Toxine

by Richard Calder

In ‘Toxine’, a story first published in Interzone: The 4th Anthology, Richard Calder reworks in modern dress some aspects of the myth Offenbach took from Hoffmann and Hoffmann drew from the deep fears of the race; his tale of redressing is poisonous, saturated, decadent as the end of the last century.’ – John Clute

33 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

as a precocious 13-year-old lad, our narrator - nicknamed "Lord Snooty" by bullying classmates - becomes infatuated with an archaic automaton named Toxine, sadly not functioning. even more sadly, she is soon sold after his father witnesses a certain indiscretion. and so creating his own Toxine becomes an overriding obsession; as an insane adult, he engineers faulty mannequin after faulty mannequin, until realizing that it is human flesh that must be subsumed by porcelain and gears. enter a new boarder - a lass ripe for his plucking and remaking.



this is an exceedingly uncomfortable story. overripely romantic in our protagonist's pretentious, heavy-breathing depictions of his love for Toxine, and gorgeously written at that. but sardonic distance and lush prose can't prettify a story about an abused runaway finding a different sort of abuse at the hands of a madman. fortunately, Capricious Calder remains sharply aware of such timeless ills as the Male Gaze, the desire to turn women into perfect dolls, the nostalgia for the old ways of Submissive Wife and Man the King, Man the Creator. his horror tale swoons at, not with, its anti-hero's sickness.