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bracketsoffear · 2 months ago

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Flesh Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Flesh Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Awad, Mona: Rouge

Barker, Clive: The Hellbound Heart Basye, Dale E.: Blimpo Bazterrica, Agustina: Cadáver exquisito (Tender is the flesh) Boote, Justin: Carnivore Bradbury, Ray: Skeleton Brown, Daniel James: The Indifferent Stars Above Buller, Jon and Susan Schade: Mike and the Magic Cookies

Calvert, Amy: You Are What You (M)Eat: Explorations of Meat-Eating, Masculinity and Masquerade Carroll, Emily: Some Other Animal’s Meat Clarke, Arthur C.: Food of the Gods Cook, Robin: Coma

Dahl, Roald: Pig

Ellin, Stanley: The Specialty of the House Enriquez, Mariana: Carne (Meat)

Fink, Joseph: It Devours!

Gaiman, Neil: Babycakes from Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions Graves, Damian: An Apple A Day Guanzhong, Luo: Excerpt from Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Harris, Thomas: Hannibal Harris, Thomas: Silence of the Lambs

Ito, Junji: Glyceride Ito, Junji: Tomie

Katsu, Alma: The Hunger KFC: Tender Wings of Desire King, Stephen: Survivor Type King, Stephen: Thinner

Lee, Tanith: The Beast Levene, Rebecca: Too Rich for My Blood (in Seven Deadly Sins)

Miyazawa, Kenji: The Restaurant of Many Orders

Ojeda, Mónica: Mandíbula (Jawbone) Orwell, George: Animal Farm Ovid: Metamorphoses

Pinkwater, Daniel: Slaves of Spiegel Piper, Hailey: Benny Rose, the Cannibal King Pizarnik, Alejandra: La Condesa Sangrienta (The bloody countess)

Quiroga, Horacio: La gallina degollada (The decapitated chicken)

Rymer, James Malcolm and Thomas Peckett Prest: The String of Pearls; or, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Shusterman, Neal: Duckling Ugly Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle Smith, Clark Ashton: The Garden of Adompha Smith, Cordwainer: A Planet Named Shayol Stine, R.L.: Chicken, Chicken Stine, R.L. and Stephen Roos: The Boy Who Ate Fear Street Summers, Chelsea G.: A Certain Hunger Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal

Wells, H.G.: The Island of Dr. Moreau

Yoshitomi, Akihito: School Ningyo (School Mermaid)

Awad, Mona: Rouge

The book’s themes centre on consumption and perfecting the body. Much of it is reminiscent of the denizens of the mortal garden. Vague cannibalism and vampiric vibes but the latter distinctly not in a hunt way. A lot of juxtaposition of sterility and cleanness with fleshliness and revulsion. Towards the end of the book, the main character finds herself in a production line-esque march to some unknown doom. The book is tinged with several powers (haven’t even touched on the spooky mirror-dwelling dark prince who assumes the guise of whoever the watcher most desires) but flesh seems like the dominant one.

Barker, Clive: The Hellbound Heart

Frank Cotton is a hedonistic criminal selfishly devoted to sensual experience even if it harms others. Believing he has indulged in every pleasure the world can offer, Frank obtains the Lemarchand Configuration, a puzzle box said to open a "schism" or portal to an extradimensional realm of unfathomable pleasure ruled by beings called the Cenobites. Solving the box, he is confused and horrified when the Cenobites – horribly scarified creatures whose bodies have been modified to the point that they appear sexless and in constant pain – arrive. Frank still eagerly accepts the offer of experiences he has never known before, and the Cenobites take him to their realm, where they subject him to total sensory overload and he realises their devotion to sadomasochism is so extreme and their personalities so removed from humanity that they no longer differentiate between pain and pleasure and have no care to ever stop even if their subject no longer wishes the experience.

Sometime later, Frank's brother, Rory, moves into the home in England with his wife Julia. Unknown to Rory, Julia had an affair with Frank a week before their wedding and has lusted after him since. While in the attic, Rory accidentally cuts his hand and bleeds on the spot where Frank was taken by the Cenobites. The blood, mixed with semen Frank had left on the floor before he was taken, opens a dimensional schism. Frank returns, his body now reduced to a desiccated corpse by the Cenobites' experiments. Julia later finds him and promises to restore his body so he can truly live and they can be together. Julia seduces men at bars and kills them in the attic, where Frank feeds on their corpses.

