In Control

by Kyle Wright

Katherine is an average twenty-something with all the usual stress and anxiety: school; money; her soul-crushing job. But something else plagues her. It is as if something is lurking … inside her.

Strange hallucinations, slips of reality, and dangerous urges drive her to the edge of sanity. No one believes her, from doctors to her own closest friends, and as she begins to research, a horrific answer looms closer than she can expect.

Katherine is caught in a paranoid thriller.

Katherine is experiencing full-blown body horror.

Katherine is …

IN CONTROL



Cover art by Don Noble and Nicholas Day.

Genres: Horror

74 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2021

Reviews

[David Kuhnlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

in control is a taut body horror novella, tonging our culture’s rotten teeth. The suspenseful narrative cracks like its protagonist’s body habitus, inviting in (or releasing) something sinister, characterized by the “fog on her eyes” and “a nightmare with no head” that doesn’t speak in words but “something running like current”. Katherine (conveniently called Kat) crushes her enemies with feline prowess, stalks rude customers at her bakery job, and stuffs the corpses of friends-who-know-what’s-best into her closet. Or does she? The ambiguity of Kyle Wright’s debut is one of its many strengths, fiddling with classic VHS horror tropes kin to Polanski’s Repulsion. Katherine’s sanity flits like a jungle cat’s tail, which prodded me to the seat's edge, before nimbly curling into a grin.