Melissa opened the door to the OB/GYN’s clinic. She’d started seeing Dr Sabinsky at the six week mark, and their meetings had already taken on a brisk predictability.

How are you feeling? Any food cravings? No pica? Good, good. Go to the community clinic for an ultrasound. Take some more folic acid. Bulk-billing is available. Good-bye.

This time, she had a sunken face, and shadows under her eyes.

When Dr Sabinsky said hello, she didn’t respond.

She shuffled into the clinic, and sat down in the chair opposite his.

“It’s kicking,” was all she said.

“That’s great,” Sabinsky’s PR smile lit up the room. “You must be so excited.”

Melissa shook her head.

Didn’t look excited. Not even a little bit.

“I don’t know what’s happening, or what I’ve done wrong.” She said, slowly. It was as if speaking cost her dearly. “I don’t even know if there’s a point in coming to you. The baby’s kicking.”

Sabinsky’s smile widened, and then he was off and running, reciting one of the dozen canned speeches that he gave over and over to women in this clinic. “So you’re feeling confused? Not sure what to make of all this? Don’t worry, that’s absolutely normal. Your hormones are on a rollercoaster, but all your metrics are right on point – this has just about been a model pregnancy. What we’ll do next is book you in for a multiple marker test, just to make one hundred percent sure everything’s going to plan in there…”

Melissa shook her head.

“…and I’ve got some more supplements for you to take, and we’ll also get you started on some Kegel exercises. Never too early to start strengthening up your pelvic floor. And then we’ll…”

“I miscarried.” She blurted out.

He stared at her. “What?”

“Last week. I lost the baby.” The words left her mouth like vomit. “My husband and I woke up, and the bed was just a lake of blood.”

“Ah.”

“So why do I still feel it kicking?” Her voice rose, containing a shrill note of panic. She pulled up the hem of her maternity skirt, exposing her swollen belly. “Can you answer that, doc? What do I have inside me?“

He was the doctor. He had an answer for everything.

But when he put his hands on her gravid stomach, and felt something stirring within, he found that he didn’t, and couldn’t.

This is a 24,000 word horror novella about a morbid fascination: self-help.

It’s one of the 21st century’s phenomenons. It’s corruptible linguistically. One letter away from “sell-help”. Another letter away from “self-hell”. It’s corruptible in other ways, too. Scientology. James Arthur Ray. Jonestown. History is full of charismatic sociopaths with the solution to all your problems, so long as those problems are a heavy wallet, your sanity, and your life.

This book takes that idea, turns the dial to 11, and tears it off. Review copies are available. Hit me up at mail @ this website URL, with “Gateless Gate, Skyless Sky” as the subject line.

—

“…Welcome to the program, Mr Zhang.”

What would you do to change your life?

What if you said ‘anything’…and meant it?

Jiro Zhang is a small-time criminal, steadily circling the drain. Then he meets Makassar, psychologist and founder of the Gateless Gate, Skyless Sky method.

This method is like nothing that has ever existed before. Its techniques are terrifying, illegal, and perhaps deadly. It can cure you of anything, even your humanity. It’s Zen Buddhism on steroids, crack cocaine, and Zyklon B. Jiro just has to sign the dotted line.

Under the guidance of the sinister Makassar, Jiro will walk a path to the edge of sanity, and then far, far beyond. He’s on the ultimate self-help journey…but he might look inside and find there’s no “self” left at the end.

Gateless Gate is a horror novella that mixes Buddhism, transhumanism, and ultra-violence. It’s the tale of a man who tears out the darkness in his soul and replaces it with something a thousand shades blacker.

[The Gate Opens Wide.]

If Metallica’s career was a movie narrated by Morgan Freeman, here’s the part where he says “…and that’s when it all started to go wrong.”

“It’s slow” is a common complaint lodged against Metallica’s 1991 self-titled release, but that’s not the true problem: a slow Metallica album might be actually interesting. Instead, what they did was take any possible extremity and…make it less extreme.

A few long songs became lots of short ones. Furious speed became a uptempo bounce. Droning slowness became a downtempo plod. Everything was smoothed out, graded even – this is an album so flat you can iron your clothes on it.

Pick out something you liked about 80s Metallica. Odds are, that element is now either gone or greatly reduced. It could have been career suicide, but unknown to everyone, they were positioned ride one of the biggest waves in popular music.

Nirvana’s Nevermind was sliding out of Seattle’s bomb bay doors, and rock music would be destroyed and rebuilt in a new, “alternative” image. Rock concerts became the new place to get bored out of your skull, and Metallica became the heavier version of the grunge rock craze. People seemed to dig their new lack of pretension. Playing too fast or too slow is trying, man. And trying isn’t cool.

Sometimes, The Black Album hits home. Other time, it’s my finger that hits home, on the skip button.

“Sad but True” is pedestrian and lacks energy. Hetfield’s riffs are weak and Ulrich’s drumming has a mechanical, overproduced quality. It almost seems to flop out of your speakers.

“Enter Sandman”…chronic overplay is an interesting phenomenon. Some songs survive it, other songs don’t. No further comment except that I neither want nor don’t want to hear “Sandman”: it inspires no reaction from me at all.

“Nothing Else Matters” is either the most commercial Metallica song ever or an fascinating fusion of genres. Apparently Hetfield wrote the first few bars while on the phone with his girlfriend, which is why the opening arpeggios can be played with one hand.

“Holier than Thou”, “Through the Never”, and “The Struggle Within” rock fairly hard and pull the album back a bit to a thrash metal sound. “Never” is the album standout, featuring one of Hetfield’s better vocal performances and an energized set of riffs.

The rest of the album is a crapshoot of commercial-sounding metal carefully calculated to not scare anyone wearing flannel and stonewashed jeans. Tracks like “Don’t Tread on Me”, “Of Wolf and Man, and “My Friend in Misery” are now heavily dated, especially if you believe metal should push against a boundary somewhere. None of it is offensive, but you want something more – more speed, more heaviness, more hooks, better developed ideas. Instead, these songs just show up, punch a clock, do their job, then leave. They’re the Teamsters of the metal world.

For all its failings, The Black Album is not grunge rock. But it’s infected with the grunge rock disease, a pretentious lack of pretension.

Sound contradictory? Welcome to the 90s. Rockstars pretending to be tortured, introverted loners while making millions of dollars. Pantera and Ministry conducting Stalinesque purges of their back catalog, lest anybody suspect they were capable of laughing or having fun. The whole decade sucked. Phony, fake, wrist-slashing garbage. Lyrically, Hetfield bows to changing times only once, writing a sob story about his upbringing in “The God that Failed”. Musically, he bent so much he turned into a pretzel.

I wish there was more contrast. It seems like it was written so that every song could be a potential radio hit, and it comes off like a plate of mashed potato – some hills and some valleys, but it’s still pile of mashed spud.