You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams by Carlton Mellick III

 

(pb; 2023)

From the back cover

“Dreams shouldn’t kill you. If you die in a dream you should be fine in real life. But that’s not what Elias [Thompson] learns once he moves in with a girl named Roe who has the terrible habit of pulling people into her dreams with her whenever she falls asleep. Although she’s the nicest, coolest, most attractive woman Elias has ever known while she’s awake. Roe is a complete psychopath in her dreams. She will stop at nothing to kill anyone who finds their way into her subconscious worlds. But Elias has no choice but to survive her crazy dreams every night if he ever hopes to make it in a world that has been torn apart by a global pandemic and economic collapse.”

 

Review

Always, a relatively light entry in Mellick’s oeuvre, is pure delight, poking fun at Portland, Oregon, the author’s current city-of-residence while marking the social anxiety of the recent COVID-19 outbreak as well as the uncertainties, cruelty and fickleness of collegiate youth.

The characters are deftly sketched out, fleshed enough to ring as relatable and true, while the fast-moving, often funny and sometimes gory story, with its well-placed (and often quiet) twists redirecting the plot/action into new, distinctly Mellick territory, darkly hilarious with underlying seriousness and a multilayered, disturbing-or-comforting finish, depending on your mood. This is a great read if you’re looking to read a lighter-in-tone, later Mellick work, one of my favorite novellas by him.

Apeship by Carlton Mellick III

 

(pb; 2024: third book in the Apes**t series)

From the back cover

“An intolerable prick takes his weird daughter, his college-aged girlfriend, her douchey brother, and her awkward best friend on a boating trip to show off his new yacht. But when they come across an abandoned cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, they find themselves hunted by a group of sadistic mutant killers hellbent on keeping them as their immortal playthings for all eternity.”

 

Review

Mellick returns to the risible, out-there horror of the pink crystals (which keep the dead, however mutilated, alive and alert) with Apeship, this time set on the ocean, first on “Daddy Cool”’s yacht (The Crotch Moistener) and later on the long-lost-at-sea The Pacific Princess (its exterior seen in the first season of the television show The Love Boat, 1977-87). As with the first book, Apes**t, there’s little/no explanation how the decades-at-sea Pacific Princess became a floating home to the pink crystals and new(?) mutants, so those craving backstories in their entertainment might see that as lacking; if Mellick writes a fourth Apes**t novella—an idea he mused about recently—he might do what he did in Clusterf**k and provide more background about the pink crystals and specific characters.

Another recurring Apes**t element: cringey characters with strange and wild secrets. This time out, they’re less cringey and almost likeable at times. Also revisited are Mellick’s piss takes on political correctness and generational differences (e.g., the ‘r word,’ cultural appropriation), 1970s/1980s television, sex (tacky, gory, horrific), and other social affronts, all spot-on hilarious, and not recommended for the easily offended.

For the rest of us who appreciate deviant humor, unkillable mutants and often-horrible people, Apeship may prove to be a laugh-out-loud, equally over-the-top entry in the Apes**t series.

 

Note to new Apes**t readers: Apeship can be read without reading the books before it. They also can be read in any order. That said, those who enjoy the series may get more enjoyment reading them in publication order because they are loosely linked via character. In this most recent Apes**t entry, Lily and her father (Blaise, aka “Daddy Cool”) are cousin and uncle to frat bro “Extreme Dean” (from Clusterf**k)—early on in Apeship it’s noted that he “went missing last fall.”

The Big Meat by Carlton Mellick III

(pb; 2017)

From the back cover

“The creature was finally dead. After months of fighting it, trying desperately to stop it as it rampaged across the American countryside, turning city after city into a landscape of rubble, we finally managed to beat the damned thing. We actually saved the human species. We survived.

“But the corpse still lingers.

“In the center of the city once known as Portland, Oregon, there lies a mountain of flesh. Hundreds of thousands of tons of rotting flesh. It has filled the city with disease and dead-lizard stench, contaminated the water supply with its greasy putrid fluids, clogged the air with toxic gases so thick that you can’t leave your house without the aid of a gas mask. And no one really knows quite what to do about it. A thousand-man demolition crew has been trying to clear it out one piece at a time, but after three months of work they’ve barely made a dent. And then there’s the junkies who have started burrowing into the monster’s guts, searching for a drug produced by its fire glands, setting back the excavation even longer.

“It seems like the corpse will never go away. And with the quarantine still in place, we’re not even allowed to leave. We’re stuck in this disgusting rotten hell forever.

“The Big Meat is a gut-wrenching, nerve-squirming survival story of loss, addiction and claustrophobia.”

