Welcome back, you twisted fucks. This time around, we’re here to dissect Straw World and Other Echoes From the Void by Erik McHatton. It’s a fever dream that’ll leave you gasping, grinning, and questioning your own sanity. This book doesn’t just push boundaries but chews them up and spits them out like rancid gristle. If you’re one of my cult readers who craves horror that’s raw, weird, and unapologetically literary, this is your holy grail. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to corner a stranger in a dive bar and slur, “You gotta read this, you spineless fuck!”

My first exposure to McHatton was his standout entry in Tenebrous Press‘s Brave New Weird Volume 3 from earlier this year entitled “The Man Who Collected Ligotti.” Straw World is a plunge into a psychic swamp where every step squelches with dread and wonder. This debut collection is a jagged mosaic of rural surrealism, existential horror, and grotesque folk fables that defies easy labels. It’s like stumbling into a cornfield where the scarecrows are stitched from your own regrets, whispering your failures back to you. McHatton doesn’t write stories; he conjures rituals, each one a descent into a world where grief, decay, and the Void itself are the only constants.

The title story, “Straw World,” sets the tone with a vengeance. It’s a guided tour through an art installation of straw figures (families, lovers, dogs) frozen in moments of quiet horror. The narrator forces you to project your own loved ones onto these effigies, turning personal loss into a universal wound. Lines like “Her heart, still beating, exploded out onto her chest” hit like a sledgehammer, blending visceral imagery with a haunting meditation on impermanence. It’s a story you survive, and it’s worth every scar.

The rest of the collection keeps the pedal down. “Knocks” traps you in a house with Evie, a girl tormented by relentless pounding from an unseen entity, building an atmosphere so claustrophobic you’ll check your own locks. “Little Dirt Boy” is a gut-wrenching tale of a mother, Agnes, sculpting a grotesque effigy of her lost child from dirt, balancing tenderness and horror in a way that’ll leave you raw. “We Must Be Rabbits” is a psychological gut-punch, with characters reduced to animalistic roles under a sinister “Father,” exploring control and dehumanization with a cruelty that lingers.

“The Success of Dover’s Glen: A Study in Four People” paints a dying town through four broken souls, each fragment a shard of despair. “Station 42” introduces a television-headed man delivering a cursed Quine Model TV, spiraling into rage and liberation. “Timmy Thamerson’s Turn” turns Halloween into a cosmic revenge tale, with a ghostly kid in a flowery sheet stealing your breath. “The Face Dealer” is a gruesome fairy tale about vanity, while “The Last Case of Dr. Jonah Wexley Abbott” dives into occult horror with a doomed doctor facing a Lovecraftian beast. “On the Night Bus” is an anxiety-soaked journal of a man unraveling on a cursed commute, and “Something’s Off About Wizzle” is a bizarre, almost absurd encounter with a Muppet-like monster.

“Where We Are, Where We Were, Where We Will Always Be” is a surreal nightmare involving a meat-car and a puppet named Zilch, blending body horror with existential absurdity. “In Carnality” is a brief, meditative piece about a sentient mound of flesh, oddly serene for its grotesque premise. “The Man Who Collected Ligotti” is a four-part love letter to cosmic horror, channeling Thomas Ligotti’s nihilism through a performer, a paranoiac, a dreamer, and a collector. Finally, “Demodorum” closes with a mythic tale of a malevolent book in a necropolis, weaving gore and despair into a cosmic tapestry.

McHatton’s prose is a goddamn revelation. It’s electric, poetic, and obsessive, like a backwoods preacher high on moonshine and existential dread. He carves sentences, each one dripping with imagery that’s equal parts gorgeous and grotesque. Take this from “Straw World”: “The air strings its exposed straw, cruelly.” It’s the kind of line that makes you pause, reread, and wonder if you’re still human. The prose dances on the edge of pretension but always lands in something raw, whether it’s grief, rage, or the cold pull of the Void. It’s recursive, circling back to motifs like straw, dirt, and voids, creating a cohesive atmosphere of decay that binds the stories without ever feeling forced.

The structure is just as bold. McHatton laughs in the face of three-act structures and predictable arcs. These stories are conceptual whirlwinds, where narrative logic bends to serve theme and mood. It’s not weird for weird’s sake. It’s a deliberate rebellion against cookie-cutter storytelling. The result is a collection that feels alive, pulsing with a warped heartbeat that echoes House of Leaves, The Wicker Man, and Ligotti’s cosmic despair, with a nod to Carson Winter’s knack for blending the mundane with the horrific. Winter’s introduction, by the way, is a perfect primer, raw and sincere, setting the stage for the madness to come.

Straw World is a meditation on grief, memory, and the fragility of identity. These stories dig into how we cope with loss, whether it’s a mother crafting a dirt child or a town crumbling under its own delusions. There’s a strong thread of ecological entropy—fields rot, landscapes choke, and characters are consumed by the land as much as their own minds. The Void isn’t just a boogeyman; it’s the inevitable pull of impermanence, the thing we all face when our stories unravel.

But there’s a strange ecstasy here, too. Even at their most broken, McHatton’s characters reach for connection, redemption, or just a fleeting moment of clarity. This tension between despair and defiance gives the collection its soul. It doesn’t preach or moralize. It haunts, leaving you to sift through the wreckage.

Some readers may choke on Straw World‘s dense, recursive prose or get lost in its labyrinthine structure. Stories like “In Carnality” are so abstract they might leave you squinting in confusion. But for my tastes, these aren’t bugs, they’re the whole fucking point. This isn’t for people who want jump scares or neat resolutions. It’s for those who crave horror that’s bold, strange, and unapologetically literary. Best of all, it’s unfilmable. No Hollywood suit could turn this into a popcorn flick without gutting its essence. It’s horror as art, not commerce. It’s the kind of book I’m here to scream about: weird, fearless, and dripping with atmosphere. It’s a highlight of 2025.

TL;DR: Straw World and Other Echoes From the Void is a deranged, lyrical triumph. It doesn’t ask if it works, but rather dares you to keep up. For you freaks who live for the strange and the brutal, this is your new obsession. Read it, weep, and send me a thank-you note.