Peter Mitchell graduated rehab yesterday. Happy to be home, back to his wife, children, work as a software designer. Eager to make amends. But it all begins to feel inside out. Upside down. Like people despise him. Stares execute. Conversations stab. Or is it all is his mind?
His wife, children and dog soon loathe and fear him. Co-workers malignant; icy. His rehab psychiatrist, Dr. Gladd, reminds him new sobriety brings vulnerability; alcohol’s firewall gone, menace imagined; a self-sabotaging mirror.
But Gladd is wrong. It’s real.
And nowhere is safe.
Strangers viciously turn on Peter. He’s fired. Forced by his wife to leave the family home; exiled. Running for his life, terrified, hiding in creases of L.A. Evading two ruthless men who pursue him. As he flees, he discovers a ghastly secret about why the world is literally out to get him—a maze of lies and horror. He desperately avoids capture. Torture. Death clock ticking; a gallows. His enemies stopping at nothing. He can trust only himself to unravel the nightmare, destroy it.
Get his life back.
Before it’s devoured; gone.
Trigger warning: I’m discussing drug addiction and alcoholism in detail.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe. This book’s story is by R.C. Matheson (who is new to me) and Mick Garris (who I’m a lifelong fan of), and is written by Matheson. Oh, my goodness gracious, it almost brought me to tears.
Peter is an alcoholic who is really doing his best to overcome the addiction and straighten himself out for the sake of his family. Once sober and leaving rehab, he starts to notice that people seem to detest him, almost immediately on sight. This escalates, and Peter finds himself bewildered, terrified, and lost.
I read this book in one sitting and found it thoroughly engaging and captivating. Peter’s plight, both internal and external, borders on savage. There a large section of his journey that felt helpless and hopeless, but then there’d be a wave of hope, a feeling of questions being answered, of the ability to move forward, and it got me thinking about how well this book handled the theme.
Addiction is a worldwide health issue that affects many more people than we seem to think it does, and under the right circumstances, it can afflict anyone. It truly lies in “battling your demons” territory, and yet I can only think of a handful of horror genre works in which this is explored to the degree it is here. King’s The Shining, of course, is a great, effective example. Jay Bonansinga’s Self Storage is also excellent. And now, I have discovered this.
Peter is a character that I felt so much empathy for, and also frustration with, simultaneously. He’s in rehab to try to overcome his alcoholism, but any addict will tell you that sobriety is not a linear process, and that no matter how long you don’t partake in whatever your poison of choice is, there is no guarantee that even with a decade of sobriety, you won’t relapse, or have a minor slip. This is, emotionally and mentally, an extremely tough reality for someone overcoming an addiction – to know that something within you has fundamentally changed into something out of your control. There’s been a chemical shift (something I feel that people who’ve never suffered with an addiction don’t know). I do know this, because in 2010 I spent two weeks on a morphine drip (following some very serious injuries and surgeries), and spent months tapering off opiates. I’m taking a personal diversion for two paragraphs, but there’s a point I’m getting around to with it, so bear with me.
Tapering off those drugs and then hitting the cold-turkey phase was physically and mentally the most horrendous experience I’ve ever endured, worse than the surgical recoveries, and I wouldn’t wish withdrawal like that on my worst enemy. Realising, several years later because of a bout of migraines, that – oh no – I will forever actually be an addict, was soul-crushing. I thought that “overcoming” that part of my life meant that I was done with it, never to think of it again. I took over-the-counter migraine tablets, which contain codeine, and the next thing I knew, I realised almost a month later that I’d, quite without even thinking about it, been taking codeine every day for four weeks. And yay, now I had to go through withdrawal again. It was, if you’ll forgive the slight pun, a sobering experience.
I have permanent back pain (a broken spine was in my list of injuries that kicked this all off in the first place), which has worsened as I’ve aged, and sometimes I experience trapped nerves and pain so excruciating that my only option is painkillers. Also, as I mentioned, these migraines! They have become debilitating over the last couple of years, and guess what the only solution has been? Painkillers. I no longer consider myself in serious risk of taking them too much, but that’s because I am now so aware – and so afraid – of letting that happen again that I carefully consider how much pain I can stand before I have to resort to taking my prescriptions. Also, I have assigned my husband the keeper of these prescriptions, and I don’t know where they are in the house, I have to ask him for them. This has ensured I won’t just go munching them if I stub my toe.
The reason I told you that is because there is a judgment hanging over addicts, assumptions made about their character, this idea – especially when others are affected by their issues – that they’re selfish and weak for not just stopping. A judgment that cuts so deeply that I felt the need to over-explain my own experience to you, lest you turn your back on me and vow to side-eye all goats for eternity. There are also often assumptions that addiction is self-inflicted in the first place, that to be an addict is somehow a moral or intellectual failing. Let me tell you, no one wants or thinks they’re going to become an addict. That mum that makes jokes about her wine consumption on the weekend? That person who, through no fault of their own, was on a morphine drip? Kids that grow up in smoker houses and realise when they hit 40 that they now smoke twice as much as their parents? It can happen, literally, to anyone. And worst of all is that this judgment isn’t just from other people, the call is coming most strongly from inside the house.
This novel explores both the external pressures and judgments and lack of trust in the addict, and the internal fear, self-loathing, and completely crushed self-esteem of the addict. Peter spends this entire book, for various reasons, feeling like a complete piece of shit. Like a failure as a man, a husband, and a father. He’s a failure at work, and socially, he’s a pariah. When bad things happen to him, even his own wife doesn’t believe him and assumes he’s lying. Everyone he comes into contact with seems to know there’s something not just wrong, but loathsome about him, and that’s what was choking me up. Drinking caused problems, but also seems to keep other problems at bay. Sometimes, it seems the only answer is the bottle. Even when he is sober, when he’s confident he’s doing better, everyone expects him to let them down and they let him know it. That is the angle that I felt was handled most brilliantly here – that feeling that even sober, deep down you’re still a weak mess that doesn’t deserve to be trusted and loved. That feeling that no matter how long you’re sober for, no one believes you, and no one will ever think of you the way you want to be thought of again. It is a hideous, heart-breaking headspace to be in, and if ever I’ve read a book that really digs into this aspect of addiction, it’s this one. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything else that comes close to so effectively communicating this side of this issue.
I was thoroughly impressed by this novel and was, in equal measure, touched by the sincerity and sensitivity, and entertained by its execution.
If you’d like to check out the book or its creators, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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