By the Nails of the Warpriest by Nik Korpon

And when he thinks he’ll break if he has to carry – literally or figuratively – the burden of his mother any longer, he finally understands why people are willing to roll the dice to have the basement surgeon excise their problems. Day after day, night after night the dutiful son is forced to relive memories of a man he remembers very differently than his mother does, a man whose faults he’s not willing to overlook or forgive. I mean, one should seriously rethink their desire for cheap elective surgery when their doctor works with such sophisticated equipment as filet knives and tongs, a corkscrew and melon baller, fishing line and a nitrous oxide tank covered in clowns.īut as the story unfolds we learn that when not at work helping fix the (perceived) problems of strangers, the narrator spends his time at home trying to mend his mother, a woman both mentally and physically worn down by time, and a broken heart. The story’s lead works as the assistant to an off the books surgeon who performs procedures in his less than sterile basement operating theater. “His Footsteps are Made of Soot” is the story I think perhaps best captures the mixture of grit and eloquence which makes Korpon’s writing so intoxicating.

This being a Korpon story, however, we quickly realize that under the bed was probably the best place for the burglar boyfriend to be, as things go from awkward to alarming upon his emergence from hiding. The tension in this one is nearly unbearable, as Korpon paints his lead into a corner – or under a bed as the case may be – leaving both the poor guy and the reader to wonder how he’s getting out without getting caught. But instead of getting in and out with surgical precision, he lingers a bit too long and finds himself trapped when his ex returns from a night out at the bars…and she’s not alone. “Alex and the Music Box” finds a guy sneaking back into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to retrieve the music box he’d given her.

As with any collection, however, there were a few that particularly stood out to me. The nine stories which form the collection clock in collectively at around 80 pages, and every one of them has clearly been crafted with the utmost care. That disturbing yet eloquent line opens “His Footsteps are Made of Soot,” one of my favorite stories in Nik Korpon’s recently released collection Bar Scars. Her skin parts like wet silk under a razor, and even with a gaping hole in her face, I think she’s quite beautiful.

By the Nails of the Warpriest by Nik Korpon