"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.

Buy Here:
https://amzn.to/2P490Tw