Low Kill Shelter

by Porpentine Charity Heartscape

*when your best friend gets infected and wants to eat your face off
*and you work at a medical lab with his ex
*and you still remember your family huddled around a pool of teeth on the floor
*horror novella about caregiving/autism/gay shit

Genres: Horror, Queer, Fiction, Science Fiction, LGBT

83 pages, ebook

First published September 28, 2021

About the author

wrote Serious Weakness, Torture Works, a bunch of other shit

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An age-old virus spreads amongst humans as fast as their dangerous new teeth grow in. Logic and the art of compartmentalization helps one man to research a remedy, but when his male subject reacts to him with unbridled animal passion and aggression, the tables are turned. Old teeth are discarded as fever burns through brains and bodies like wildfire. Blood, saliva, and nails replace rational thought. Is there a way to balance the two extremes? Put on your spit mask and explore the possibilities.

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm loath to read a pandemic book, but wow –– this one was perfect. This novella takes on biopunk with an almost mythological bent, and refuses distinctions between the traumatic and the pleasurable, the violent and the tender. These shapeshifting, body-ambiguous characters engage with conditions of ongoing apocalypse and intense institutional and interpersonal violence, all with cutting emotional complexity and just the right amount of humor. I'm so glad I leaned into the disorientation that this book's opening pages brought me –– upon sinking my teeth deeper I realized I had found a real treat.

[Briar Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is now my favorite romance novel. Maybe the best one I'll ever read.

[Andrew Schultheis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dug this. Strong Cronenberg vibes.

[Renart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this as I am drooling and needing to drink so badly but I cannot because I need to finish the novella first was like I was part of the story.
Apart from that it was so good ! I love the way it is written and I really enjoyed the character and especially the protagonist. It's refreshing to read the perception of someone autistic. And the entire gay rabic dog thing is just perfect (and hot).
I will buy Serious Weakness soon enough to read more from this author :3

[Ash Nyx · Rating 5 out of 5]

DOG BOYS i liked the part where they were dogs and kissed that was hot. I love blood and gore and flesh !!!! :3

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He has to see Rache every day. His manager. Jess's ex. She's older than either of them and wears glasses and spends a lot more time in her office since Jess died. They talk about normal things. A new shipment of nitrate gloves. The vending machine is still broken. Did you know I have your boyfriend chained up in a closet?"

Dog boys. Dog boys biting each other. Dog boys spit swapping rabies. Dog boys kissing. Dog boys feasting upon flesh. Dog boys dog boys dog boys- Low Kill Shelter is perhaps my new favorite romance novel, while I don't think anything will ever come close to being the masterpiece that Serious Weakness is, this book is pretty damn great. Pandemic novels (Specifically those ones published post-covid and extra specifically those heavily rooted in the actual pandemic part of their narratives) aren't really my vibe, which, sounds strange coming from someone that really fucking loves zombie fiction, but man, does this take pandemic fiction to a whole new level. Low Kill Shelter is sleazy and gross and filthy and vile in a super stylized, gritty Hollywood noir sort of way.

Porpentine is quickly becoming a favorite author of mine, there's this super specific feeling to their writing that's so insanely hard to describe, it all feels so bleak and desperate in such a beautifully artistic, enrapturing sort of way, it just sort of feels like confronting the void. Low Kill Shelter is such an aggressive, snarling, hyper-bitey book that's just oozing with lust and desire and obsession. Only Porpentine could make infecting your loved one with rabies seem romantic. This thing is just, so brilliant, it's kaleidoscopic and swirling and maddening in a way that all the best books seem to be, it'll have you feeling as if you've lost your mind.

"Tearing, slurping, coughing it up, vomitorium. Their mouths find each other in the red maze, Jess shotgunning blood into Iran. There's nothing clean and vampiric about the exchange, it's full of flesh and pulp and bitter byproducts, a peasant's stew of gore. Their jaws slip free of each other and Iran catches his breath, surveying the tableaux, Jess is on all fours, shoulder blades flexing as he chews. The body spasms below them, converted to twitching machinery. Nelson is trying to say something but why listen to those shitty little words when you can commune through the slightest gasp and nuzzle? Don't let him reinvent abacuses and pottery and gunpowder."

There's something so weirdly vulnerable and tender in Low Kill Shelter, behind the gore and the viscera and the drippings of blood lies a beautiful heart, you just have to wade through the blood and flesh and biting and tearing first. It's sort of bug-chasing but it's rabies and dog boys, yknow? It's enough to get anyone barking. Low Kill Shelter is some weird shit but it's fucking brilliant, and it's daring and subversive in a way that books seem so afraid of being these days, this is what Shy Girl wishes it could have been. If there ever was one single book that was written just for the people who still use ":3" unironically, this would be that book, and you know what? I really fuck with that.

"Iran kisses him, then goes prey still at how Jess's teeth cover his like a rockslide, like Jess could bite Iran's mouth out like a scoop of ice cream, drooling so thickly that Iran has to swallow so he doesn't choke, and then shocking clicks of enamel like cracks in a frozen lake, but he's not dead and he's still not dead, and he's still not dead, and now he's alive, and someone cuts their tongue, he's not sure who, they're burning up together, this guy on top of him with hair like he was trapped in a closet for months, the guy trying not to chew his face off."

