THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #92: A review of "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" by Poppy Z. Brite

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[WARNING:  The link above will lead to a NSFW picture of Poppy Z. Brite.]


Anyone who has read Brite’s work in the past knows she can get down and dirty, possibly even nastier than most of her fellow horror writers. Does she live up to expectations in her entry in this anthology?



The unnamed narrator of this piece was born in Calcutta, but his mother died in labor the night the entire hospital burned to the ground. His father, an American, takes him to the US and raises him as an American boy. However, when the ol’ man croaks due to his boozing, the narrator decides to check out his homeland. He finds it to be a hellhole, but kind of a beautiful hellhole. It would be interesting to see what a guy like Campbell or Ligotti would do with Brite’s Calcutta.


Unfortunately, while he’s in Calcutta, the zombie apocalypse begins. In Calcutta, though, it doesn’t seem to be much of a big deal, since most people were walking dead anyway. It also seems that the only people who are in danger are the ones who have given up on life and the ones who are infirm. Strong young men like our narrator will probably be fine, just so long as he continues staying in his flat on the second floor (zombies aren’t good at climbing stairs) and keeps his door locked (they’re not good with the metallurgic arts, either).


These zombies are so slow and ineffectual, the narrator wanders the city in the daytime, oblivious to the undead eating, say, a baby fresh from its mother’s arms. Here is where Brite gets particularly ugly. She gives us a couple of hideous images that alone earn her this spot in Pelan’s book. Apparently, the choicest bits of humans for zombies to eat are the genitals. Male or female, it doesn’t matter. They’ll spread a victim's legs and just bury their choppers into soft, pink sex organs and they’ll gnaw away until they’re deep into the body. In another moment, Brite describes the zombies biting into a new mother’s breasts, bursting them like the udders they are and lapping at the blood and milk that pours from them.


Ugh.


Anyway, our narrator likes to hang out at the temple of Kali and marvel at the gifts people have left her. Mostly, they’re stuff like the flowers he brings, but there are also things like fingers and ears. He had once left a bit of his own blood, so he can only assume that people chopped these pieces off of themselves for their goddess of destruction.


For the most part, this story meanders, describing the beauty and gore of one of the filthiest cities in the world (Brite has one of her characters call the world a whore, and Calcutta her pussy). In parts, she overdoes it a little. But in the end, shit gets real. That’s where the meat of the story happens. SPOILER ALERT: What kind of god do you think zombies worship? After everything described here, any answer other than Kali would be silly.


During a late-night rambling session, the narrator comes to the temple of Kali from another, unfamiliar angle, and when he walks in, kind of crept out by the fact that he’s never been here after sunset, he discovers that the dead have gathered around the idol of Kali, leaving all sorts of gruesome sacrifices for her.


And Kali is very much alive. Her tongue lolls from her wet mouth, and when she sees the narrator, she opens her legs, showing off a pussy unlike any seen before. The narrator wants to shove his head in it and keep going until he reaches the center of the world.


Instead, he flees, and wisely so. END OF SPOILERS.


While the story itself wanders a bit too much from the point, the ending more than makes up for it. Even without the ending, though, some of these descriptive scenes would be enough to get Brite into this book. Don’t pass up this little gem.


[This story first appeared in STILL DEAD and cannot be read online at this time.]