Rory's friend Kirsty encounters Frank, who attempts to kill her. Kirsty grabs the puzzle box before fleeing and later accidentally opens it. The Cenobite intends to take Kirsty now that it is here, but she then reveals Frank is alive on Earth again. Though skeptical that one of their experiments could have escaped, the Cenobite is intrigued. It agrees that if Kirsty leads them to Frank and he confirms his identity, they will take him back and perhaps leave her alone.

Rory and Julia claim they killed Frank but Kirsty realizes the man she is speaking to is Frank wearing Rory's skin. Another altercation ensues, during which Frank inadvertently kills Julia. Kirsty then baits Frank into admitting his true name out loud. The Cenobites appear, ensnare Frank and return him to their realm, telling Kirsty to leave. Downstairs, Kirsty sees Julia's disembodied head calling for help. The leader of the Cenobites, a being called the Engineer, then appears and seems to take away Julia as well before briefly bumping into Kirsty. After leaving the house, Kirsty realizes the Engineer gave her the puzzle box to watch over until another seeks it out.

Basye, Dale E.: Blimpo

"After his second escape from Bea "Elsa" Bubb, the Principal of Darkness, Milton Fauster makes his way to Blimpo—the circle of the otherworldly reform school, Heck, where he's sure his friend Virgil is sentenced. Virgil's only crime is being, well, plump . Milton has to wonder if that's really enough to justify eternal darnation. And what Milton finds in Blimpo horrifies him. The overweight dead kids spend most of their time running on giant human hamster wheels called DREADmills that detect and exploit their deepest fears. The rest they spend eating Hambone Hank's barbecue—mystery meat that is delicious, but suspiciously (to Milton, anyway) haunting . Every classroom has a huge TV screen showing happy thin people who taunt Blimpo residents with a perfection they will never attain. Meanwhile, at her new job in the devil's Infernship program, Milton's sister, Marlo, knows all about trying to achieve perfection. And failing miserably. Can Milton get himself and Virgil out of Blimpo in time to rescue Marlo, too? Or is Fauster the next delicacy on Bea "Elsa" Bubb's menu?"

Bazterrica, Agustina: Cadáver exquisito (Tender is the flesh)

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

***

The virus makes animal flesh unsafe to eat. Society converts to farming humans for meat. The book describes functioning slaughterhouse, often exaggerating the violence that goes on within. Where does the border between animals and human lie? What does it means to be reduced to meat? How would a human behave if they were treated like cattle?

Boote, Justin: Carnivore

Detective Inspector Jim Morfield is worried. In the quiet, countryside village of Fritton, human remains have begun appearing. Bodies so viciously mutilated that only their bones are left behind, in some cases less than a few hours after they were reported missing. What creature could possibly devour human remains so quickly? Surely, as with the case of farmer Stanley Walters, it couldn’t be his cows nearby and covered in blood that dismembered and devoured him? Then, when another person is attacked by a horse, his arm nearly torn off, he has no choice but to consider the impossible.

The problem is that there is another killer to contend with. One who has Fritton terrified. A serial killer hiding among the woods and fields, unseen, unchallenged. Now Jim has to decide if the bodies accumulating in the area are the works of a human or something as harmless as the local wildlife.

Bradbury, Ray: Skeleton

The story of a hypochondriac who becomes utterly terrified of the alien form of his own bones, and sets out to have them... treated. The character of M. Munigant alone, and his terrible office, would have made for an excellent Flesh avatar.

Brown, Daniel James: The Indifferent Stars Above

In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors.

In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.

Bonus: This is a nonfiction account of The Donner Party, probably one of the most famous occurrences of survival cannibalism in history.

Buller, Jon and Susan Schade: Mike and the Magic Cookies

The protagonist and his family are turned into animals by the antagonist who is planning to eat them. Pretty Flesh i guess.

Calvert, Amy: You Are What You (M)Eat: Explorations of Meat-Eating, Masculinity and Masquerade

A fascinating essay on the concept of carnophallogocentrism (the connection between meat-eating and masculinity, as defined by Jacques Derrida) which discusses the gendered politics of consuming, preparing, and raising meat animals, viewed through the lens of the US reality television series Man V. Food. Calvert argues that the show represents the sexualization of both women and meat, and represents a cultural backlash against feminism as traditional concepts of masculinity are reasserted through the grotesque displays of meat consumption onscreen.

