Leah Looks At: Bladejob by Lucas Mangum
GENRE: Horror
PUBLISHER: Madness Heart Press
RELEASE DATE: 7/14/23
AUTHOR: Lucas Mangum
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Cover art by Jim Agpalza
A retired professional wrestler is released from federal prison into a more comfortable cage and finds himself haunted by an unexpected visitor from his storied past.
Brian Hearns, once a professional wrestler before his contentious conviction, sacrificed many years of what could have been a successful career to carry out his lengthy sentence. A bus deposits him at the nearest point to his new rural home.
After a solitary hike lasting several miles, Brian doesn’t have a chance to enjoy the absence of steel bars before a new jailer appears on his doorstep lugging a briefcase of questionable content that he chooses to ignore.
Eager to begin this new phase of his life, his daughter then refuses to meet with him, and the cause is understandable. In a fit of drunken desperation, Brian reaches out to the obvious option left unexplored – and opens that formidable briefcase. Let the madness begin!
Sometimes in memory, pieces begin to merge. One work calls upon another, and another…A flavor about this rings familiar with an unproduced script by Harlan Ellison regarding the Devil, and a certain scene circling around fluid seeping into a mat conjures fragments similar to what you’d find among the works of Clive Barker. (More sponges, please. *mwah* – chef’s kiss) Other portions of this novella broadcast a Choose Your Own Adventure vibe. Much like some professional wrestling bouts of times past, Lucas Mangum has brought us something that is just plain FUN.
Find Bladejob HERE on 7/14/23.