Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'American Cult: Horror Anthology' From MHP

Seven masterful stories about the deep state, which deliver predictable, but devastatingly dark depictions of those who fought to make our country an Oligarchy, and rob us of our liberty.

If you like stories about Reagan as a hand wringing overlord, or Nixon being nothing more than a puppet to those with real power, this is—for sure—the Anthology for you.

There wasn’t a single story that disappointed, and while one did drag on for a bit, I do not regret reading it to its end. There isn’t just one or two really strong stories here, each story has its strengths, and none are worth skipping.

Consider buying a copy at the link below.American Cult: Horror Anthology

SPOILERS!!!

"My Name is Theodore Robert Bundy and I am a Nixon Man"

... That is a long fucking title, but it certainly is provocative. This short already grabbed me in a few places, where you get my full undivided attention quickly. Basically, all you have to do from that point is to not fuck it up. We have historical fiction, politics, and serial killers all wrapped up in one delicious snack for my consumption. Fuck you, if that sounds boring! This is the sort of clandestine occult shit that can truly shake you to the core.

What if Ted Bundy wasn’t born a serial killer? What if he was ‘infected’ so to speak, by a cult of personality? This is a story of white male fragility being pushed to the edge. A story of a man who realizes that everything he aspires to, his heroes, his morals, his masculinity, are all lies he’s told himself for comfort.

A fantastic start to the anthology.

"Rev Six Two"

"Rev Six Two" takes a hard right turn and actually dives into deep government occult. It was well written, but I feel poorly researched for historical, political fiction. That’s fine. There was nothing so blatantly offensive that it bucked me from my reader’s trance, just a few things that made me grumble. Like a MiG from the Korean war winding up in Vietnam. Or why a MiG pilot would be transporting anything in his cramped ass cockpit? I mean, these things aren't too reaching, just out of place. However, the story involved is absolutely fantastic. Soldiers sent into the red zone to hunt down an occult artifact is always a great story!

It did go on a little longer than I felt was necessary. After the mission to recover the artifact, why not just cleanly tidy up by killing the Captain right then and there? Why risk the Captain being alive for several tours before finally deciding he was a liability? I didn’t completely check out, but the story was already essentially over for me at the end of the mission.

"Policy of Neglect"

"Policy of Neglect," is exactly what I expected from this Anthology. Which is actually almost a problem, as it’s obvious, bordering on pandering. However, it was masterfully written, and gave me exactly what I wanted. I can literally see Reagan in no other light. As a hard leftist myself, considering the damage Reagan did to minorities and the LGTBQAI, it’s hard to imagine him as anything less than a hand wringing overlord. This story goes deep, and the best part is, it does so with historical accuracy. Reagan’s actions as a political actor can only be described as malicious, so this is just adding mythos as a sort of logic, a layer of dark horror to what we already lived through as a country.

This story sets a standard I will now expect every story to live up to in this Anthology. It brings the kind of crushingly dark, looming finality that I expect.

"Watercolors"

Jesus, you’d think he’d just take the fucking things away, and get a new set after the third time the little brats of his class went all “Deathnote” with the watercolors. Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but I feel like the writer really needed to hang a lantern on it. He could have left us a little more curious, leave quite a lot more to the imagination. I gotta tell you though, it certainly was a fun fucking concept. Children, just doing what they do, being guided to herald mass destruction through their paintings.

For its few faults, It was well written and fascinating, so it lives up to the minimum standard I’m expecting out of this Anthology.

"The Clients"

"The Clients" began to bore me a little. I get that the guy was a scummy lawyer, I didn’t need his full resume. The first two pages could have been boiled down to a single paragraph, one page max. To be specific, you only need a paragraph to explain why he’s a scummy lawyer, and a paragraph to explain why he can’t sleep at night, even though he’s still making excuses for himself.

You know, it’s a funny concept, being a lawyer for the old ones. Just like the concept of being a lawyer for the devil. I appreciate the writer's attempt to make every instance of the character's encounter with his strange clients quick and to the point. Wish he’d done that for the introduction. It isn’t until he’s on the third case where you begin to pick up the connection of each case.

