THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #64: "A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" by Charles Birkin

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Get a bunch of people together and ask them what they thought was the most horrifying moment of the 20th Century. Nine out of every ten will probably mention the Holocaust. Birkin is the first of this batch of post-war writers to bring up that horrible chapter in humanity’s life.



The commanding officers of a concentration camp gather together five of their prisoners, all of whom are kind of relieved. Usually, when Jews are singled out at the camp, they are sent to their deaths. These five pass up the usual death destinations, but one of them, Cohn, feels that their captors have something nasty in mind for them.


The Nazis have dressed up five coconuts as the leaders of their opposing armies, from Churchill to Roosevelt to Stalin, etc. They have also given these five prisoners projectile weapons. The idea is, one by one, these prisoners will have a few opportunities to hit their coconut targets. The four who have the highest scores will be given posh jobs, and their loved ones in the female section of the camp will be given extra food. The lowest scorer will go back to his old job in shame.


Naturally, they’re all eager to get out of the usual shit labor, so they do their best with this competition. Even so, Cohn suspects something is off about this, that maybe these Nazis are just doing this because they’re bored. But not even he, the youngest and strongest of the Jews chosen for this contest, can guess the depths of depravity involved with this exercise.


SPOILER ALERT: Not surprisingly, Cohn scores the highest, and after a tie-breaker, the lowest scorer is determined. As a reward, the Nazis give them their coconut targets, telling them that prizes reside in the middle of them. Cohn opens up his coconut to discover the head of his beloved wife. The other husbands also find the heads of their wives, and the only one who doesn’t have a wife finds the head of his daughter.


Holy shit. Can this story get any uglier? Well . . . yes, it can. Cohn, angered by this development, throws his wife’s head at the Nazi in charge and gets shot in the guts and dick for his effort. They leave him in the dirt, dying, and ship the others off to their new hell. Meanwhile, Cohn tries his best to crawl his way to the head Nazi to exact his revenge, except . . . well, he doesn’t get it. The Nazi in charge sees him later, and when his underling goes to shoot Cohn, the Nazi stops him, telling him that the Jew will die anyway, so why waste the bullet?


And that’s it. There is no moral, only horror. Deep, dark, stark, relentless horror. END OF SPOILERS.


This is the most nihilistic story ever put to paper. Birkin has no point to prove, aside from the fact that all human beings are scum, and there is no reward for effort. That is probably what makes this one of the most horrifying stories in this volume.


It’s an ugly tale. Most people won’t have the stomach for it. It takes only the truest, purest horror fan to get into this story. Even then, it’s kind of hard. There is too much exposition in the beginning. Birkin doesn’t get to the story until he’s a few pages in. But once you get past that, the reward—or rather, the horror—is exquisite. You will not forget this story, even though you may want to.


[This story first appeared in SHAFTS OF FEAR and cannot be read online at this time.]