The amount of allegories, metaphors you can get out of this short story... The way you can use this story in so many ways, look at it through so many perspectives, you can find so much commentary on so many things in it, when you analyze it, I love that. CriminOlly was right, it's truly a perfect short story.
The amount of allegories, metaphors you can get out of this short story... The way you can use this story in so many ways, look at it through so many perspectives, you can find so much commentary on so many things in it, when you analyze it, I love that. CriminOlly was right, it's truly a perfect short story.
October 5, 2022
I wish I could go back in time to before I ever read this short story....
It was entertaining to say the least and trust me do I enjoy some f*ckd up stories but it's predictable and not well written. Should've kept this one in your journal <3
It was entertaining to say the least and trust me do I enjoy some f*ckd up stories but it's predictable and not well written. Should've kept this one in your journal <3
January 18, 2020
This is a story about a dumb kid who takes things too literally and follows them to the obvious conclusion. Not interesting, just disturbed.
Read
September 14, 2021????/5⭐️
Well ... that was ... that.
Well ... that was ... that.
April 22, 2024
This was fantastic and disturbing on a whole other level this was my first exposure to Graham Mastertons writing and after how much I enjoyed this you can place your bet on your bottom dollar that ill be picking up a novel by him very soon.
So this was originally published in a magazine called frighteners and this short story was so disturbing that they ended up removing the magazine entirely its that gory and disturbing.
Let me tell you right off the bat that this is not for the faint of heart and please dont pick this up if you are easily disturbed with gory descriptions,
Okay so now that I have gotten the idiot introduction out of the way let me tell you what this is about.
So this follows Eric a sweet nature child in the intro and his mother always tells him that youll become what you eat and this phrase just keeps on sticking with his mind again and again and we follow his journey to his mad acts.
One of the best things is the progression like we see Erics journey to madness little by little in ontl ten pages and the writing is just top notch like youll be reading the most petrifying scene from this book and be like I want to read that again because it was written superbly.
Overall this was a lot of fun and now I have a new author to have fun with.
So this was originally published in a magazine called frighteners and this short story was so disturbing that they ended up removing the magazine entirely its that gory and disturbing.
Let me tell you right off the bat that this is not for the faint of heart and please dont pick this up if you are easily disturbed with gory descriptions,
Okay so now that I have gotten the idiot introduction out of the way let me tell you what this is about.
So this follows Eric a sweet nature child in the intro and his mother always tells him that youll become what you eat and this phrase just keeps on sticking with his mind again and again and we follow his journey to his mad acts.
One of the best things is the progression like we see Erics journey to madness little by little in ontl ten pages and the writing is just top notch like youll be reading the most petrifying scene from this book and be like I want to read that again because it was written superbly.
Overall this was a lot of fun and now I have a new author to have fun with.
May 5, 2025
What an excellent piece of extreme horror history! Eric the Pie was incredibly ahead of its time when it was first published in 1991, and must be one of the earliest examples of an "extreme horror short" in the style that would become very popular on sites like Godless over 30 years later.
One can only speculate as to how much influence this story had, if it was only published in a UK horror magazine (and is said to have subsequently caused it to be shut down due to how many complaints were received for Eric the Pie) and is unlikely to have ever been seen by future generations of extreme writers—much like Gabrielle Wittkop's 'The Necrophiliac', which was written in 1972 but only translated into English long after the splatterpunk and extreme horror movements had already occurred.
The story itself is genuinely unpleasant reading which feels like the most disturbing concepts from The Wasp Factory and Matthew Stokoe's Cows (which it pre-dates!) and boiled them down to around 10 nihilistic and visceral pages of deliberate and evocative prose.
One can only speculate as to how much influence this story had, if it was only published in a UK horror magazine (and is said to have subsequently caused it to be shut down due to how many complaints were received for Eric the Pie) and is unlikely to have ever been seen by future generations of extreme writers—much like Gabrielle Wittkop's 'The Necrophiliac', which was written in 1972 but only translated into English long after the splatterpunk and extreme horror movements had already occurred.
