Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson

He hasn’t killed anyone-yet.Īngie fights back one day when Cypher goes way too far as she begs him for more drugs. Curtis, meanwhile, is a psychopath just waiting to burst forth from his shell, plagued by headaches that seemingly urge him to do bad things. Cypher is also Angie’s baby daddy, with their mutual child Kaya being mostly neglected while Angie looks for another score and Cypher is off doing God knows what.

Angie is a drug addict, and willfully accepts the horrible abuse inflicted upon her by the story’s antagonist, Cypher. It follows Angie and Curtis, two very, very troubled souls as they embark on a path that will see the two meet up. Unlike some dark fiction though, where it can often feel depraved for its own sake, this is a powerful meditation on substance abuse, toxic relationships, and a damn fine piece of bizarro horror in its own right.

In fact, it is up there with one of the darkest books I’ve ever read. To say this book is bleak is something of an understatement. One author operating in this sub-sub-genre is Jeremy Robert Johnson, and today I’m going to highlight my three favorite books by him.īe warned that we will be discussing some disturbing subject matter, particularly with our first entry. Nothing is off limits with these stories either, with the subject matter sometimes being so perverse that you couldn’t bring the book out in public for fear of getting sideways glances just from the cover. It is, for the most part, exactly what it says on the package-stories that are off the wall, the kind that make you sound like a raving lunatic when you describe them to somebody. There’s a sub-sub-genre of horror and science fiction called bizarro.

Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson