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Long Fiction Review: Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung by Usman Malik (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 74)

“Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” by Usman Malik

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 74, November 2018

ASIN: B07K386T2B

Available: Kindle edition

 

“Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” is an #ownvoices novelette that takes place in Pakistan. The narrator is a cleaned-up heroin addict who has been accused of killing a doctor in Uch, a site of pilgrimage, at various times, for Sufis, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. The tale is his confession to the police, who he is certain will turn him over to some very angry heroin dealers who think he swindled them.

The narrator tells the story of being rescued and sobered up by a doctor studying snake venoms for their healing uses,  who has been asking addicts in the park if they have seen a girl in a photo he carries. The girl turns out to be his wife, Maliha, purchased by him when she was eight years old, who became a herpetologist. Maliha ran away to seek the Serpent Pearl, a mythological stone given by the Serpent King of the underworld to his wife, which gave her the power to command animals and birds, immunity to venom, open a gateway to other worlds, and immortality, that she believed could be found in Uch. The doctor decides to follow her to Uch, accompanied by the narrator, who is now on the run from heroin dealers.

In Uch, they approach a shrine during a musical festival. The narrator follows the doctor past the crowd and into the shrine, and witnesses the doctor’s apparent, and fatal, reunion with his wife, who may be a cobra, or an apparition, or may be something else entirely, driving him to poison the water supply of Uch with snake venom as he loses touch with reality.

The setting and much of the language are way outside of my realm of experience, and I don’t feel that I can truly do this story justice, but I can say that the summary above in no way can express the feeling of this tale. It is a fever dream that creates a world that envelops the reader in a combination of the grim life of a heroin addict, with a dark mythology grounded in both Pakistani folklore and cosmic horror.  At the same time, it is grounded in a terrible real-life story: the doctor who purchases a wife when she is eight, and chases her down when she runs away as a young woman. In “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” Usman Malik steps the reader into an unreal, fantastic, and horrifying world that he makes very, very real.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” is a nominee on the final ballot of the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction. 

Long Fiction Review: “You Are Released” by Joe Hill (in Fright or Flight edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent)

“You Are Released” by Joe Hill (in Fright or Flight edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent)

Cemetery Dance, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1587676796

Available: Hardcover, paperback, audiobook, audio CD

 

Joe Hill has never shied away from uneasy stories or topics in his work. When Stephen King and Bev Vincent chose stories related to terror in the air for their book, they chose some obvious ones, but thankfully, Hill took a left turn and tried something different. Joe Hill’s piece details an ill-fated flight with a cast of characters that is representative of America, both good and bad. Readers might be hoping for something supernatural here, to feel comfortable about, but the claustrophobic setting he creates mirrors the fears most readers face, or refuse to admit, are part of the reality in society today. What occurs inside the plane is just as disturbing, if not more, than the disaster that upends the outside world. I had a quibble with the ending, but on repeated readings, it resonates in a way that should.

 

Reviewed by Dave Simms

 

Editor’s note: “You Are Released” is a nominee on the final ballot for the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.