 

Review

Meat, like Mellick’s other nailing-it works, deftly mixes genres, in this case: kaiju, drug addiction, plague and grief dramas as well as science fiction and icky horror. Less light-hearted than works like The Girl with the Barbed Wire Hair, Meat flirts with the saturnine-horrific tone of Village of the Mermaids and built-up dread of Quicksand House—it’s an inspired, entertaining 162-page novel, with its protagonist literally going through a “gut-wrenching” situation, looking for his disappeared Blue Food-addicted brother (David) while struggling to survive physically and economically in what appears to be a lose/suffer-more existence.

One of the many things I love about Mellick’s work is how he, with seeming ease, slips in backstory details without sacrificing its odd genre mix pacing, solid storytelling and relatable emotion impact.

Meat, less flashy in its setup and delivery than some high-profile Mellick's books, sports a profound maturity within its sometimes gory, genre-true (especially for kaiju fans) and inspired situations, a work worth owning—one of my favorite reads this year.

The Girl with the Barbed Wire Hair by Carlton Mellick III

 

(pb; 2022)

 

From the back cover

“This is a ghost story.

“It is also a love story.

“It is a story about obsession, desperation, loneliness, and depravity.

“It is not a story that will make you happy.”

 

Review

Girl is an instantly addictive (in a good way) read, seamlessly incorporating integral facets of Japanese horror (aka J-horror) into a relatively straightforward, sometimes clever-twisty tale: a kind, quiet boy (Yusuke) is thrown into wild situations after helping a strange street girl (Akiko Mori) and, while doing so, attracting the weird-affection attention of his popular, pretty and casually cruel junior high classmate (Narumi Wada). Events spiral out of bloody, community-threatening control when Akiko’s true nature is revealed, playing out in a way that feels true to J-horror and its well-developed character while maintaining a fresh take on it. Girl, Mellick’s sixty-fourth book, is less bizarre in tone and execution, but still a wild, entertaining and standout work, one worth owning.

Quicksand House by Carlton Mellick III

(pb; 2013)

From the back cover

"Tick and Polly have never met their parents before. They live in the same house with them, they dream about them every night, they share the same flesh and blood, yet for some reason their parents have never found the time to visit them even once since they were born. Living in a dark corner of their parents' vast crumbling mansion, the children long for the day when they will finally be held in their mother's loving arms for the first time... But that day seems to never come. They worry their parents have long since forgotten about them.

"When the machines that provide them with food and water stop functioning, the children are forced to venture out of the nursery to find their parents on their own. But the rest of the house is much larger and stranger than they ever could have imagined. The maze-like hallways are dark and seem to go on forever, deranged creatures lurk in every shadow, and the bodies of long-dead children litter the abandoned storerooms. Every minute out of the nursery is a constant battle for survival. And the deeper into the house they go, the more they must unravel the mysteries surrounding their past and the world they've grown up in, if they ever hope to meet the parents they've always longed to see."


Review

Quicksand is an excellent mixture of mystery, science fiction, horror and bizarro fiction, one worth owning. What Mellick has that so many other bizarro authors lack is tight editing, good characterization (which lends itself to a strange sense warmth, bond between key characters) and a willingness to experiment with genre expectations. This is one of my favorite reads of 2017.

Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes by Carlton Mellick III

(pb; 2016)

From the back cover:

"Known for his cute, disturbing, and utterly absurd novels, cult author Carlton Mellick III returns with a tale of childhood love and spontaneous face explosions.

"Ethan is in love with the weird girl in school. The one with the twitchy eyes and spiders in her hair. The one who can't sit still for even a minute and speaks in an odd squeaky voice. The one they call Spiderweb.

"Although she scares all the other kids in school, Ethan thinks Spiderweb is the cutest, sweetest, most perfect girl in the world. But there's a problem. Whenever they go on a date at the Dairy Queen, her whole fucking face explodes. He's not sure why it happens. She just gets so excited that pressure builds under her skin. Then her face bursts, spraying meat and gore across the room, her eyeballs and lips landing in his strawberry sundae.

"At first, Ethan believes he can deal with his girlfriend's face-exploding condition. But the more he gets to know her, the weirder her condition turns out to be. And as their relationship gets serious, Ethan realizes that the only way to make it work is to become just as strange as she is."

Review:

This sweet-natured, physically icky, original and fast-moving novella is a joyous, sometimes laugh-out-loud read, an R-rated romance for those with bizarro, flirting-with-horror leanings. Every, a near-impossible-to-set-down work, is one of the best strange books I have read in a long while -- worth owning, this.

Village of the Mermaids by Carlton Mellick III

(pb; 2013: novella)

From the back cover:

"MERMAID [mur-meyd] "noun" -- a rare species of fish evolved to resemble the appearance of a woman in order to attract male human prey. Mermaids are protected by the government under the Endangered Species Act, which means you aren't able to kill them even in self-defense. This is especially problematic if you happen to live in the isolated fishing village of Siren Cove, where there exists a healthy population of mermaids in the surrounding waters that view you as the main source of protein in their diet.

