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Spread Me: A Review

Sarah Gailey has been one of my favorite writers since I first encountered their work in River of Teeth. They have a tremendous knack for writing team dynamics and characters who survive against all odds. Their most recent book, Spread Me, is a spectacular example of both of these qualities with healthy doses of horror and horniness mixed in.

Kinsey is a researcher. She is the leader of an isolated team that is studying the cryptobiotic crust deep in the desert on a four-year mission. As is expected of humans under these sort of circumstances, the members of the team find themselves romantically (or at least sexually) entangled with one another, with the sole exception of Kinsey herself. While she’s not asexual, she’s not attracted to any of her fellow researchers (or fellow humans). Kinsey has a unique situation that she’s struggled to hide from the others at the station—she’s attracted to and aroused by viruses.

Under normal circumstances, Kinsey’s feelings aren’t an issue. She’s not distracted by the interactions of her coworkers, and feels like the isolation of their research station is conducive to her ability to focus on her work. Really, it’s an ideal setup for her. Until, of course, the specimen is unearthed.

Domino is the one to accidentally uncover it, but Kinsey is the one who saw it was breathing, the one to insist on breaking with protocols and bringing it inside the research station before an oncoming sandstorm can bury it again. Against the protests of Mads, the team medic, she brings the thing into the lab. To give a nod to Gailey’s earlier work, “this was a terrible plan.” Not long after contact with the specimen, the other team members begin to show signs of a viral infection, and Kinsey… Kinsey begins to fantasize about the implications of a previously unknown type of life—one that seems to know just what it is that she desires most, and is willing to do anything to give it to her.

Spread Me is an utterly brilliant erotic horror novella. Kinsey is simultaneously distant and sympathetic as she struggles with the differences between acknowledging and loving what she has and exploring her deepest, most secret desires. The novella alternates skillfully between chapters covering the present situation at the station and the recent past, wherein Kinsey and her subordinates meet, arrive at the station for the first time, and get to know each other. It’s a welcome diversion from the mounting tension (dramatic and otherwise) in the present, and gives you a chance to understand the relationships, and just why everyone at the station implicitly trusts Kinsey, even when that’s not the best course of action.

I absolutely loved Spread Me. It’s the fourth Gailey book I’ve read, and it’s an unrepentantly horny version of my all-time favorite horror movie, John Carpenter’s The Thing. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Spread Me is available today. If you’re looking for sexy horror, this is it. Go get it.

Trifecta (Week 96)

This week’s Trifecta Challenge gave us the word “animal,” with the definition being “a human being considered chiefly as physical or nonrational; also :  this nature.” It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote one of these, so with 333 words, here’s my entry for the challenge.

“Animal”

Animal.

That’s what they call me. They spit the word at me through the ventilation holes in my polymer prison. They don’t think I can understand them, that I’m mindless, that the virus that began developing inside of me three months ago has transformed me into a thing from their nightmares. Animal’s better than the other word.

But I can hear them. I hear the scientists talking. That’s how I know what’s happened, how long it’s been. And it’s not being held in a plastic cell that scares me. I’m just a passenger in my head now, a prisoner locked in my own body, and so far undetected by any of their tests. But I can still hear them. I know what they say, but all of my will isn’t enough to move my jaw and tongue and make myself say anything beyond the roars and screams.

I’m more scared of me than I am of them. I may be slamming my fists and feet and knees and head against the walls and getting them to threaten to shoot me, but that’s not scary. What scares me is that it’s not me doing that. I’m not any more in control of my limbs than I am of mouth.

It’s the virus. It has to be. I remember getting sick at work. The tremors, the headaches. I thought it was just the flu, but I went to the doctor anyway. Better to get back on my feet quickly, right? Turns out whatever it was was like nothing they’d ever seen before, or at least that’s what the scientists say when they come by to look at my body. It’s not me that they’re seeing. That’s why they call me an animal. Pure instinct. Unhuman.

Trapped in a cage that’s trapped in a cage. Still, I know they’ll come back to me, when they find a cure. After all, they’re using me to develop and test it.

I’m not an animal.

I am patient zero.