The description of some of the creatures was ‘Lovecraft lazy.’ But we all grew up with that. This story falls below the general standard I set for this anthology with "Policy of Neglect." I don’t like lazy. "Policy of Neglect" might have been obvious, but it didn’t ignore the details. It was present and tangible. The mind could easily picture it, and use that to fill in the blanks, where blanks had been left. This literally described one of the creatures as looking like every sea creature imaginable, all at once. That doesn’t tell me much, and this story had already been wasting a lot of my time. Stringing me along and delivering that crap is a bit of a slap in the face. Cute ending though, and ultimately still worth the read.

I don’t want you to think this story was bad. I did like it, it just irked me with the presentation. It was a bit rambling, failed to deliver when it needed to, but all around was still a solid story.

"Stuffed"

Some seriously poor word usage here. And I don’t mean because the character is mostly a dullards. Some word usage seemed flat out wrong, and others are just strangely chosen. Again, not enough to buck me from my reader’s trance, just enough to get me to take pause. I guess my biggest problem is that the story just wasn’t interesting. It’s literally just two people peacocking across a table for the majority of the story. Small potatoes trying to convince the people with power that he’s big potatoes. That sort of dialogue is okay for single scenes—a little give and take—but this just runs on forever. A little fish trying to let the big sharks let him swim along. And that leads to the predictable end, where the main character’s only purpose is to serve up amusement to those he wishes to share power with. It’s exactly the way I assume those with power regard the fools who worship that power.

Still not a bad story, just kind of boring and predictable.

"Children of Glory"

Like Policy of Neglect, it’s a bit obvious. However, it does dive deeply into the dark corridors of white, nationalist, conservative psychosis. It pushes just that much further, and you can really feel the quagmire of emotions our subject Sarah is going through as she prepares for her duty. The worst thing is, Sarah and her comrades are heading straight towards certain death, and they really drive home the sense that their leader either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care. He’s literally raised an army of child soldiers, trained from birth to know nothing, save hate and violence. The processing coupled with Sarah’s disillusionment, and her propensity to continue with her programming, hits such a deep, dark place in the human psyche. Sarah doesn’t want it, and isn’t even physically capable of it, but literally knows nothing else. The writing is also fantastic. The descriptive narrative is dark, gripping, and gritty as fuck. Absolutely bravo. I’d basically call this one the winner of the anthology.

Author Bios

Dustin McKissen ("My Name is Theodore") is an author and writer based in St. Louis, Missouri. His nonfiction writing has appeared in Inc. Magazine, CNBC, CNN, and several other major media outlets. In total, his blogs and articles have been viewed by more than 20 million readers. He is also the author of the novel The Civil War at Home.

Jude Reid ("Rev Six Two") lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and writes horror stories in the narrow gaps between her day job, chasing her kids, studying ITF Tae Kwon Do, and trying to tire out a border collie. She does her best writing after midnight, which is lucky, because that's the only time she gets to herself.

James Lief ("Policy of Neglect") is a professor of anthropology who has always had a wide array of interests. He has long been fascinated by the juxtaposition of public servants using the public to serve themselves, and is most interested where humanity’s collective nightmares come from.

Phillip Wendt ("Watercolors"), proud native of the great state of Texas. Phillip is thirty-five, and has been writing short fiction since the age of eight, always of the horror genre. When not writing, his other passion is anything outdoors. The solitude is a necessity.

Vincent Treewell ("The Clients") is the pen name of an author living in Wisconsin. He is a military veteran, a former law-enforcement officer, and a retired attorney. He enjoys hunting and fishing, and is fascinated with the paranormal. His literary vision is to put gritty, noir-like characters and plots in fantastical speculative fiction universes.

Charles R. Bernard ("Stuffed") is a writer who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. He resides next to Salt Lake City Cemetery; a sprawling necropolis whose tombs and markers stretch out over a square kilometer of grounds. Charles is lively enough company, though. You can find him on Twitter at @CRBernard and on Instagram at @SaltCitySinner, and can read more at saltcitysinner.blogspot.com

Jeremy Megargee ("Children of Glory") has always loved dark fiction. He cut his teeth on R.L Stine’s Goosebumps series as a child, and a fascination with Stephen King’s work followed later in life. Jeremy weaves his tales of personal horror from Martinsburg, West Virginia with his cat Lazarus acting as his muse/familiar.

Find interviews with these authors, and many more on Madness Heart Radio.

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