“Hi,” I say. “My name is Jillian. And I’m terrified of you.”

Out in paperback now is the latest short story collection from Eric LaRocca, This Skin was Once Mine, and Other Disturbances. In here we have 4 dark stories that explore a mix of childhood trauma, abuse, obsession, and murder.

I absolutely devour anything LaRocca writes. The only two I’m missing are We Can Never Leave This Place, and his 2025 release At Dark, I Become Lonesome. And every single one of his books are a 5/5 for me, easily.

This collection joins the 5/5 club.

Our first story, and my personal favourite in the collection, is the title story, This Skin Was Once Mine. We follow Jillian, a woman who was sent away from home when she was a small child, and hasn’t seen her parents since. Except for an occasional letter from her father, and her bills being paid for her, Jillian has no connection to her family. But when her father passes away, her estranged mother requests for Jillian to return home.

As the story unravels, so too does Jillian’s sanity as she is faced with flashback memories of her father, and has to confront her mother who is also dying. I loved Ambrose, he was so dry and cruel. Every interaction with him he makes a snarky remark that would make me laugh. It’s pretty clear within a few pages that Jillian’s father sexually abused her as a child but Jillian has distorted memories of this, placing the blame on her mother, and seeing her father as a perfect figure. But then a twist hits that knocks you completely on your ass. Jillian discovers a young woman trapped in a box under a bed who has clearly been kept prisoner for her entire life in their house. And we quickly learn, this was Jillian’s replacement, her father has kept this young girl trapped, abusing her, and calling her the same nick name as Jillian.

When you’re trying to catch your breath from that reveal, you then learn that this young woman is actually Jillian’s younger sister. And the mother has no idea. And Ambrose does. THEN…Jillian decides to keep the young woman, Jay, hostage. THEN…when Jay is finally free, she in-turn keeps Jillian hostage.

It’s fucking wild. And SO good. Just an incredibly paced, dark, and twisted story about generations of trauma, and the secrets that families keep.

“Notice how it always moves forward, Jay bird? A snake doesn’t glance back and think to itself, this skin was once mine. A snake always moves forward. Keeps changing. No matter what.”

The next story is Seedling, which is a close second favourite for me. In this tale, a son and his father don’t have a close relationship, but when the mother dies, the son flees to the house to take care of his father, while his mother’s body still lays dead in the other room. This one is much more speculative and almost dreamy in the way it’s written. I thoroughly enjoyed the imagery of these two men finding small black holes in their skin that seem to have a dark galaxy of black twisting vines and oil within them. Ultimately, we’re faced with two men who never learned to communicate with each other, and the loss they feel when the matriarch keeping the family together, dies.

“Instead, the darkness residing in the small pocket of his open skin stared back at me and seemed to shimmer, as if pleased to know I was so curious.”

Our third story, and perhaps the most disturbing, is All the Parts of you That Won’t Easily Burn. Enoch sets out to buy a fancy knife for his husband’s dinner party, only to encounter a strange shopkeeper who strikes a deal with him. He can have this fancy knife for free, if he’ll let the shopkeeper cut him with it and insert a small piece of glass.

This awakens something in Enoch and he quickly unravels. By the end of the story, Enoch is in a fight for his life against a deeply disturbed individual who keeps a naked man hostage, burning him to feel something.

I had to take a deep breath after this one, and then stare at the wall for a bit.

“I can’t bear to part with this, he thinks to himself. Not yet.”

And lastly, we have Prickle. This is about two old friends who have been apart for many years as one was sent away to recover from an illness. But when the two meet again, Mr. Chessler looks worse than when he left. At first, their meeting is awkward, but when Mr. Spirro recommends they play their disturbing game, ‘prickle’, the two become thick as thieves quickly. But this game means they ruin a stranger’s day in a fucked up way. Mr. Chessler goes first, starting up a conversation with a lonely old woman, only to stab her and pretend it was a wasp. Mr. Spirro follows up by approaching and talking to man with a cane, before promptly breaking the cane in half leaving this poor man to limp home confused and devastated.

The final game, Mr. Chessler tells Mr. Spirro to feed a baby a small pebble. But this crosses a line for Mr. Spirro, in a display of logic that baffled me and reveals the layers of disturbance both these men have. So Mr. Chessler does it himself, taking it one step further by throwing the baby in the river. It’s a wild turn of events that completely catches you off guard.

“It was the hearty, emphatic laugh of a madman — the horrible kind of laugh that reached deep inside Mr. Spirro and twisted his guts into ribbons while prickling the hairs on the nape of his neck.”

Overall, another astoundingly good collection from Eric LaRocca. A massive thank you to Titan Books for sending me a copy of this in exchange for an honest review. And for sending me many of LaRocca’s books over the years. You’re the freakin’ best!!!