Carroll, Emily: Some Other Animal’s Meat

An excellent blend of the body image issues central to the Flesh and classic body horror.

“Aren't you tired of all those half empty bottles cluttering up the cupboard beneath your bathroom sink? Why not choose something that actually WORKS for once? Alo-Glo is all natural rejuvenating healing”

“But I wonder... What if inside. it's somehow the wrong stuff? What if my meat is some other animal's meat and the human part of me is just the skin like the smooth layer of dough you drape over an uncooked pie”

Clarke, Arthur C.: Food of the Gods

In this imagined future, we have stopped killing animals for meat and started to grow tissue in vats instead (to help support our even-more-massive population). People actually retch at the thought of eating animal flesh, although the vast majority of the various manufactured foods replicate the characteristics of various meats exactly. Several companies manufacture the stuff and get into a competition about who can make the best. Eventually, one company makes one that apparently tastes delicious and is perfectly tailored to human needs, calling it "Ambrosia Plus". The competition goes before a Senate subcommittee to explain why this might be a problem:

"Yes, Triplanitary's chemists have done a superb technical job. Now you have to resolve the moral and philosophical issues. When I began my evidence, I used the archaic word 'carnivore'. Now I must introduce you to another: I'll spell it out the first time: C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L ..."

Cook, Robin: Coma

Susan Wheeler is a medical student working at the Boston Memorial Hospital. Young, healthy patients are coming in for routine operations and leaving in permanent comas. Susan investigates, eventually unearthing an Organ Theft conspiracy. Apparently, they started using hospital patients who were already comatose, but demand (and profits) is such that they start artificially inducing brain death in healthy patients undergoing surgery to get more victims.

Dahl, Roald: Pig

Once upon a time, a boy named Lexington is born in New York City. Unfortunately he is soon orphaned when his parents are accidentally shot by the police, who mistake them for robbers. Lexington is sent to live with his Aunt Glosspan out in her cottage high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is an eccentric old woman who schools him herself and raises him to be a strict vegetarian. As he grows older, Lexington starts to exhibit a talent for cooking and Aunt Glosspan encourages him to write a cookbook. By the time he is 17, he has invented over 9,000 different dishes. He is shocked when Aunt Glosspan suddenly dies, though, and he buries her himself behind the cowshed. The next day he finds a letter she has left him instructing him to go to New York and meet with her lawyer. Apparently the lawyer will read her Will and then give Lexington money to pursue his cooking ambitions. Unfortunately for the boy, the lawyer is an unscrupulous man who takes advantage of Lexington’s trusting nature and ends up giving him just $15,000 out of the $500,000 his Aunt left for him. Upon leaving the office, Lexington decides he is hungry and heads to the nearest restaurant for some dinner. To his surprise, he is served pork for the first time in his life and he finds it delicious. Eager to learn about this new food for his book, he bribes the waiter to take him back into the kitchen to meet the chef. The chef tells him though, that he can’t be sure it was pig’s meat. “There’s just a chance,” he says, “that it might have been a piece of human stuff.” He tells Lexington that they’ve been getting an awful lot of it from the butcher lately. He’s pretty sure that the piece Lexington had was pork though, so the boy asks him to show him how to prepare it. The cook says that it all begins with a properly butchered pig. Wanting to see how this is done, Lexington takes off for the packing-house in the Bronx. When he gets there he is ushered into a waiting room to await the Guided Tour. He watches as others go through the doors before him: a mother with two little boys, a young couple, and a pale woman with long white gloves. Finally his turn is called, and he is led to the “schackling area” where the pigs are grabbed, looped about the ankle with a chain, and then dragged up through a hole in the roof. While he is watching, one of the workers slips a chain around Lexington’s ankle and before he knows what is happening he is being dragged along the path as well. “Help!” he cries. “There’s been a frightful mistake!” But no one stops the engine, and he’s carried along to the sticker, who slices open the boy’s jugular vein with a knife. As the belt moves on and Lexington begins to feel faint, he sees the pigs ahead being dropped into a large cauldron of boiling water. One of the pigs seems to be wearing white gloves. Lexington’s strong heart pumps out the last of his blood, and he passes on “out of this, the best of all possible worlds, into the next.”

