Nothing tastes better than hot chocolate drunk with someone else's lips someone else's tongue someone else's throat. Angela looked around the room – thank god for plastic sheeting protecting the carpet – looked at the others around her, and felt truly comfortable for the first time in her life.

She thought back to how this started – the advert online leading to a life-drawing class that offered something she'd not known she longed for. Something clicked as she watched the life model undress. Even with his ribs bared to the room, the model was confident. Angela sketched the stretched, flayed skin and promised herself – she would be this free.

It took some work – finding a group online, non-refundable membership fees, a series of interviews, then an invitation to a basement in London. She had left a note, just in case, beside the phone she had to leave behind in her flat. There was every possibility this was a mistake, but Angela had to try.

Inside, ordinary-seeming people stood around drinking wine. A young man greeted her, asked if was her first time and ran through the event with her, said that she should take a break if she felt overwhelmed, but she was welcome here. Welcome. A bell rang to get everyone's attention. A woman had entered, flowery dress and sharp knife. It was time to move to the flensing room.

Angela had read exposes online about events like this – horrid, seedy accounts. Here everyone was kind and encouraging, happy to help loosen the skin around a tricky joint. All about, people cast off their skins as easily as removing a cardigan. A young couple was were tender while stripping Angela’s arms to the bones. She was delighted to see her tendons flex for the first time – she loved her fingers so much more after that – she thrilled to her body's intricate construction. She'd never been sure about her calves, her ankles, but they felt different now she'd stroked her own achilles tendon, her tendo calcaneus.

Borrowed fingers curled around the hot chocolate mug. Around her, everyone else shared the same bliss. Soon it would be time to get back into their own bodies, and head out into the world. She slurped her drink, not minding that she was using someone else's lips. She would be back here. She now understood why skeletons smiled.

Background

This story started as a response to jokes I'd seen online about 'cosy splatterpunk', responding to the debate around cosy fantasy. This genre is growing in popularity as the world gets darker. Cosy fiction is controversial, with Dorian Dawes’ The Necessity of Pain in ‘Cozy’ demolishing the politics of Legends and Lattes1, a novel about a retired adventurer opening a coffee shop. Too often the idea of cosiness absorbs structures and meaning direct from capitalism without questioning them.

In some ways, my story here is a writing exercise, but it’s also me engaging with the politics of the extreme horror I read as a child. My local library2 had an excellent horror section and I picked up the Splatterpunk anthology as a teenager, possibly before I had the maturity to understand it3.

Splatterpunk was a very 80s genre. It pushed horror to the very limits of what was acceptable. In part, this was reacting to respectable, bestseller horror, but often resulted in grim edgelording that now looks juvenile and embarrassing4. But there were also writers who used the genre to talk about issues and characters that were excluded from mainstream horror. It’s notably that the two most notable writers that emerged through splatterpunk were Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite.

While the themes of Clive Barker's Cabal were lost on fourteen-year-old James, that book is definitely cosy splatterpunk. Barker tells the story of Boone, a man who’s secretly a monster, and how he comes to terms with his own monstrosity. He resists the medical community’s judgements, eventually finding a hidden community of monsters where he’s accepted for who he is. While I might not have appreciated Barker’s allegories at the time, his work was an important part of my cultural development.

Recommendations

Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You is Ethel Cain's second album of 2025, following the experimental and abrasive Perverts. I think it's a stronger album than its predecessor, Preacher's Daughter, and I'm growing to love it deeply. Willoughby Tucker… is a less singles-led record, prepared to take its time with tracks such as the 7-minute instrumental, Willoughby’s Interlude.

The most interesting thing about Ethel Cain’s work is the story being told by the records. Cain is a character, created by Hayden Silas Anhedönia. Anhedönia has described her work as a sort of film-making through the medium she is most familiar with.

I've always been fascinated by artists who create paracosms, imaginary worlds. An obvious example is the vision of Staten Island as Shaolin from Wu-tang Clan - but the same thing is there in Springsteen's New Jersey, or Nick Cave’s theology. I love how some artists fuse music with place and plots. I’ve always felt a little jealous of artists who have this sort of coherent vision. It’s hard for me to construct something like that from stories that are less than four-hundred words.

Willoughby Tucker… is a prequel album to Preacher’s Daughter, and the character occurs in a heartbreaking song from the latter album, House in Nebraska. I’ve not yet dug deeply into the Ethel Cain’s world (I’m waiting to find just the right fan-written guide) but I love how the connections I can see add texture and depth to the songs.