Drippy Trippy Doom: Strange Tales

The Weird Tale and the stories of “Cosmic Horror” within, have haunted and fascinated the human scope of imagination for close to one hundred years. Beginning in the pulp tradition of the magazine of the same name that coined the genre. With countless books, poetry, radio, film, and television, we continue to read, watch, scribble, sketch, paint, and sculpt these monsters within the mist, sirens serenading along the shores of folklore and myth.

Those who seek out such terrifying wonders, like a misfit cult, Cthulhu’s children drawn to fantastic worlds full of leviathans and old gods hidden in the night sky and below the fury of mountains, the unknowable sea, and behind other-dimensional doors we dare not open yet cannot help but turn its knob in spite of how such dark colors out of space take shape. For the behemoths of unmerciful death and blinding madness knock so loudly from the other side of infinity, hiding from “reality” and biding their time, steeped in ancient, tentacled malevolence.

Author H. P. Lovecraft, summoned the influences of earlier weird tale writers like Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Alan Poe, and Robert Chambers, inventing a sub genre that, when recognizing such distinct cosmic traits of Elder gods, mysterious cults, or omnipotent beings from beyond human understanding in any form of art, we simply describe these now well worn tropes as, “Lovecraftian”.

Many talented writers and fans of Lovecraft, including Robert E Howard, Robert Bloch, Stephen King, and Brian Keene, have successfully tried their hands at their own version of cosmic horror within short fiction and novels. Californian author, David Kane, keeps to this tradition with his latest short story collection, “Drippy Trippy Doom: Strange Tales.” Each of David’s stories are accompanied by beautifully rendered and badass illustrations, any of which would make a fantastic tattoo, by illustrator and musician, Jorge Pena.

One of the biggest draws to creating your own Lovecraftian fiction is the infinite broadness of your canvass in which you can paint across. The bandwidth of imagination running wild within dark forests of apathetic stars and beautiful agony. Playing make believe within a peculiar treehouse you rediscover from your youth, that looks like the one you played in as a child but feels odd and slightly off. Wooden boards, nails, and shingles framed too small from the outside but enter and vast worlds of danger lie behind an added door inside, you know your dad never built.

Kane, an obvious died in the celestial wool, cosmic horror cultist, and weird tale weirdo who is no stranger to a strange tale, gives the reader thirteen stories within his ominous omnibus, ranging from attending a goth-punk concert from Hell, a gooey reunion of estranged siblings where insanity fills the void created by familial distance, a journalist seeking justice and truth against a Cult Of Yuck, and even two undercover cops in over their heads with a Lovecraftian drug dealer, among others.

The author weaves the bleakest of reoccurring themes into each differing account. Accursed survival across desolate, desert landscapes. Undiscovered caves housing aquatic succubi hidden off coastlines holding up dilapidated New England Saltboxes. Elderich horror conjuring interdimensional hard drugs, Hellbound Doompunks, unethical scientists, all powerful cults, the exposure to otherworldly biomaterial impersonating food and drink, human and animal biology, complex machinery, medicine, and wickedly inhumane medical procedures. Human characters suspended into the bizarro body horror of trans-inhumanism where flesh mutates into amphibious scales, lungs become gills to breathe in unknown fluorescent waters, breath becomes neon pink vapor, human blood boils into ectoplasm, and meatless bones soften like unhygienic, silk smoothies.

Kane, injects his themes and influences with the used heroine needle of hyperliterate prose, overwhelming his collection’s vascular system, threatening to explode it’s rapidly beating black heart. The hyperkinetic pace carries the terminal infection of obsession, gore, and the disintegration of mental health when facing “cosmic truth” beyond our capacity of understanding. Depending on the tale, Kane oscillates briefly between matter-of-fact minimalism propelling plot, to maximizing the outright lyrical beauty of prose poetry about grotesque entities and appendages that ooze and shake and eat and destroy worlds, creating what feels like his own cosmo-bio-medicinal vocabulary and vernacular to an almost Burgessian level. The author dances across the thinnest line of dreams and nightmares while walking intoxicated across a fine line of playful clever word play, baked in dark humor and outright opaque abstraction bordering on the verbose. Some stories may pull you along breathlessly in its narrative before concluding in a dense fog of bewilderment and chaos where we comprehend no clear outcome.

But Kane’s style crackles like a cosmic storm at a schizophrenic pace before halting as deep dive into the dense, unforgiving void; unconcerned with whether the reader still holds their wits, mostly feels purposeful and controlled. The reader may have lost their way, but the author is already at the destination, daring us to figure out how it and we end. The author understands that in Lovecraft country, there are no endings. Only the fear of eternal beginnings. For some readers, the lack of clear narrative and easily digestible prose may be a deterrent, as these are not your typical horror stories, and many sections read as pure, abstract poetry. For myself, this style excels as a feature and not a Lovecraftian bug. Just like Kane’s characters, the reader begins on page one, feeling in control of their faculties, but by the final sentence may fall under the influence of Kane’s monstrous substances, ancient magic, terrible monsters, and loss of sanity his protagonists experience in deafening primordial ambiguity. It’s the kind of hellish music that’s my jam indeed.

I would recommend David Kane’s strange tales for anytime and occasion, but as we move closer to Autumn and the Witching Season, Drippy Trippy Doom: Strange Tales, makes an excellent seasonal and holiday read to enhance your spooky season ambience. Kane has summoned, through his original talent, a uniquely honed voice and style calling out from a collection of cosmic horrors crafted with a love that would make Lovecraft proud.

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Kyle Ryan’s Substack is called Empyrean Almanac, where he writes monthly poetry, southern gothic short fiction, and the occasional horror film essay under, The Scarestack Society. He also cohost the Substack pub trivia gameshow, Prose And Cons, with Jennifer Hong/ @JHong.

David Kane writes Weird fiction and psychotronic articles. He is the author of Drippy Trippy Doom and a performer of absurdist theatre. He’s been published in Cosmic Pulp Zine, I Have That On Vinyl, and psychopomp.com. Follow him on Substack or at doompunkdispatch.com, if you’re a true blue doompunk.

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