This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances by Eric LaRocca

This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances is a collection of four stories from horror writer Eric LaRocca, all delving into the weird and dark sides of people’s nature. The opening letter to the reader warns of claustrophobic stories and asks the reader if they want to read such upsetting stories, a framing that plays with expectations as much as it warns people. As I’ve found with other LaRocca story collections, some of them felt unsettling and dark, with clever endings, and others didn’t work as well for me.

My favourite was probably the titular story, ‘This Skin Was Once Mine’, which is also the longest in the book. It combines what happens when you learn the truth about an idolised family member after their death with a load of snakes and a weird caretaker-type figure, and the length of the story meant that it was vividly drawn with a decent amount of depth to the main character. The ending is predictably fitting and overall the story looks at the ways in which families perpetuate violence.

I also enjoyed ‘All the Parts of You That Won’t Easily Burn’ because it starts as one kind of story and ends as another, a weird journey into self-mutilation that just gets more horrifying. That story probably justifies the warning at the start, as I’m sure it’ll make a lot of people flinch (and it reminds me of the vibe of something like Alison Rumfitt’s Brainwyrms).

The other two stories, ‘Seedling’ and ‘Prickle’, were short and felt a bit too similar to other LaRocca stories to me (‘Seedling’ comes immediately after ‘This Skin Was Once Mine’ and is also about someone returning to their family home after the death of a parent). ‘Seedling’ wasn’t for me, as I didn’t feel like it went anywhere, and whilst I liked the premise of ‘Prickle’ (two old men playing a cruel game in a park), again it didn’t particularly go anywhere interesting or resolve a few of the details in it.

The two meatiest stories in this collection were exactly what I was looking for from it, with well-fleshed out protagonists in weird, dark situations. The other two were perhaps less distinctive short stories, but I suppose it’s probably a good idea to not have four very intense stories in the book for some readers…