***

A short story about a cookbook writer, Lexington, who was raised by a strictly vegetarian aunt. After her aunt's death, he seeks to expand his culinary horizons, first by tasting pork for the first time and then going to a factory tour to see how meat is processed. Unfortunately for him, the slaughterhouse he goes to appears to specialize on processing meat of the "long pig" kind...

Ellin, Stanley: The Specialty of the House

https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/books/stanley-ellin-the-specialty-of-the-house/

A macabre little tale about an unusual restaurant in Manhattan and its lonely patrons.

Enriquez, Mariana: Carne (Meat)

From the book Los peligros de fumar en la cama (The dangers of smoking in bed).

After the suicide of a controversial culty musician who sang about how we're all meat, a couple of teenagers dug up his rotting body and began to consume it until they were detained by police. This leads to a huge debate in the city as to wether these girls were insane groupies or if they "understood his message perfectly".

Fink, Joseph: It Devours!

From the authors of the New York Times bestselling novel Welcome to Night Vale and the creators of the #1 international podcast of the same name, comes a mystery exploring the intersections of faith and science, the growing relationship between two young people who want desperately to trust each other, and the terrifying, toothy power of the Smiling God.

Nilanjana Sikdar is an outsider to the town of Night Vale. Working for Carlos, the town’s top scientist, she relies on fact and logic as her guiding principles. But all of that is put into question when Carlos gives her a special assignment investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert wasteland outside of town. This investigation leads her to the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, and to Darryl, one of its most committed members. Caught between her beliefs in the ultimate power of science and her growing attraction to Darryl, she begins to suspect the Congregation is planning a ritual that could threaten the lives of everyone in town. Nilanjana and Darryl must search for common ground between their very different world views as they are faced with the Congregation’s darkest and most terrible secret.

Gaiman, Neil: Babycakes from Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions

In this story, all the animals disappeared and people resorted to using babies as a substitute. Eating them. wearing clothes made with their skin and testing various things of them. A remarkably macabre Flesh vision of the world. Also, written as a benefit for PETA which, I think, should give it bonus points in the flesh category.

Graves, Damian: An Apple A Day

Tim Barnett decides to get revenge on his cruel neighbor, Bill Cole, by vandalizing his apple orchard. He steals and eats one of the man's apples as a souvenir, prompting a slow, painful transformation into an apple tree.

Guanzhong, Luo: Excerpt from Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Untitled, fictitious story in the larger work, meant to demonstrate Liu Bei's incredible character. He stops at the home of Liu An (a hunter, and one of his relatives). Liu An doesn't have enough meat to feed his lord and his retinue, to he kills, butchers, cooks and serves his own wife so that Liu Bei and company wouldn't be under-served. When Liu Bei finds out this he is shocked, but not outraged, at having been unknowingly fed human flesh. He is, instead, amazed at Liu An's devotion to hospitality (to the point of feeding his lord his own wife), and instead praises him as a model citizen. And this is a story the author inserted to make Liu Bei sound more virtuous and heroic than he was in actual history!

Harris, Thomas: Hannibal

Lecter's backstory. As horrible as you would imagine.

Harris, Thomas: Silence of the Lambs

Not only is this book about a guy who kidnaps, captures, and kills women and peels off their skin to make himself beautiful, there’s an unrelated cannibal (Dr Hannibal Lecter) just hanging out in jail. The title derives from Clarise’s experience growing up on a farm and hearing “the silence of the lambs” after they’ve been screaming before being slaughtered.

Ito, Junji: Glyceride

The story revolves around a father and his daughter and son, who run a barbecue joint, which results in grease rising from the bottom floor to their living space, making everything in their house- their clothes, the walls, the furniture - covered in a film of grease. There's a constant motif of the horrors of the flesh at their grossest: The constant bullying the daughter Yui endures from her brother Goro, her stress and disgust at what she calls the "saturation level" of grease in the air, the horrible acne Goro develops and his strange addiction to drinking cooking oil, and the unnatural, greasy body odor their father has. All of this is later put on disgusting constract against their father's job at the barbecue, and how his customers think the meat he serves is delicious...

