 Sex, Slayer, teen alienation and getting your end away…. I love uncovering musical references in fiction, especially sounds I have a strong personal connection with and so when the main character in Matthew R Davis’s The Dark Matter of Natasha pitches up at a record shop and buys Slayer’s classic Seasons in the Abyss album I could not help but smile. The dude was just discovering the meaning of cool taste and a new way of life! Once experienced, as the unnamed main character realises, one simply cannot return to soft poodle rock of Def Leppard! Such was my youthful love for Slayer I even saw them tour Seasons in the Abyss in the early nineties, playing at the Edinburgh Playhouse, travelling down all the way from Aberdeen. The strong musical vibe throbs throughout this early nineties set novella and the days of cassettes and Nintendo cartridges took me back to my own formative years in a small town in the north of Scotland not too dissimilar from Lunar Bay. The Dark Matter of Natasha is the second release on the new Emergent Expressions range from the excellent Grey Matter Press (GMP). In recent years GMP have had an outstanding track record in producing high quality horror, dark and weird fiction from the likes of Paul Kane, Karen Runge, John FD Taff and Alan Baxter. The latter two being responsible for two outstanding series The Fearing (Taff) and Eli Carver (Baxter) which rank amongst my recent personal favourites. The strength of GMP is its ability to effortlessly move between the boundaries of dark fiction, encompassing thriller, horror, science fiction, crime/noir, horror, speculative fiction and fantasy. The Dark Matter of Natasha continues this fine tradition with this very dark, but highly entertaining, coming-of-age tale. The Emergent Expressions novella series began with Amanda Kool’s terrific cli-fi debut Resembling Lepus and will shortly be followed by Andrew McRae (horror) and Patrick Bard (fantasy). Their latest, The Dark Matter of Natasha is best described as a rather melancholic coming-of-age drama which morphs into a thriller but has a self-conscious and edgy sense of humour which had me chuckling. I devoured this story in two sittings and wished it was longer and would have enjoyed a longer slice of this particular brand of darkness. It delivers a moody shot of teen discontentment, boredom and the never-ending chase for any kind of thrill in a dead-end one-horse town. The seventeen-year-old narrator and his single parent mother arrive at the small town of Lunar Bay and take over the Seven Stars Caravan Park. The story is narrated in the first person from some point in the future and it is this personal reflection which gives the story its dark downbeat edge. Looking back, on one level there is acceptance of being a normal teenager, looking to get laid and smoke dope, but on another he wishes he did things differently, wondering how things might have played out if he had been dealt an alternative hand, especially regarding the three women in his life, Natasha, Caitlin and his mother. The reflective mood of the story reminded me slightly of the eighties thriller River’s Edge where disaffected teens roamed the streets looking for the next kick or easy fix. There is some of this in The Dark Matter of Natasha and even though some of the story revolves around one of the greatest teen storylines of them all: losing your virginity, I doubt this novella will be made into a teen movie anytime soon! This is as far away from John Hughes as you could possibly get. None of the teens involved show any interest in school and hang around abandoned areas and bridges unofficially named after suicide jumpers (Jennifer’s Crossing) nobody remembers. And like all small towns: everybody dreams of leaving it. I do not want to put anybody off this novella by implying it was too downbeat, because it really was not and had a genuine sense of black humour and the sex scenes were gleefully funny. The sequence where the lead character loses his virginity was cringingly hilarious and brutally honest. The voice of the first-person narrator was also 100% authentic and at times I thought he was too hard on himself. But like many of us he has a person in his past (Natasha) that no matter how many years go by he cannot shake her shadow off. There are ghosts in every closet and perhaps they play a part in leading the unfulfilled life alluded to. The plot was very straightforward: the narrator is dating Caitlin Dempsey and doing his very best to get into her pants. After an argument with Caitlin, he meets Natasha, who amongst other things, introduces him to cigarettes, drugs, Slayer and sex. Natasha is scary, angry and aggressive, but he is equally fascinated by this girl who comes from the wrong side of the tracks and their worlds soon collide. The Dark Matter of Natasha is a gripping, disturbing and funny coming-of-age drama which blends into a psychological thriller and once read you will realise why Natasha still haunts the narrators dreams after so many passing years. Matthew R Davis has had many short stories published in an impressive range of anthologies and was also nominated for the prestigious literary dark fiction Shirley Jackson Award for his novelette Heritage Hill. I’m also a sucker for Demain Publishing’s Short Sharp Shocks! series and have added Matthew’s The Supermassive Black Mass (Book 21) to my ever-growing TBR pile to check his work out further. Tony Jones The Dark Matter of Natasha |
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