‘We Are Here To Hurt Each Other’ – Paula D. Ashe (Nictitating Books)

 

Page Count: 131 Pages

I’m still not a hundred percent sure how I feel about it but it’s like someone told my phone that I like horror fiction and now it likes to recommend stuff to me. Which is nice of it, don’t get me wrong, it just feels a little disconcerting to be reading some horror, only to have my phone beep and suggest that I read something else instead. I’m not ready for this kind of interaction with my phone; in the words of Murtaugh, I’m too old for this shit ;o)

Anyway…

The other day, my phone beeped and pointed me at an article on The Quietus, their list of ‘The Best 25 Pieces of Horror Fiction of the 21st Century (So Far)’. For the hell of it, I thought I’d have a read. I added a few books to my Amazon wishlist (because of course I did) but when I read that Paula D. Ashe is a ‘self-confessed Hellraiser obsessive’, I ordered ‘We Are Here To Hurt Each Other’ straight away. I'm a bit of a Hellraiser obsessive too (all of them, even that one). It’s only 131 pages long so made for an ideal read while I was stuck on the phone, queuing for my GP (I don’t read that quickly these days, it was a long old queue…)

Long time readers will know that this is the paragraph where I’ll either attempt to summarize the book or, mostly, just copy and paste some blurb from elsewhere. It’s been a weird old day, mostly because I read ‘We Are Here To Hurt Each Other’, so here’s the Amazon blurb.

With these twelve stories Paula D. Ashe takes you into a dark and bloody world where nothing is sacred and no one is safe. A landscape of urban decay and human degradation, this collection finds the psychic pressure points of us all, and giddily squeezes. Try to run, try to hide, but there is no escape: we are here to hurt each other.

We shouldn’t be hurting each other, not in an ideal world, but this isn’t an ideal world and a lot of the time, that’s exactly what we end up doing. Sometimes though, something positive can come out of that experience, whether that’s a lesson learned or… A book like this one, where the author delivers a pure uncompromising vision of horror that settles for nothing less than being read on its own terms. The kind of horror that’s considerate enough to give you a ‘Content Warning’ page but once you start reading, what comes next is all on you. That is exactly what Ashe does here and the end result is just superb. I am notoriously late to the party but if you are somehow even later than I am, you really should do something about that right now. You can thank me later, just get reading ;o)

Funnily enough, I’m not going to say too much about the content, mostly because my two young daughters occasionally read this blog and well, you know… :o) What I will say though is that in each of the stories featured here, Ashe shows us horror in all its guises, ranging from cosmic horror to my favourite, the horror that is done to people, by other people, and how this makes them commit acts of horror in return. Sometimes, horror just happens… And then it ripples outwards.

The prose framing all of this is just gorgeous, almost poetic; it drew me in and kept me hooked, especially when faced with moments that made my stomach turn. No matter what was on the page, I had no choice but to keep reading. And that reading experience hurt, but in a good way, the kind of hurt that really makes you think about what’s going on and why. The kind of read where I’m thinking ‘God, no!’ but also, ‘that poor person…’

Honestly, not a single story misses the target here but special mention must go to…

‘Aspects of Emptiness’ & ‘Carry On Carrion’ – If the Chatterer had made it past ‘Hellraiser 2’, I like to think that this is what he’d be up to when not working for Pinhead.

‘Bereft’ – It’s not often that horror inspires such a reaction from me but I was reading this thinking… ‘She’s not going to… Is she? Damn, she is…’ For such an act (and where it leads our lead) to be written so beautifully though, and that moment of realization…

‘Because You Watched’ – People get what they deserve, or do they…? I’m still not sure (Lily definitely didn’t), I’ll be thinking about this one for the next few days.

‘Telesignatures From A Future Corpse’ – Possibly the most fucked up time-travel story I’ve ever read, and it was glorious.

Seriously though, all of the stories here are superb. Those are just the stand out ones for me.

If you like a bit of horror, and you’re happy for all the curtains to be drawn back on it, then you absolutely should read ‘We Are Here To Hurt Each Other’. And if you’ve already read it, then read it again. I will be doing just that.