Black Sheep by Gary Fry - Kitchen Sink Gothic

Some families have secrets. Dark secrets. Perhaps this is something Billy doesn't realise. After all, his own is an open book. An open book that he loathes. Out of work and workshy, his father and Billy's mother rely on his older sister's wage to supplement the family income.  In contrast, still at college. studying for his exams, Billy is subjected to scorn and ridicule, resented for not making any money for them all.

"We didn't need no education to get on in life," Mum said, and if there was any trace of maternal affection in her tone, it was quickly superseded by occupational bitterness. Then she added to her husband, "I suppose he thinks he's better than us now."

Invited by his girlfriend, Trudy, to have dinner with her well to do parents, though, Billy soon finds that sometimes, however much money a family might have, there are grim, dirty, disgusting secrets that make the damage his own family are doing to him, with their sarcasm and resentment, seem tame by comparison.

Gary Fry has created a uniquely Aickmanesque nightmare in Black Sheep, with more than a touch of Charles Birkin.

A toothpick was pinning together his lips, its points thrust through both wedges of flesh. His mum's domestic skills had certainly been put to good use here. 

Read Gary Fry's darkly grotesque tale of a family gone wrong in Kitchen Sink Gothic. Try it - and the other 16 stories, some darkly humorous, while others are more than weirdly strange and occasionally horrific. None are less than memorable.

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Kitchen Sink Gothic includes:

1964 by Franklin Marsh
Derek Edge and the Sun-Spots by Andrew Darlington
Daddy Giggles by Stephen Bacon
Black Sheep by Gary Fry
Jamal Comes Home by Benedict J. Jones
Waiting by Kate Farrell
Lilly Finds a Place to Stay by Charles Black
The Mutant's Cry by David A. Sutton
The Sanitation Solution by Walter Gascoigne
Up and Out of Here by Mark Patrick Lynch
Late Shift by Adrian Cole
The Great Estate by Shaun Avery
Nine Tenths by Jay Eales
Envelopes by Craig Herbertson
Tunnel Vision by Tim Major
Life is Prescious M. J. Wesolowski
Canvey Island Baby by David Turnbull