All of this escalates until Goro tries to kill Yui. However, their father saves Yui by bashing Goro over the head with a frying pan, killing him; he subsequently gets rid of the body by serving his flesh to the customers in his restaurant. The restaurant enjoys a revival in popularity due to Goro being served to the patrons but, when the meat runs out, the customers stop coming back. Yui begins to develop acne and a bad temper, just like Goro. She wakes up one night to find her father forcing oil down her throat just as Goro used to drink it. From then on, Yui can't sleep due to her father's constant efforts to break into her room and give her oil.

With no more meat left, Yui's father is forced to close the restaurant. He begins drinking the oil himself. His skin and hair become even greasier, and the saturation level continues to rise. The entire house is now full to the brim with grease, and grease drips constantly from the ceiling the saturation level is 90%. Eventually, Yui catches a glimpse of her father cutting off his own leg to serve in the restaurant since Goro's been eaten and she refuses to drink the oil; she observes that her father's leg is not leaking blood, only grease, as she realizes the saturation level is now at 100%.

Ito, Junji: Tomie

Not only has body horror and cannibalism, but is also a commentary on beauty standards and objectification of women.

Katsu, Alma: The Hunger

Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history.

While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"

KFC: Tender Wings of Desire

It's a romance novel by KFC. What more do you really need to know?

King, Stephen: Survivor Type

One of the few short stories that even King thinks he went a little too far on.

From Wikipedia: "Survivor Type is written as the diary of a disgraced surgeon, Richard Pine nee Pinzetti, who, while attempting to smuggle a large amount of heroin aboard a cruise ship, is forced to escape when an explosion causes the ship to sink. He relates growing up poor in an Italian-American neighborhood and playing college football (which he hated) to get into a good college and then went on to medical school and in time a successful practice until his illegal distribution of prescription medicines and blank forms led to the loss of his license. He arranged to smuggle heroin from Vietnam to make a large amount of money, which would then be distributed for bribes that would enable him to return to practicing medicine. While encountering a storm in his empty lifeboat, Pine finds himself marooned on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean whose exact location is completely unknown to him, with very limited supplies and no food. A self-proclaimed "survivor" type, Pine bitterly whiles away the time by using a logbook as his diary, detailing his rise and fall in the medical profession and his determination to survive this ordeal, get even with the people that "screwed him over," and return to prosperity.

Over time, the diary entries become more and more disjointed and raving, revealing Pine's slow mental decay and eventual insanity caused by starvation, isolation and drug use. Determined to hold out for rescue, he goes to horrifying lengths to survive. He eats insects, kelp and seagulls. After fracturing his ankle while attempting to signal an airplane, he amputates his own foot, then realizes he has to eat it to survive. He continues to amputate his own limbs to use as a food source, ingesting the heroin as a crude anesthetic during these operations. His last few diary entries, barely comprehensible, indicate that Pine has sliced off and eaten both legs, as well as his earlobes, and drools uncontrollably as he ponders which body part to consume next. The diary entries end when he cuts off his left hand to eat it and writes "lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers." "

King, Stephen: Thinner

Billy Halleck is a successful, arrogant lawyer known for his chronic obesity and sleazy manner. While driving across town he is distracted by his wife Heidi and runs over an elderly Romani woman, killing her. The woman's father, Taduz Lemke, curses Billy outside the courthouse, and Billy begins to lose weight rapidly regardless of how much he eats. Later, Billy discovers that the judge who cleared him of manslaughter charges has been disfigured by hideous scales growing on his skin, while the policeman who committed perjury on Billy's behalf is now stricken with uncontrollable acne. Both men eventually commit suicide out of shame for their malformed appearances.

(The judge is literally slowly turning into like, a literal alligator man, in horrifying detail per Stephen King. The policeman's "acne" is his entire skin basically turning into one giant pimple and sloughing off. It's very Flesh and VERY horrifying)

A now-emaciated, nearly skeletal Billy tracks the Romani band north along the seacoast of New England to Maine. He confronts Lemke at their camp and tries to persuade him to lift the curse but Lemke refuses.

Billy calls for help from his mob boss friend who threatens the Romani with violence until Lemke agrees to meet with Billy, who is now at risk of death from heart arrhythmia because of his emaciation. Lemke brings a strawberry pie with him and adds blood from Billy's wounded hand to it. He explains that the curse can't be taken back, so Billy must pass it to someone else by getting them to eat the pie. (The pie starts pulsing like it has a heartbeat by the way.)