"The only thing standing between you and the ravenous sea women is the equally-dangerous supply of human livestock known as Food People. Normally, these "feeder humans" are enough to keep the mermaid population happy and well-fed. But in Siren Cove, the mermaids are avoiding the human livestock and have returned to hunting the frightened local fishermen. It is up to Doctor Black, an eccentric representative of the Food People Corporation, to investigate the matter and hopefully find a way to correct the mermaids' new eating patterns before the remaining villagers end up as fish food."

"Like a Lovecraftian version of David Lynch's Twin Peaks, Village of the Mermaids is a dystopian mystery for the bizarro fiction fan. It proves, once again, how cult author Carlton Mellick III brings the weird to a whole new level."


Review:

Short (111 pages), waste-no-words, mysterious, atmospheric, creepy, full of odd humor, twists, turns and interesting characters, this novella lives up to its bizarro classification, one of the best I have read in the genre, and one of the best I have read this year. Village is worth owning.

Clusterfuck by Carlton Mellick III

(pb; 2013: second book in the Apeshit series)

From the back cover:

"A bunch of douchebag frat boys get trapped in a cave with subterranean cannibal mutants and try to survive not by using their wits but by following the bro code . . . From master of bizarro fiction Carlton Mellick III, author of the international cult hits Satan Burger and Adolf in Wonderland, comes a violent and hilarious B movie in book form. Set in the same woods as Mellick's splatterpunk satire Apeshit, Clusterfuck follows Trent Chesterton, alpha bro, who has come up with what he thinks is a flawless plan to get laid. He invites three hot chicks and his three best bros on a weekend of extreme cave diving in a remote area known as Turtle Mountain, hoping to impress the ladies with his expert caving skills.

"But things don't quite go as Trent planned. For starters, only one of the three chicks turns out to be remotely hot and she has no interest in him for some inexplicable reason. Then he ends up looking like a total dumbass when everyone learns he's never actually gone caving in his entire life. And to top it all off, he's the one to get blamed once they find themselves lost and trapped deep underground with no way to turn back and no possible chance of rescue. What's a bro to do? Sure he could win some points if he actually tried to save the ladies from the family of unkillable subterranean cannibal mutants hunting them for their flesh, but fuck that. No slam piece is worth that amount of effort. He'd much rather just use them as bait so that he can save himself.

"It's Tucker Max versus The Descent in this gore-filled comedy for the camp horror fan."


Review:

Clusterfuck is a worthwhile sequel to Apeshit, as gory, bizarro, entertaining and full-of-dislikable-characters as its predecessor story. (I do not include the trip-reluctant and mostly-smart Lance in Clusterfuck as one of those characters.)

More slapstick comedic and longer than Apeshit, Clusterfuck answers many of the questions set up by the first book. Apeshit is more intense than it sequel, but that is not a criticism of Clusterfuck. (Given how wild and great that first "Turtle Mountain" story is, it would be near-impossible for Mellick -- or any author -- to top that, within the "Turtle Mountain" storyline.) Chance are, if you like Apeshit you will also enjoy Clusterfuck. Followed by Apeship.

Apeshit by Carlton Mellick III

(pb; 2008, 2012: prequel to Clusterfuck)

From the back cover:

"Friday the 13th meets Visitor Q.

"Apeshit is Mellick's love letter to the great and terrible B-horror movie genre. Six trendy teenagers (three cheerleaders and three football players) go to an isolated cabin in the mountains for a weekend of drinking, partying and crazy sex, only to find themselves in the middle of a life and death struggle against a horribly mutated psychotic freak that just won't stay dead. Mellick parodies this horror cliché and twists it into something deeper and stranger. . .  If you are a fan of Takashi Miike, Evil Dead, early Peter Jackson, or Eurotrash horror, then you must read this book."


Review:

More than a shock-for-shock's-sake splatter novel, Apeshit is one of the most wryly hilarious and boundaries-crossing work I have read in a long time. Nothing is sacred in this nihilistic story, with its abortion-themed kink, ultra-gory cinematic scenes and sly twists. Apeshit is not for those who find Stephen King and Dean Koontz disturbing, or those who need to like the characters they are reading about -- it is, however, for those readers who like their splatter and terror works fresh and fearless, unafraid to offend with its waste-no-words (and otherwise well-written) prose.

This is worth owning, if you are a fan of the films and directors mentioned on the above back-cover description. If you are not, and still insist on trying to read it, buy a cheap used copy or try to get it from your local library.

Followed by Clusterfuck.