Praise for Eric LaRocca

PRAISE FOR ERIC LAROCCA

“A startling affair...I’ll be cleaning up particles of darkness in my office for weeks.”

JOSH MALERMAN (BIRD BOX, INSPECTION)

"When broken people do broken things - especially in the name of love - we all get broken, too. What starts as sweetly genteel swiftly descends into everything that's brutalizingly ugly about the abusive master/slave dynamic. A hauntingly elegant, masterfully written, and ultimately devastating indictment of cruel manipulation and even crueler submission. This is one deeply fucked-up heartbreaker. You have been warned."

JOHN SKIPP (THE LIGHT AT THE END)

"Part Dennis Cooper's The Sluts, part David Cronenberg's The Brood...Eric LaRocca's Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a masterpiece of epistolary body horror."

MAX BOOTH III (WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING)

"Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a tight, merciless epistolary, each piece of correspondence coiling the reader around its finger and never letting go. LaRocca skillfully weaves a grotesque, unforgettable page-turner of manipulation and depravity."

HAILEY PIPER (THE WORM AND HIS KINGS)

"With darkly poetic prose and chilling stories that peel back layers of skin to reveal a beating, bloody heart, Eric LaRocca is the clear literary heir of Clive Barker."

TYLER JONES (CRITERIUM, THE DARK SIDE OF THE ROOM)

“Eric LaRocca is a fierce talent that knows no limit, masterful and utterly unmissable!”

ROSS JEFFERY (JUNIPER, TOME)

Title Page

Copyright

Copyright © 2021 by Eric LaRocca, Artists, Weirdpunk Books

First Edition

WP-0012

Print ISBN 978-1-951658-12-0

Editing and internal layout/formatting by Sam Richard

Weirdpunk Books logo by Nate Sorenson

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Weirdpunk Books

Dedication

To Ali, my love.

Things have gotten better since we first met.

You make me feel like less of a monster.

Contents

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Part One

A Sliced Apple

Part Two

What Have You Done Today To Deserve Your Eyes?

Part Three

A Salamander From the Park

Part Four

An Egg Before it Cracks

Part Five

Gracious Host

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Weirdpunk Books

Author’s Note

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As there has already been an overwhelming amount of conjecture and vitriol – especially in the dominion of online discussion – regarding the untimely demise of Agnes Petrella at the age of twenty-four, the author of this text has tenderly and judiciously compiled the following content with the hope of enlightening the public by publishing the contents of her correspondence with Zoe Cross in the several months prior to her death.