I feel like if I lived in Australia I would be scared of a snake jumping out of my toilet bowl. Alas, I rent an Edinburgh apartment where the pipes have not been changed since the turn of the Victorian century. I seem to be more exposed to sewage backing up from the shower. It got so bad last week a carrot floated up, entangled in hair, to keep me company as I brushed my teeth.
Now, I am one of those rare people who is not afraid of carrots. Or hair. What I am afraid of though is a full sized talking head whispering at me through the drain when I am shaving my armpits. This was not a phobia of mine until I began reading Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny.
Translated from the original Korean by Anton Hur, this collection of short stories get so disturbing you have to snap the thing shut and start looking up next day-delivery options for night lights off Amazon. The first story, ‘The Head,’ where a tenant is harassed by a sentient creature building its body out of excrement solidified my plumbing fears. Yet, the more I read, the more I started to find human behaviour equally as disturbing. The stories start shifting from concrete horror to sci-fi depictions of reality such as the societal pressures women experience becoming pregnant out of a relationship. This is prevalent in ‘The Embodiment’ where a woman goes all Virgin Mary and procures a child despite never having been with anyone. Spoiler—the doctor is the villain in that one.
Even if gore does not send you to sleep, this book offers a sure way to swap your monthly dose of chills you get from your Hinge likes to something a little safer on paper. Whether it be from a grandad sending a cursed lamp to seek revenge on a company or the eerie relationship scientists adopt to their creations, a line will stick. Although, I would not recommend reading ‘The Frozen Finger’ in an empty flat. Or if you are claustrophobic.
Two things are certain now that I have read Chung’s work. The first being I have Christmas present ideas sorted for all my odder mates. The second being I have never been so grateful for the state of my apartment. If a person crawled out of my drain, she would drown in the overflow before she could get a word in edgeways.
Illustration by Erika Bunjevac @erikabunjevac