REVIEW: Abortion Arcade by Cameron Pierce
Abortion Arcade is a collection of 3 short stories, No Children, The Roadkill Quarterback of Heavy Metal High and The Destroyed Room. To be blunt, I didn’t enjoy reading these stories at all. Some, No Children, were beyond grotesque and the others fall into the sub genre of bizarro fiction. That being said, I’ll continue.
No Children is a short zombie story where the world is now populated and controlled by the undead. Humans are kept in ‘farms’ where they are fed ground up remains of other humans and made to mate with females that their zombie masters choose for them. This is referred to as a wedding and the unlucky male after allegedly consummating the marriage, is beheaded the next morning. The brain of the recently beheaded is used to somehow power the zombie homes. That part of the story got a little out there and made me think that I was possibly tripping on LSD or some combination of mind altering drugs and shrooms. While some may call this an apocalyptic love story whereas the boy pines for a girl whom he will in all probability never have any kind of relationship with, No Children is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.
The Roadkill Quarterback of Heavy Metal High centers on a werewolf, Danny, and this is not one who is like any you may be thinking of, that is thrust into the position of quarterback after the first string quarterback is tragically killed in an accident. Just to clarify, this is not a normal high school. Some of the cheerleaders are zombies; the faculty consists of mummies, a sadistic robot and several uncategorized creatures. On the outside, this story could be subjective and symbolic of teenage angst and life in high school in general or it could just be a really weird, surrealistic look at how the author saw his high school years. The main character is obsessed with heavy metal and trying to win the love of the head cheerleader. This is in relation to what most high schoolers and teenagers go through during those years. No matter how large or small a school is, there are always those ‘groups’ that students migrate to. Symbolically, the werewolf, Danny, is the odd kid out. Not good enough to be first string so he’s the delegated bench warmer until Moose, (apt name) is killed in a tragic monster truck collision with two military cargo trucks transporting napalm. The storyline moves on from there to Danny trying to get out of being the starting player against the Country Vampires, the opposing team. The end result, if this was a John Hughes film, would be to win the heart of the head cheerleader, Barbetta who just happens to be a zombie. That is not the end result to this little story.
The Destroyed Room is about a man, Simon and his wife Celia. This story is again one where you have to consider the bizarro factor and then step back to look at the symbolism and surrealism of the overall story. Simon discovers that all he knows and the people he thought he knew are actually marionettes and that once you disconnect their strings, they no longer interact with you. With confusion reminiscent of ‘Brazil’, the story moves along to the point where Simon realizes that he is just a puppet doing the bidding of someone or something else.
This collection of stories without a doubt, are the strangest, most grotesque and disturbing that I have read in a very long time. Cameron Pierce writes bizarro fiction that is similar to what others would refer to as ‘cult classics’. This style and genre is not for everyone.
Available at Amazon.