Billy returns home intending to feed the pie to Heidi as he blames her for his predicament. He falls asleep, and when he wakes, he is horrified to find that both Heidi and his beloved daughter Linda are now cursed. Without hesitation, he eats the rest of the pie. And then the book just fucking ENDS, leaving you the reader to speculate on how the curse manifests to finish them off.

Lee, Tanith: The Beast

A "Beauty and the Beast" retelling that inverts a lot of the fairytale's traditional tropes: instead of Vessavion starting the story as an ugly Beast who becomes handsome at the end when the Beauty returns to him and recognizes his inner beauty, he starts the story as a handsome and seemingly perfect man who becomes an ugly Beast (and dead) at the end when his wife Isobel leaves him after learning about his secret hobby of murdering ugly people and taking their incongruously beautiful body parts for his collection.

Levene, Rebecca: Too Rich for My Blood (in Seven Deadly Sins)

The stories in Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins are based on the Christian concept of seven deadly sins. This story's theme is gluttony.

On a trip to Las Vegas, Chris Cwej watches a hot-dog eating contest go horribly wrong as a painfully skinny contender devours his entire plate... and then his competitors'... and then his competitors. He's been spiked with alien hormones that massively accelerate his metabolism, burning away his calories as he eats -- and it's infectious. Soon, the casino is overrun with a zombie plague as Chris tries to lead the survivors to safety and ensure that the infection doesn't make its way onto the streets. Meanwhile, the Doctor searches for a cure, and Benny has stumbled into a poker tournament where the prize is getting to live.

Miyazawa, Kenji: The Restaurant of Many Orders

From Wikipedia: "Two gentlemen in Western-style dress go hunting in the woods, accompanied by two dogs and a guide. After a day of hunting, they have failed to capture any game, they have become separated from their guide, and their dogs suddenly drop dead. As the two gentlemen lament their losses and trudge forward, they suddenly turn to find a large Western-style house with a sign reading, "Restaurant Wildcat House Western-Style Cooking". The hungry gentlemen, though unnerved, enter the restaurant to encounter a series of doors that open before and close behind them. Each door is preceded by a sign, the first few of which bear double-entendre messages of welcome. The gentlemen interpret these signs, apologizing for the restaurant's "many orders", as indicating the restaurant's popularity and quality. Later signs bear commands (the Japanese 注文 chūmon having the same two senses as the English "orders") instructing the men to undress and rub themselves with strange substances. All the while, growing hungrier and colder, the men speculate about the fine food and diners they expect to find in a restaurant so discerning.

Finally, the men realize they cannot go back and realize that they will be devoured by the proprietor of the house if they approach the last door. In a deus ex machina, their previously dead dogs return to fight the demons lying behind the final door and the house vanishes into mist. The gentlemen are rejoined by their guide, and they return to Tokyo forever traumatized by the experience."

Ojeda, Mónica: Mandíbula (Jawbone)

“Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?”

Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise?

When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

Orwell, George: Animal Farm

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

***

"It tells the story of a group of anthropomorphic farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed and, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before. "

A tale about animals trying to rebel against the slaughter and failing. What's more flesh than that? Also, it's a metaphor against totalitarian regimes and in those humans are often treated like cattle.

Ovid: Metamorphoses

A series of stories all about transformation, the flesh being reshaped in radical ways. Sometimes the changes are punishments, other times rewards, but all of them are carefully detailed and totally irrevocable. May have played a role in my own furry awakening.

Pinkwater, Daniel: Slaves of Spiegel

At the beginning of the story, a community of obese space pirates inhabit the planet Spiegel, but periodically raid other planets for fattening food. At a feast celebrating their raids, the pirates' supreme commander 'Sargon the Great' initiates a new expedition for the three greatest cooks in the galaxy; at the conclusion whereof, the three finalists and their assistants are brought to a grand festival on Spiegel, and ordered to satisfy all the pirates in a contest of their skills, of which the winner's prize is the lifelong position of chief cook to the pirates themselves. Among the finalists are Steve Nickleson (the protagonist of an earlier book) and his assistant Norman Bleistift, whereof Norman serves as first-person narrator of nearly one-half of the text. Ultimately, Steve and Norman win the second prize of 600 pounds of Spiegelian blue garlic and transport home, which Steve later uses to create a "bright blue" pizza. The first place winner is forced to cook for the pirates forever.

