Another awesome writer (and awesome human) I met through Storm. I worked with Kim on her novel Tourniquet for Immanion Press. I had thought I knew Kim’s writing: gothic wonderment; strange steampunk circuses; muscle cars; the smell of diesel and worlds burning… but ‘Rotten Things’ was a total surprise and an utter delight. I read this story a while before it was published and loved it immediately.
Set in the gothic wild of the Louisiana swamp, young Edmée is an unwanted child, too loud and bothersome for her aunt and uncle. When she comes home making a noise about a yellow house on legs, instead of listening to her strange tale they have murder on their minds and throw her under the trailer to where an alligator lies waiting.
The inhabitant of the yellow house, Marie St Angel, hears her death cries and works her magic to bring the child out of still lifelessness in the swamp and instructs her to seek out those she has wronged to enact revenge and clean her spirit.
There is a lushness and verdancy running through the prose. The characterisation is deftly done, and you find yourself rooting for the little monster as she wreaks her horrid vengeance with sharp teeth and tricks those who would be tricksters.
First published in ParSec, 2022. Collected in Sparks Flying, Newcon Press, 2023
A Personal Anthology 