Nathan Ballingrud | Horror | Ep. 7

Horror and dark fantasy writer Nathan Ballingrud reads a passage from his novella, The Butcher’s Table, originally published in the short fiction collection Wounds (The Atlas of Hell). He talks to Jon and Cory about:The story’s origins as a blog serialHis initial struggles to commit to the significant tonal departure from the stories in his first collection, North American Lake MonstersThe fear of being taken less seriously by writing pulpy, fantastical fictionHow Mike Mignola's Hellboy inspired him to commit to something as over-the-top as an angel-possessed squidSwitching between laptop and pen and paper to unlock looser, more reckless draftingLearning to write by mimicking Stephen King and Clive BarkerAttending Clarion WorkshopWhy he tries to avoid reading reviews (including those on Reddit, Goodreads, and social media)His love of Mervyn Peake and the Gormenghast booksNathan’s passage, from The Butcher’s Table:It spoke a word that fractured the jaw of its host, registering the pain as a curiosity. Upon hearing the word, one of the roosting angels took flight, rearing against the sun in a flare of black feathers, and plummeted into the sea, where it sank from sight like a corpse weighted with stones. The angel descended quickly, a dark-feathered ball, until it passed beyond the reach of sunlight and the water grew cold and black. It fell more deeply yet, oblivious to the atmospheres pressing against its body, its eyes pulling from the lightless fathom darting shapes, shifting mountains of flesh.It found a host, made a bloody gash and wriggled into it, and filled the beast with its holy spirit. Skin split in fissures along the length of its form, and it jetted forward with fresh purpose, its tentacles trailing in a tight formation behind it, its red saucer-shaped eyes incandescent with hunger.[...skips about 10 pages…]It was a squid, a deep-sea monstrosity with tentacles nearly as long as the ship itself, and it was inverted in the sky. Its arms pulled the sails from their masts, yanked yardarms free of their moorings. People slid from the deck and into the churning water. The squid hovered in the air, its skin split lengthwise, revealing the white flesh of its interior, as though something within itself did not fit. Ragged black feathers jutted from the wounds. Its tentacles splayed in the air around it, a corona of horrors. Its glaring eyes smoked in the beating rain.