From the Bram Stoker Award®-finalist and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, a grim yet gentle, horrifying yet hopeful tale of grief, trauma, and love.
If you’re reading this, you’ve likely thought that the world would be a better place without you.
A single line of text, glowing in the darkness of the internet. Written by Ashley Lutin, who has often thought that, and worse, in the years since his wife died and his young son disappeared. But the peace of the grave is not for Ashley—it’s for those he can help. Ashley Lutin has constructed a peculiar ritual for those whose desire to die is at war with their yearning to live a better life.
Struggling to overcome his never-ending grief, one night Ashley connects with Jinx, who spins a tale both revolting and fascinating. This begins a relationship that traps the men in a tightening spiral of painful revelations, where long-hidden secrets are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light.
Only through pain can we find healing. Only through death can we find life.
Dark bleatings, my dark tribe! I’m very excited to be talking about Eric LaRocca’s upcoming book, At Dark, I Become Loathsome today. I was disturbed and disgusted, but also moved. LaRocca writes even the most depraved, hideous scenes and character traits with such empathy that despite the direction this story goes in, I couldn’t find it in myself to loathe the protagonist – certainly not as much as he loathes himself, anyway.
Ashley, or ‘Sad Boy’ is a depressed, grieving widower who not only lost his wife to illness, but his young son when he was taken. It’s been a year and the police aren’t any closer to finding him. Ashley is full of regret, self-hatred, and is only managing to cling on because of the slither of hope he has that he’ll see his son alive again.
What he does for work is…interesting, and very fitting of his character. This is an element of the story that I absolutely loved because it’s just so different to anything I’ve ever read, as concepts go. He helps people who struggle with suicidal ideation. This isn’t a charitable effort, it’s how he makes his living, but he does believe he’s doing something good. The ritual, as he calls it, involves a fake death and burial – coffin and all. When the customer emerges after being dug back up, they see life through a different lens, now knowing what it feels like to be set in their eternal resting place.
The story follows Ashley as he talks to and meets various clients, who tell him their stories – or just other stories. We waver between sincere depression and hopelessness, and depraved tales of explicit sex and violence.
Things take a horrible turn for both Ashley and his next client when the police deliver some potentially devastating updates on the case of his missing son. Suddenly, with his own hope lost, Ashley wonders if he’s actually helping anyone by pulling them back from death rather than just letting them go…
Thematically, there’s a lot going on – we’re dealing with grief, a heavy emotion that LaRocca depicts beautifully through his characters here. And loss, which isn’t necessarily the same thing. But it goes deeper than even those dark waters, because Ashley has so much self-loathing, it makes me want to give him a hug. He considers himself loathsome, believing he is somehow worse during the night when it’s dark than he is during the day. It’s a potentially complex metaphor that likely hints at aspects of himself he considers shameful (that he must keep concealed in the shadows, so to speak), and felt particularly wretched about during his marriage. These issues with himself stretch very far back, well before his bereavement.
None of this excuses some of his later decisions but I totally understand why his mind strays into the territory it goes into. Complete hopelessness effs you up.
Something else that I really loved about this story was that though Ashley isn’t utterly hopeless and though there is potential for peace there, his journey illustrates how easily you can permanently mess things up for yourself later, should you give in to one intrusive thought when you’re in the midst of your worst emotional state. There’s this idea in society that we shouldn’t allow our emotions to rule us, but we are our emotions, aren’t we? A lot of the time we can control our behaviour, but what’s bubbling away beneath that isn’t something you can always just pop a plucky positive attitude onto and change. Sometimes, your mind gets the better of you.
Overall, this is horrible but awesome to read, and a lesser writer could easily have totally botched its execution. I was in awe of how raw, honest, and evocative it was. It’s melancholy and almost relentlessly depressing, but impossible to put down because it’s so compelling. I wouldn’t call it extreme horror but there is definitely some tough subject matter here. If I had to compare it to anything, I’d have to say it reminds me of Exquisite Corpse (Poppy Z. Brite/Billy Martin). Story-wise, we’re really not even in the same ballpark, but in terms of how LaRocca writes such tough subject matter with unflinching sincerity, that’s the category I’d put it in.
I’d recommend this to horror fans looking for a complex, disturbing character study, and readers that enjoy feeling really uncomfortable and full of dread. MWAHAHAHAH!
If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is expected to be unleashed on the 28th January, 2025.
Bleeeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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