Piper, Hailey: Benny Rose, the Cannibal King

The main antagonist of the novel, Benny Rose has a special hunger for children. During the 50s, he ended up trapped with five kids in the basement of a hospital that caught fire and consumed them to stay alive, which caused him to become a supernatural entity of some kind. Now, every Halloween night, he strikes and feasts upon the trick-and-treaters who are filling the streets. To make him even more heinous, he eats his victims piecemeal, while they're still alive.

Pizarnik, Alejandra: La Condesa Sangrienta (The bloody countess)

The book is based on the real life story that inspired the figure of the vampire.

Accused of the murders of 650 young women, Erzébeth Báthory is one of the most sinister criminals in history. In her castle on the Carpaths, in the late 17th century, the countess closes in on her victims to bleed them and keep her youth. Her cursed and fascinating legend lives on through time. The bloody countess is one of Alejandra Pizarnik's key works, its pages build up a disturbing portrait of sadism and madness.

Quiroga, Horacio: La gallina degollada (The decapitated chicken)

A couple has a deep desire to have children and a legacy. Unfortunately their first four sons turn out to be idiots because of a congenital disease. They have a fifth child, a daughter who appears to be healthy and quickly becomes the favourite while the idiot sons get sent to live their lives sitting on the backyard. One day, the sons witness the cook beheading a chicken for lunch, and become obsessed with the colour red from the blood, chanting "Red, red". When they see their sister playing outside, they, in unison, replicate what the cook did to the chicken with her while chanting "red, red".

Rymer, James Malcolm and Thomas Peckett Prest: The String of Pearls; or, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The book that inspired the musical, complete with delicious meat pies.

Shusterman, Neal: Duckling Ugly

Cara is so ugly, mirrors would rather break than show her reflection. Not even her own parents can deny her ugliness, and nothing can make up for the cruelty of her schoolmates. Tormented and tortured by the shallow people of Flock’s Rest, Cara’s life is miserable. Then Cara receives a shimmering note from some exotic place suggesting that there’s more to her than meets the eye. Cara wonders if her destiny has something to do with her recurring dreams of a beautiful green valley where the people are so accepting, her ugliness doesn’t matter. Soon, Cara discovers that her valley of dreams is real. It’s a place where the ugliest of ducklings can become swans. A swan, however, can have a serious taste for revenge . . . deadly revenge.

Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle

Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Many readers were most concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper.

The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."

***

It examines the desperate lives of meatpacking workers in Packingtown, Illinois, an area of southwest Chicago marked by its abundance of stockyards, slaughterhouses, factories, and cramped tenements, in the early 20th century.

Sinclair's primary purpose in describing the meat industry and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United States. However, the novel's most notable impact at the time was to provoke public outcry over passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat-packing industry during the early 20th century, which led to sanitation reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.

***

The Jungle is the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his family, Lithuanian immigrants who come to America to work in the meatpacking plants of Chicago. Their story is a story of hardship. They face enormous difficulties: harsh and dangerous working conditions, poverty and starvation, unjust businessmen who take their money, and corrupt politicians who create laws that allow all of this to happen. The story follows the hardships of Jurgis and his family and the transformation that Jurgis undergoes when he accepts the new political and economic revolution of socialism. The novel's most notable impact at the time was to provoke public outcry over passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat-packing industry during the early 20th century, which led to sanitation reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.

"He lived like a dumb beast of burden, knowing only the moment in which he lived."

"They use everything about the hog except the squeal"

***

“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

The Jungle is probably the most famous muckraking novel in American history. Its unflinching description of meatpacking plants in Chicago brought public attention to the unsanitary, inhumane conditions of the industrialized meatpacking trade, eventually leading the U.S. to adopt the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which created what would eventually become the Food and Drug Administration. According to Wikipedia, the author Sinclair--who was an avowed socialist--told Cosmopolitan Magaizine: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

If that's not enough to make you think of the Flesh, consider one of the book's most infamous passages:

"…and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting—sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard!"

Industrialized, inhumane slaughter of animals: Check

Visceral recognition of the fragile embodied state of human beings: Check

Cannibalism: Check

The Jungle is the perfect example of a Flesh text.

