Content warning: disturbing imagery.

There are hooks in the sauna ceiling. You think nothing of them, concentrating on the heat, on the drops of sweat falling from your face. Afterwards, you sit at a table on a covered patio where they serve you a thin pizza. It's a basic margarita but covered with a layer of crisps. Some of them are deeply burned, but the crunch works well, a contrast to the soft base.

When you're finished, Anders asks if you want some more. You're full. But the waiter brings out the chef, a sweating man with a reddened face. They set down a small bowl with further curls of those crisps. You eat a couple, trying to place the flavour.

You don't put it together until the chef shows you the photographs. From the first one, you can't tell if it's a man or woman hanging from those hooks in the sauna. You can see the plastic sheeting below and the instruments cutting away at the person's back.

"It's the heat," says the waiter. His accent is stronger than Anders'. "It makes it easier to remove."

The chef's second photo has him in the background. You recognise him despite the facemask. He is sweating. In the foreground he works to remove a large patch of skin. From the condition of the other person's back, this is not the first time.

"One must be careful," says the chef. "You have to be like a doctor to avoid infection."

"This is one of the rarest pizzas in Sweden," says the waiter. "You're lucky to pass through Luleå at the right time."

You look towards Anders, and he nods, reaching for another of the crisps. When the chef suggests you take more you want to tell him you're full, you've had enough, but you also don't want to offend anyone. You pick up a small fragment of the skin and this time it tastes different.

Background

One of the downsides of writing online is that you get very clear feedback about people’s responses. For example, I know exactly how many people unsubscribed after last week's horror story. This week I will find out how many people found a story about eating crispy human skin was... too much.

During my MA, one of the tutors warned against writing to a market - how you can end up with work that has been programmed rather than expressing something that’s yours. But I’m happy with this piece and the weirdness. Better to be doing your own thing, even if it’s not the most popular thing you could be doing. I’m not sure why the idea of a horror anthology about Swedish Pizza appeals so much to me, but here we are.

Recommendations

One of the best pieces of horror fiction I’ve read recently is Hanna Boervert’s We Had to Remove this Post. It tells the story of Kayleigh, a content moderator for a platform called Hexa. All day, she looks at the worst that the internet has to offer.

While the book is not intended as horror, and includes no graphic descriptions, the opening does a brilliant job of giving you the feeling of something awful. Kayleigh talks about people always want to know the worst thing she has seen. We're faced with the intimacy of the question, and the prurience of it.

The writing is brilliant, such as the description of the early stages of a relationship, and how this is affected by Kayleigh’s job. There are arbitrary rules for what content is allowed, and there are arbitrary rules about behaviour in the office. Slowly the job poisons everything. At one point, seeing something in real life, the first response of Kayleigh and her team is not shock, but “This isn’t allowed”.

The book ends with a wonderfully creepy denouement - and a bibliography. More fiction should come with a bibliography.