buy things have gotten worse since we last spoke

Buy things have gotten worse since we last spoke series#

These sexualized displays, including several that eventually lead to Petrella losing her job, give her a rush, but it escalates from there. Petrella submits to this masochistic position quickly without ever meeting Cross, performing small flourishes that Cross demands. That means bank accounts, all behavior, even when, and what, her ward eats. Petrella’s vulnerabilities are seen quickly by Cross who unveils her true dream: to have totalizing control over another person.

Buy things have gotten worse since we last spoke series#

This is told through a series of emails and instant messages, a structure familiar to readers of horror writers like John Langhan or Gemma Files. Agnes is floored and they begin a correspondence that quickly leans romantic. She gets contacted by Zoe Cross who is interested in buying the item, but when she discovers Anges’ financial situation, she simply transfers her a bulk of money. Its success is precisely on its willingness to take something simple past where it would make sense, and into the realm of the irrational where consequences never seem to line up with caution.Īgnes Petrella posts on a queer forum trying to sell a family heirloom to make rent. This irrationality is at the heart of Eric LaRocca’s new novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, a story that spotlights a tiny fissure of discomfort about the seeming intimacy of our many anonymous online interactions and breaks it open as widely as possible. The normal tools won’t apply, and certainly won’t keep us safe. Something exists that does not play by the rules of the rest of our life. But there’s always some part of what we fear that lies beyond our rational reach.

Usually, to grapple with these things, we try to make sense out of them. Our life is filled with frightening things: lost lives, mysteries of nature, fear of death, as well as the more mundane. There is a version of horror literature founded on taking the rationally frightening to the point of irrationality.