Smith, Clark Ashton: The Garden of Adompha

King Adompha and his equally vile court magician Dwerulas rule Sotar, which is known for Adompha's royal garden, hidden from the eyes of all but himself and Dwerulas. In truth, Adompha and Dwerulas capture or execute anyone disfavored by them in Sotar in order to butcher them and have Dwerulas fuse their remains to the plants of the garden, creating half-human, half-vegetable hybrids suspended in a strange state between life and death. Adompha orders a servant girl murdered purely for her hands, ordering the rest of her body fed to the plant her hands will grow upon, and furthermore murders Dwerulas on nothing more than an impulse. Dwerulas manages to curse Adompha in retaliation, resulting in Adompha's garden turning upon him and raking him to pieces.

Link: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/76/the-garden-of-adompha

Smith, Cordwainer: A Planet Named Shayol

The protagonist, Mercer, who lives within the Empire, has been convicted of "a crime that has no name". He is condemned by the Empire to the planet Shayol, where he lives in a penal colony whose inhabitants must undergo grotesque physical mutations caused by tiny symbiotes called dromozoans. Most grow extra organs, which the Empire harvests for medical purposes. The bull-man B'dikkat administers the prisoners a drug called super-condamine that alleviates the pain of their punishment and various surgeries.

More than a century passes. Mercer has found a lover, named Lady Da. B'dikkat shows the couple a sight that horrifies him: children have been sent to Shayol -- alive, though with their brains removed. Lady Da knows how to contact the Lords of the Instrumentality so that they can intervene. When the Lords arrive on Shayol, they are shocked by what they find. Moreover, the children there are heirs to the throne. Apparently, the Imperium has become so bureaucratic and corrupt that it condemned them to prevent them from committing treason when they matured.

The Instrumentality voids permission to allow the Empire to exist and to maintain Shayol. They will free the prisoners who are still sentient and provide a cure for their suffering with a substitute for the super-condamine, namely an electronic "cap" which stimulates the brain's pleasure center. The mindless prisoners will be decapitated, their heads "taken away and killed as pleasantly as we can manage, probably by an overdosage of super-condamine", leaving the bodies to be used by the dromozoa. Ultimately, Lady Da claims Mercer as her consort.

Stine, R.L.: Chicken, Chicken

"Everyone in Goshen Falls knows about weird Vanessa. She dresses all in black. Wears black lipstick. And puts spells on people. At least, that's what they say. Crystal and her brother, Cole, know you can't believe everything you hear. But that was before they made Vanessa mad. Before she whispered that strange warning, "Chicken chicken." Because now something really weird has happened. Crystal's lips have turned as hard as a bird's beak. And Cole has started growing ugly white feathers all over his body... "

-People turning into chickens!

-Detailed descriptions of how grossly biological chickens are!

-A cliffhanger where we think the narrator's mom is going to kill and eat her!

Stine, R.L. and Stephen Roos: The Boy Who Ate Fear Street

Sam Kinney used to be a very picky eater. But after a friend’s eccentric Aunt Sylvie put a weird spice in his mac and cheese, suddenly, Sam can’t stop eating. Paste and pepper. Dishwashing soap. Even dog food. Sam has to find out what is making him eat...and eat...and eat. Before he eats his house. And all his friends on Fear Street…

Summers, Chelsea G.: A Certain Hunger

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.

But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal

The famous work of satire that suggested that poor people should sell their children to be eaten by the wealthy. Some people... didn't get the joke.

Wells, H.G.: The Island of Dr. Moreau

A shipwrecked man, Edward Prendick, reaches a sinister island inhabited by notorious vivisectionist, Doctor Moreau. Prendick suspects that experiments are also being carried out on humans, resulting in hybrid forms; however, the doctor explains that he has actually been changing animals into people.

Yoshitomi, Akihito: School Ningyo (School Mermaid)

"Description from TvTropes: A horror manga / anthology series by Akihito Yoshitomi about Japanese school girls who really want boyfriends. But rather than going through the trouble of getting the attention of a boy, talking to them and just being themselves, they decide on a much quicker way to do so… By hunting mermaids in their school and eating their flesh."

Already submitted this for a hunt bracket but it works as a Flesh Leitner even better.

Spoilers: All the mermaids used to be people. They were turned into those mindless creatures meant to be eaten. If you don't eat the flesh of a mermaid during the hunt you turn into one so you have to consume flesh to avoid becoming it.

#leitner tournament #reading list #flesh poll

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