"Any Corpse" by Brian Evenson

An unforgettable masterpiece from the best horror writer working today.

As I read through Brian Evenson's latest collection of stories "A Collapse of Horses" certain stories linger with me longer than others. The first story with such an effect is "Black Bark" which you can read my thoughts on here. Another story that is difficult story to forget is "Any Corpse" which I am going to write about now.

"Any Corpse" begins with a shower of raw flesh falling from the sky. We have a female POV observing furnishers, human-like creatures that prod at the raw flesh and attempt to sell it in exchange for beads. We then learn that our female protagonist desires an alive and in tact human body. The premise of this story is bizarre to say the least. We learn that our protagonist is one of many who live in caves and who possess a tablature used to perform a ritual. Later the protagonist asks the furnishers for a corpse. The furnishers respond by asking "what corpse?" to which the protagonist says "any corpse," so long that it is freshly dead. The protagonist fails to understand that "any corpse" includes herself so she is killed by the furnishers. 

After the furnishers kill the protagonist, they expect the protagonists corpse to provide payment. The furnishers would almost be adorable if they weren't murderous humanoid creatures who make a living selling flesh. What's frustrating about this story is that we don't know enough about the furnishers. Why are they called furnishers? What are beads and why do the furnishers desire them? I would very much like to pick Evenson's brain to understand where he got the inspiration for this story.

In the second half of this story, we switch to a male protagonist in the same situation as the first one. He also is searching for a recently deceased body. He meets up with some furnishers and buys the woman's body from the first half. He performs a ritual that revives the corpse and begins asking questions. The corpse is not exactly cooperative. She ends up spitting in the mans face before she dies again for good. 

Later on our male protagonist intends to cook and eat the woman's body. A group of furnishers come to the man's cave. The man asks for another body and ends up making the same mistake as the woman by saying that any corpse will do. The story ends with the furnishers gathered outside of the cave saying "person please out of cave."

While reading Evenson's stories, I often feel just as confused as the characters in said stories. I find myself motivated to read his stories because I want to understand the mysterious events taking place. Unfortunately I am never able to satisfy this urge. When the story ends I am just as clueless as when I started reading. Evenson does not explain why his stories are so weird. Doing so would take away from their power. Evenson's best technique is how he creates such disturbing stories without ever explaining how they work. It is clear that too much explanation would be detrimental to the effect that Evenson hopes to create. The more that we understand what's going, the more comfortable that we feel. Evenson is clearly a literary madman whose goal is to make his readers as confused and as disturbed as possible.

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Black Bark by Brian Evenson

Summary and Analysis

Brian Evenson's Black Bark is a story you could read a hundred times and you still would not understand what's going on. It's a story with supernatural elements that refuses to explain why they exist. Reading the story is like briefly entering another world that is frightening yet oddly entrancing because you are dying for an explanation as to what is going on.

Black Bark is about two characters named Sugg and Rawley. Both are cowboys riding horses looking for a cabin that may or may not exist. They are apparently running away from something and Sugg has suffered a nasty injury to his leg. Rawley is the protagonist of the story. The reader is meant to experience the story through Rawley's perspective whereas Sugg functions as an antagonist to Rawley. The weird thing about Sugg is that he disappears seemingly out of thin air several times in the story which makes me think that he does not actually exist. Sugg's disappearing act is the only supernatural element in the story. Sugg also sticks his hand into a fire without reacting and tells Rawley a weird story called "Black Bark" about a man who finds a piece of black bark in his pocket that keeps reappearing even after the man takes the bark out of his pocket.

The presence of this story within a story sheds light on the themes of this story. Rawley's main reaction to the story is that of confusion. He wants a deeper explanation of the events that are left out of black bark but Rawley refuses, claiming that he is presenting the story as it is. Sugg's story is the kind of thing you would imagine while you were tripping on acid. This make Rawley's reaction to the story quite understandable.

What I love the most about this story is how crazy and mysterious it is. The setting by itself is intriguing before it introduces the bizarre elements of Sugg's character. It's compelling to watch Rawley struggle to keep himself alive while dealing with whatever the hell is going on with his companion. At the end I was left with the question of whether Sugg was a figment of Rawley's imagination or some higher power was speaking through Sugg. A recurring image in the story is that of the blood angel that appears on Sugg's horse and later on the ground where Sugg lies in a cave. The blood angel is described as vaguely human shaped. Perhaps this is the symbol of whatever high power is controlling the environment in this story. It's incredible what kind of work your mind will do to explain what's going on when not everything is explained.

I believe that is the main goal of Evenson's story: to create a situation where not everything is explained and the events are compelling. This drives the reader to create their own explanations because it is uncomfortable not knowing why these things are happening. It's also a lot easier on Evenson's part to not have to explain the workings behind the strange events in the story. Why should Evenson have to explain why things are the way they are? Is that what a story is supposed to do?

People are raised on stories that mimic reality where all that happens is consistent with the rules of reality. But a story is not reality. A story is a collection of words on a page assembled to create meaning and there are ways to create meaning that exist outside of the normal mode of storytelling. Evenson is one of the best writers at making you feel that disturbed uncanny valley feeling. I greatly enjoyed this story and I look forward to reading and writing about more of Evenson's stories in his new collection. If there is one writer I hope to emulate in my own writing, it is Brian Evenson. I feel his methods for fiction writing are both practical from the perspective of a writer and useful for creating stories that linger with a reader long after the story has been read.

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