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Glowing in the Dark
In the distance, a darkness, and within, a glowing―just out of reach. A pulsing mass of bone and tissue is discovered beneath a sofa; gigantic mosquitoes haunt feverish dreamscapes; a man lives inside the body of a giant, buried in the blood-soaked ground. In these worlds atoms are unstable, new dimensions uncurl beneath teeth, and violence is a brother.
Comprised of stories ranging a wide variety of styles and influences, Glowing in the Dark is a hallway leading nowhere. It is gangrene.
Comprised of stories ranging a wide variety of styles and influences, Glowing in the Dark is a hallway leading nowhere. It is gangrene.
- GenresHorrorShort Stories
148 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2012
92 people want to read
About the author
David Peak
24Ìýbooks270ÌýfollowersDavid Peak is the author of The World Below (Apocalypse Party), Eyes in the Dust and Other Stories (Trepidatio Publishing), Corpsepaint (Word Horde), and The Spectacle of the Void (Schism). He lives in Chicago, where he is working on his next novel.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 12, 2017
Cables appear in apartments and signals are received. Your destination at the end of the night may be a graveyard where the moonlight is fading. Some people are just plain fucked. There is a night train that travels the eternal maternal cycle, and there are ghosts in the dining room. There is repetition and monotony in God's Panopticon, while identity and string theory fall together into madness. There are myths that explain nature, and nature that is too easily understood. Something prehistoric hungrily awakens. There is poetry and beauty in this book of speculative tales. And what I will remember most is this line: "It's only when you look closely that things seem to break down." It's true.
November 29, 2016
In David Peak’s “Glowing in the Dark � collection, we journey with him into a number of aspects of his fertile imagination. There are quite a number of stories here, some quite short, three of four pages, and several of a longer length. My preference are the longer stories where he can expand on the ideas he has laid out.
Earlier this year I read his excellent story “Eyes in the Dust� and his story telling voice prompted me to seek out more of his work. This collection fits the bill as the stories range from the Weird and Strange to hallucinogenic trips inspecting aspects of death and isolation,
The story that struck most deeply was one that could be called real-life horror. The story concerns a young international health care worker whose mission is to help wipe out polio in the world. She ends up in a small village in Africa where previously a co-worker had inoculated all of the tribe’s children. She discovers a horror that is unthinkable and heartbreaking yet plausible.
Mr. Peak is an author to look for. His stories are enthralling and move at a good clip. His grasp of the strange and bizarre are admirable as is his humanity.
Table of Contents:
007 � Strange Signals From the Center Of the Earth
015 � Carnivali and the Carmilites
027 � Dog House
029 � Museum Of Fucked
047 � Helping Hands
063 � Trauma Train
085 � The Book of the Guilty
089 � Somewher there’s a Dark Hallway of Faces
094 � Diary of the Passessed
110 � Children of God
113 � All Atoms are Dismantled
117 � Dreams from the Darklands
121 � Glowing In The Dark
127 � The Four Humors
142 - King of the Rats
This copy is inscribed and signed by David Peak.
Earlier this year I read his excellent story “Eyes in the Dust� and his story telling voice prompted me to seek out more of his work. This collection fits the bill as the stories range from the Weird and Strange to hallucinogenic trips inspecting aspects of death and isolation,
The story that struck most deeply was one that could be called real-life horror. The story concerns a young international health care worker whose mission is to help wipe out polio in the world. She ends up in a small village in Africa where previously a co-worker had inoculated all of the tribe’s children. She discovers a horror that is unthinkable and heartbreaking yet plausible.
Mr. Peak is an author to look for. His stories are enthralling and move at a good clip. His grasp of the strange and bizarre are admirable as is his humanity.
Table of Contents:
007 � Strange Signals From the Center Of the Earth
015 � Carnivali and the Carmilites
027 � Dog House
029 � Museum Of Fucked
047 � Helping Hands
063 � Trauma Train
085 � The Book of the Guilty
089 � Somewher there’s a Dark Hallway of Faces
094 � Diary of the Passessed
110 � Children of God
113 � All Atoms are Dismantled
117 � Dreams from the Darklands
121 � Glowing In The Dark
127 � The Four Humors
142 - King of the Rats
This copy is inscribed and signed by David Peak.
December 11, 2013
Lucid fables of astral body-horror. A matrix of dreams whispering that you have yet to wake up. Read these stories to have a chance at not dying in your sleep. The style and feeling of the writing is sweet, shadowy, and effortlessly allegorical, like too-human transmissions from a distant black metal planet received on a Twilight Zone cathode ray tube tucked away in a collective unconscious cavern growing with radioactive slime molds. The shorter, lyrical stories, almost prose-poems, are the most beautiful to me -- places to really float far away from the weird fact that the cosmos is like television: "Our movements are a ballet, beautiful and without the slightest hint of human error. Such careful choreography cannot possibly be described, and every passing moment is utterly blissful in its weightlessness." To see that even eternal damnation is paradise: "There would be more prayer, prayer until the knees bloomed ulcerous sores, prayer until the spine threatened to malform. Divinity. In the name of. . . . Swallowed whole, within the blackness of the eye."
November 30, 2012
This is the apocalypse. My favorite stories are: The Four Humours, Diary of the Possessed, Glowing in the Dark & Strange Signals from the Center of the Earth.
April 1, 2013
Stories functioning more like signals from beyond the beyond:
Read and you will witness the apocalypse of tomorrow, calling to you but can only see the faintest glimpses for you still have today to survive.
Read and you will witness the apocalypse of tomorrow, calling to you but can only see the faintest glimpses for you still have today to survive.
February 13, 2013
This is the first smell of a fire started. Everything is possible.
April 18, 2017
David Peak's Glowing in the Dark is a creepy collection of fictions mired in abjection, where corpses and wounds and dark holes and all kinds of rot force breakdowns in meaning.
March 3, 2014
Not bad, not great. Hopefully (Peak’s biography is vague) the work of a young man who’ll get much better. But don’t be fooled by the blurb. “New extremity�? “Language-pushing experimentalist?� Are we talking about the same book here? There’s some nice, if slight, pieces in this low-key mainstream/horror crossover. Thomas Ligotti it ain’t, but it shows imagination and an earnest desire to story-tell. On this evidence, Peak’s OK with me. (More attention to book design would help.)
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