I had purchased Mellick’s novel “The Haunted Vagina” on a lark along with Chuck Tingle’s (yes, that Chuck Tingle) book “Buttception.” I had a nonsense plan to give each to friends of Lisa when they came into town for vacation shenanigans. On receipt of the books, I realized that they had toooo much shenanigans and kept them for myself. After reading “The Haunted Vagina” I was hooked on Melick and got two more. All contain a mix of bizarre yet elegant humanity.
The Haunted Vagina
It goes in one direction and then another that you cannot anticipate then further. That’s a very generic description but an accurate one w/r/t Mellick’s gross, magic realist prose. I was intrigued then disgusted (not really) and yet surprised, and finally fascinated. No spoilers, but what starts as a story of a man crawling into his girlfriend’s vagina and finding a world, a la lions witches and wardrobes, turns into a tale of love emerging from a previous, failed relationship. Failed relationships inform subsequent relationships as if they were birthed from them and here, in a way, they are. The humanity is hidden in grotesque honesty.
Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes
Another relationship story. Here, a teen boy falls in love with a quirky, loner girl. They start dating and, as referenced in the title, when they start kissing or she gets sexually excited her face boils and then explodes. Skin and muscle and maybe her tongue or an eye flies off, also causing damage to him too if he’s too close. Her father reconstructs her using flesh from odd human-faced dog-like animals that they keep in the cellar. Eventually, she acquires an exotic, mottled face after the stitches heal and disappear. A special drug in her blood blocks her pain and his if he’s in the line of fire.
This condition was passed down from her mother–now distorted from years of reconstruction–and from all previous generations of women in her family. The boyfriend becomes concerned about her differences, including the spider-infested bedroom she sleeps in, but he’s truly in love and they eventually can be together for longer periods of time, though without having sex. That’s held off until the truly odd, gross, sweet ending. Mellick really has a knack for that.
Neverday
This is I think his most recent book and is a much more conventional sci fi story. Like the movie Groundhog Day, a man relives every day after he falls asleep. Unlike Groundhog Day, a large portion of the population suffers the same affliction and periodically more people “awaken” to live this repeated immortality.
To stave off the chaos of consequence free theft, murder, or rape, laws and a police force are created. Some people are hundreds or thousands of years old and have forgotten most of their lives. Newly awake people must go to group therapy to deal not only with the idea of being immortal, but being immortal with a hangover, horrible injuries, or as with one woman we meet, being nine months pregnant and knowing you’ll never see your child. This is a considerably more grim and more realistic Groundhog Day. The ending is as carefully human as that of his other two books I read, just less bizarre.