Laura Mauro, who this past Sunday won a British Fantasy Award in the ‘Best Short Story’ category, is in my mind one of the forefront authors of this new ‘Golden Age’ of genre writing. ‘When Charlie Sleeps’ is a tale about a creature in a bath who controls the mood of the city of London and the three women who look after him. That this story is inspired by the Skunk Anansie song ‘Charlie Big Potato’ makes the tale even more weird and gives an added dimension to the decay and chaos in the story.

First Published in Black Static #37, 2013. Collected in Best British Horror 2014, Salt