Black Brane by Michael Cisco

Until a couple years ago, Michael Cisco lurked on the periphery of what I was reading, mentioned by the Vandermeers in a collection of New weird literature, his name inserted into the folds of books by many of my favorite horror authors. Eventually I picked up “The Narrator", a beautifully descriptive maze of worlds and cultures evoking dreamlike imagery throughout - it was unfortunate, while I was well aware of his surrealist leanings, that this tomb didn't seem to end, but simply sputtered out. Thankfully “Black Brane”, though no less experimental and captivating, follows a through line and narrative one can at least imply carries a narrative arc. The story told by our unreliable and perhaps insane narrator begs far more questions than the answers it delivers, but sings a song of glassy pain the whole way.

The story itself is akin to a radiated piece of material, throwing out misery and corruption in all directions as it moves along. The story begins at an end, our narrator laying in a hospital bed, describing again and again the glassy shattering ache in his leg, a phantom pain since there seems to be no wound. Almost ready to give up, being battered by these grating descriptions page after page, I was relieved when the narrative turns to the beginning of the story, giving us a description of their Lynchian job working for an eccentric homeless woman who won the lottery and founded TISH, “the temporary institute for the study of holes” in Los Angeles. This anachronistic and kafka-esque bureaucracy is half the fun, they study anything one can imagine relating to holes and their holiness. Along the way we meet eccentric characters and are told strange stories, all while constantly looping back to the present tense, nagging us with the scratching, resilience of their agony - something we eventually learn may have been caused by a particle in their leg becoming entangled with its partner which is slowly being swallowed by a black hole. Trying to describe the plot of this slim novel any further would do little justice to Cisco, and make me look like a fool. 

This is all part of what makes “Black Brane” so horrifying - a blend of disparate elements which, on their own, are unsettling, but together begin to crawl under the skin and whisper from the dark corners. Reading the story is evocative of Noah Hawley's anachronistic institutions from Legion if they fused with the mad science of Remedy entertainments Oldest House. On top of this is a prose reminiscent of Blood Meridian and Gravity’s Rainbow, enjoyed in a flow state, as a song or a poem more than a traditional narrative. After "Black Brane" I'll definitely be adding more of Cisco’s work to my reading list.

7/10 - Would Read Again