‘The Sick Place: A Splatter Novelette’ – Bryan Smith (House of 1000 Beers)

 

Page Count: 41 Pages

We’re in the middle of the Easter Holidays, over here, so yesterday was spent hanging out with my youngest daughter and then, hanging over the back of a neighbours fence, trying to convince the kitten to come out of another empty garden. More than happy to do one of these, not so happy to do the other but it had to be done; I’m sure I don’t need to tell you which is which ;o)

Absolutely no time for reading then and that’s OK; books are a huge part of my life but certain things will always be more important, that’s all there is to it. I had finished another book, over the weekend, though so now is a good time to talk about it.

‘The Sick Place’ is a short read so this will be a short post, hope you don’t mind ;o)

After a dark web facilitated hookup gone wrong, Rebekah Parker finds herself in desperate need of medical help after consuming tainted flesh of the forbidden kind. Directions from a mysterious old man lead her to The Sick Place, where the sexy nurses have rotting flesh and vampire teeth and the doctors are only there to turn mere discomfort into endless, mind-bending agony. Because while The Sick Place is a hospital, it is not the kind that exists to mend injuries and cure ills. Instead, it is the kind that can only exist in a haunted town located at one of the uncharted outer edges of Hell, where the mortal world bleeds into the land of the Damned.

Check in at the front desk and never mind the corpses in the waiting room. We’ll be right with you...

Well damn, that was a shock to the system… ‘The Sick Place’ lives up to its title, taking the attitude that even if you’re easily offended, it’s still not going to let up on trying. ‘The Sick Place’ will consider itself a failure if you’re not at least feeling a little queasy by the time you’ve finished reading. Where you sit on that sliding scale will determine how much you get out of the experience.

Me? I don’t get nauseous easily so I had more time to better appreciate the cinematic qualities of Smith’s backdrop and what was quite literally being splattered (so that’s where the term comes from) all over it. Smith holds nothing back, and neither do his cast when their ailments, that brought them to the Sick Place, finally catch up with them. Honestly, reading ‘The Sick Place’ is like being caught in the middle of an ‘Evil Dead’ moment where the Deadite explodes, showering Ash in, well… everything. It’s the very definition of ‘gross out’ but it’s also a real catalyst that moves things forward in all the right ways.

Notice that I said ‘things’ instead of ‘plot’. There is no real plot to speak of here, just a situation that various people have found themselves in and will experience while trying to escape. And I like that, as a potential ‘snapshot’ (of something much larger) but also as a reminder that sometimes horror doesn’t just slowly build up. It can be short, intense and with a week’s worth of gore, and bodily fluids, crammed into a matter of hours.

And it was a lot of fun to watch all of this play out over a series of perfectly timed ‘random’ encounters that move things along in just the right way but also leave you with the impression that everyone who found themselves in the ‘Sick Place’, probably deserved to be there. And if they didn’t…? Well, life isn’t fair is it?

Would I recommend ‘The Sick Place’? Only to those who like their splatterpunk layered on extremely thickly and with no apologies given for it. If that’s you, skip dinner and then give ‘The Sick Place’ a read. With the energy of an 'Evil Dead' film and the attitude of 'Planet Terror', it's a hell of a way to pass an evening.