[Thomas Hale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gruesome horror novella about caregiving, autism, intimacy, and a deadly new strain of rabies. Friendship(s) that compromise everything, and how easy that choice can be to make. Porpentine twists the physical into uncanny new configurations and embeds them in the mundane horror of everyday life. The most intense and resonant prose I've read about the hellscape under the shadow of modern pandemic. One to lose sleep over.

[Lizzy]

Genuinely have no clue how to rate this. It's so crazy and I'm almost certain that I didn't get the symbolisms, but I enjoyed reading it

I feel like I'm going to be slightly disappointed whenever I read a short story or novella from Porpentine. Serious weakness was just SO good that I can't help but compare it to all the other books of theirs that I read, even though it'd be extremely difficult for anything to match it 😭

[Phoenix Mendoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wildly refreshing, bright eyed bushy tailed sharp toothed spit soaked little novella!!! Positively loved it, this is what I’ve been wanting and craving and not getting from indie horror— thrilled my search finally led me somewhere weird enough to sate the hunger. I went into it blind save for the back cover blurb which just said “dog boys” over and over again in helvetica, which was enough for me. But for those of you who want a little more: it’s a (semi allegorical, AIDS adjacent) gay pandemic horror story about a man keeping his rabid, dog-toothed, and lethally infected coworker chained up in his closet and caring for him. It’s revolting but it’s also the most romantic thing I’ve read all year. Fever hot and sick with delerium and shockingly sincere and hopeful. I LOVED the hectic, hallucinatory stream of consciousness prose, which, as you all know, is the thing I care about most as a reader. It’s a quick one, I ripped through it so fast and couldn’t think about anything else while I read, it had me by the throat. Cannot reccomend enough and I’m so excited to check out more by this author.

[Ulrike · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh it left me wanting moreee!!!! classic wonderful porpentine charity heartscape prose. always love the way she mirrors modern culture right at you, how fucking real her books are. also how real her autistic characters are. this was gross and short and sweet like burnt sugar with rancid urinal notes :) perfect thing to read when i felt very very rotten but have just finally changed my bedding.

[V.]

Clearly inspired by 2020, but goes in a very different direction with it that transcends any view you might have one way or the other about that quotidian subject matter. Is much more about relationships, degenerative illness, paranoia...

This had a strong emotional impact on me, I won't deny that. Weirdly strong. I guess Porpentine can just play me like a fiddle. I think I feel the way that Gregor's family feel on their picnic at the end of The Metamorphosis.

(I will say that this volume, more than most other of her stuff that I've read, seems like it was rushed out — lots of small clumsinesses/errors that a once-over by a good editor would smooth out. But that is a minor point.)

I think this book is going to stick with me. We'll see, I guess.

[Willow Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Came across this randomly as a recommendation on twitter, glad I read it !! Using fucked up imagery and morbidity as a vessel for romance is my fav and this story does it great. Disease, hunger, and violence, but also surprisingly sorta wholesome.

[Francis Bass · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has the special porpentine sauce which I so enjoy but the pacing is very stilted. this novella should be constantly increasing the tension or strategically releasing it in order to ramp it up again even higher. Instead it just slackens in the middle and never really regains it, just moves from one archetypal monster movie scene to another
still enjoyed it. where else am I gonna read “What did Tolstoy say? All rabid guys are alike; each beta cuck is cringe in his own way.”

[grackky · Rating 4 out of 5]

thoroughly enjoyed my time with this freaky shit. dog boys dog boys dog boys
being a long time luvr of the authors equally freaky blog format narratives I decided to buy a bunch of their books and they just don't disappoint. if you find that things are never quite feral enough for you I recommend this book, this author.

[little nemo · Rating 5 out of 5]

sooo romantic so nice overjoyed gut soup slurry!!!!

[Aislinn Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

fuck yeah

[mh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a wet open-mouth kiss with bleeding gums and too-sharp teeth

[Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's not okay to have teeth

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, fuck

[C.J. Wacker · Rating 5 out of 5]

man i love being gay and having ocd and being permanently, fundamentally shifted on a blood-deep level

[taranis · Rating 4 out of 5]

porpentine never fails

[Eli · Rating 4 out of 5]

porpentines work is wild lmao

[rae vide0nsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

dogboy yaoi, disgustingly intimate and makes me feel more torn open and understood than any other work <3

[G? · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t normally like novellas, let alone stories about the pandemic, but this was done so well! This author is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

[Halon W · Rating 5 out of 5]

vividly visceral with a strong vein of tender care in the midst of hopelessness. really goddamn good

[MODERNWAR · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 (maybe?)

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dog boys dog boys in love DOG BOYS wheeee!!

[daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

dog boys dog boys dog boys dog boys

[Cummo · Rating 5 out of 5]

#dog

autistic rage to me often feels indistinguishable from a rabid dog frenzied and lashing, and reading that dog getting jacked off is a kind of catharsis I didn't know was possible