The story itself is genuinely unpleasant reading which feels like the most disturbing concepts from The Wasp Factory and Matthew Stokoe's Cows (which it pre-dates!) and boiled them down to around 10 nihilistic and visceral pages of deliberate and evocative prose.
September 4, 2022
Text to a friend after reading the short story:
"One of his stories was the cover story of a new magazine that was so disgusting that a British bookstore banned it which led to the magazine going under by the second issue.
I foolishly went to his website to read the story.
I didn't think I'd get past page 6.
Muscled through.
Ugh. Is there a way to bleach your brain?"
Too intense for my taste. He followed the premise through to it's natural conclusion and escalated to levels I did not think imaginable.
It's pretty gross, and most people should avoid reading it. You'd have to be into some really violent and gory stuff to be able to endure this particular story.
If you do read it, do so at your own risk. You can't unread it.
"One of his stories was the cover story of a new magazine that was so disgusting that a British bookstore banned it which led to the magazine going under by the second issue.
I foolishly went to his website to read the story.
I didn't think I'd get past page 6.
Muscled through.
Ugh. Is there a way to bleach your brain?"
Too intense for my taste. He followed the premise through to it's natural conclusion and escalated to levels I did not think imaginable.
It's pretty gross, and most people should avoid reading it. You'd have to be into some really violent and gory stuff to be able to endure this particular story.
If you do read it, do so at your own risk. You can't unread it.
May 21, 2021
Despicable. Devious. Pitiless.
This short is not for a faint hearted simpleton. There are (spoiler ahead) gory, violent depictions of cannibalism, bestiality, rape, and brute murder. I fancy myself as to be a braveheart but this churned my stomach and left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. I don't consider this to be piece of literary genius - splatterpunk genre or otherwise.
Skip this one.
This short is not for a faint hearted simpleton. There are (spoiler ahead) gory, violent depictions of cannibalism, bestiality, rape, and brute murder. I fancy myself as to be a braveheart but this churned my stomach and left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. I don't consider this to be piece of literary genius - splatterpunk genre or otherwise.
Skip this one.
June 2, 2024
Una delle cose più tremende, pesanti e disturbanti mai viste, ho letto e guardato tantissima roba ultrasplatter tra libri e film, ma questo va oltre proprio nel concetto e nell' idea di base. "Non per tutti" non renderebbe l'idea, anche se siete avvezzi a opere estreme, valutate bene se leggerlo o meno, per tutti gli altri, statene alla larga.
June 8, 2023
Loved it .Olli rlly has a taste in horror books! Idk why but reading through Eric's childhood I thought of the narrator of babyfucker by urs allemand.idk .
But for real this was quick nd refreshing cuz it was a rlly fun read
But for real this was quick nd refreshing cuz it was a rlly fun read
June 19, 2023
A nicely condensed argument against splatterpunk (on which I'm neutral), replete with typos and physical impossibilities, to serve a story that, with each page, begs you to find it edgy enough to keep reading. It's impressive that this would be the absolute last thing I'd recommend to a young person, as all I could think while reading it is how juvenile it was.
Read
July 5, 2019So, I regret reading this, but I will definitely read more of this author.
October 19, 2021
It's not scary. It's kind of just gross and gory and full of typos. That said, if that interests you, it's only 10 pages.
November 21, 2022
Wasn't as unsettling as everyone made it out to be.
May 23, 2023
Extremhorror på 10 sidor. Riktigt motbjudande
August 27, 2023
I was looking for horror, and I found it. Truly unspeakable horror.
November 11, 2023
Effective writing. Certainly more visceral than most things I’ve read.
January 15, 2024
Disgusting, unhinged but strangely compelling, Eric the Pie is a short, effective, and very memorable story about a disturbed young man!
January 30, 2024
BRUH
that shit was nasty i'm not gonna lie
really well written but at what cost. yuck
that shit was nasty i'm not gonna lie
really well written but at what cost. yuck
March 21, 2024
why did i read this.
TW- everything except CSA
TW- everything except CSA
Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews