Coup De Grâce E-Book

Sofia Ajram

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 146

Beschreibung

"A harrowing exploration of the expanding labyrinth of despair and the self." Paul Tremblay. A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke. Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station. Determined to find a way out again, he starts to explore the rooms and corridors ahead of him. But no matter how many claustrophobic hallways or vast cathedral-esque rooms he passes through, the exit is nowhere in sight. The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn't been trapped there accidentally, and amongst the shadows and concrete, he comes to realise that he almost certainly is not alone. A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Author’s Note

Dedication

Coup de Grâce

Acknowledgements

About the Author

“Alienating, exquisite, and disturbing; a poem in blood and concrete.”

Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo

“Coup de Grâce is a harrowing exploration of the expanding labyrinth of despair and the self. Its liminal melancholy will linger. Sofia Ajram is a writer to watch.”

Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts

“An aching spectacle of bleakness and jewelled prose; Coup de Grâce is one hell of a debut for multi-talented Sofia Ajram.”

Cassandra Khaw, bestselling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth

“In this caustic confrontation with the self, Ajram’s carefully crafted dread is a hand wrapped around your throat.”

Andrew F. Sullivan, Locus Award finalist and author of The Marigold

“The decision, the ride, the beautiful stranger, the end you always knew would find you—Sofia Ajram’s Coup de Grâce is wholly original and totally, despairingly, passionately alive.”

Kathe Koja, author of Dark Factory and The Cipher

“Relentless, terrifying, gorgeous, and perfect; one of the most powerful books I’ve ever been lost inside. This is a beautiful nightmare built by a genius architect and I’ll be shocked if I read anything better all year.”

Daniel Kraus,New York Times bestselling author of Whalefall

“Forwarded with the funereal poetics of dream-logic but, wait: awake. And therefore, no dream, but nightmare. Still, despite the horror, Ajram’s spirited voice is as self-evident as a solitary bright hue in a wide grey world. What do we look for in books, in stories, if not signs of life? Coup de Grâce is teeming with rare life.”

Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Incidents Around the House

“A stunner. Ajram makes earnest ennui feel like the most natural state of a story. Don’t assume you get to just read; you’re part of this too.”

Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker® Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth

“Coup de Grâce is a novella woven with cold elegance like sea breeze drifting from the ocean at night through liminal spaces both seen but felt.”

Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker® award-nominated author of Linghun

“The literary equivalent of a high-fever delirium, of picking at a wound, of an acid burn in the back of your throat. Ajram will have your nightmares wrapped around his finger, and you will be reluctant to come up for air.”

Andrew Joseph White, New York Times bestselling author of Hell Followed with Us and The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

“A truly unsettling and uneasy novella. Ajram perfectly captures a setting that is at once vast and empty, yet confining and claustrophobic, blending the mundane and the fantastical… A distinct voice and vision.”

A.C. Wise, Bram Stoker® Award-nominated author of The Ghost Sequences

“A stunning mobius strip of a nightmare, equal parts Clive Barker and M.C. Escher, full of fleshy architecture and seductively serpentine prose.”

Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

“Bleak, unrelenting, and surprising at every turn, the torturous inner maze of depression becomes literal in Sofia Ajram’s nightmarish vision of an endlessly expanding House of Leaves.”

Ally Wilkes, Bram Stoker® Award-nominated author of All the White Spaces

“A lyrically written yet shockingly raw depiction of its narrator’s descent into the depths of suicidal depression. It is rare that surreal horror bites this deep or tears this hard at the reader’s emotions. I was floored.”

David Demchuk, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of The Bone Mother

“Dark, visceral, and refreshing. It’s horror that feels modern and exciting… an insanely impressive debut.”

Isa Mazzei, screenwriter of CAM

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Coup de Grâce

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781803369624

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803369631

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: October 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Sofia Ajram 2024

Sofia Ajram asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Coup de Grâce is a story primarily about depression and suicide. In dealing with these subjects, the book includes scenes with reference to suicidal ideation and depictions of self-harm.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please reach out for support. Please do not struggle in silence.

For those who understand.

Can we try it another way?

—JUSTIN BENSON & AARON MOORHEAD, Resolution

IHAVE SOME SAD NEWS for you. I’ve condemned myself to die. I try to treat this with as much eloquence and compassion as a work of art. It is, of course, the most important thing any of us may ever say, so I will paint it with the melancholy of a poet. Psyche, not awakened by the light touch of an arrow, but a kiss. A kiss with the waves.

I’ve decided that’s how, and the time is now.

All I can think about, as the subway rushes to lift me there, is a story I read somewhere about a man who walked into the North Sea. When they finally recovered his bloated white body, belly full of rocks, there was an unused train ticket in his pocket. A return ticket to London. He must’ve held the choice until the very end.

I’M GOING, GOING, GONE.

*   *   *

“You good, man?”

I slide a headphone off to hear. The air surges in, laps icy flumes around me. He sits down on the seat next to me, his hand brushing against my thigh. The subway chimes and the doors close. Odd place to cruise, but stranger things have happened.

“Yeah, you?”

“Sure,” he says. Shifts in his seat.

Across from us, there’s an ad for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition on taboo in art. Don’t Look Back is plastered across every poster in bubblegum pink. Along the seats, cresting the sliding doors of the Metro, are image reproductions of various myths: Orpheus looking back upon Eurydice, Psyche beholding Eros, men casting their eyes upon Medusa—all with dire consequence.

The one nearest us is Lot’s wife of the Book of Genesis looking back upon the destruction of Sodom, dissolved to a pillar of salt—an ill portent.

He asks me if I’ve seen the show. I haven’t.

“Have you?”

“Yeah,” he says.

I look at him. Knowing this’ll be the last person I talk to before I die.

A soft mess of curls, the colour of earth. Gloves tucked into his pockets, hunched over, glasses dangling from his fingers as though to indicate some sort of softness. He is so beautiful. Very handsome, so it all makes sense. I like him at once, overwhelmingly. There is a confidence that comes with the ease of loveliness. Not many are on the train, but everyone is looking at him, his freckled, sun-kissed skin. I want to pour into his lap.

I pick at a sticker on the shiny plastic subway bench as he talks to me about the exhibit. His voice is pleasant. The sticker depicts an angry little demon cherub, cherry-red cheeks and cherry-red horns, chin resting into a plump little fist under a curved banner that reads No terfs no swerfs no fascists! Across the back of the seat are the words YUPPIE SCUM scratched in with crosshatched lines like an inmate counting days of solitary.

The doors open on Charlevoix station. A bridge bisects the subway rails, like Radisson, where a woman jumped onto the tracks last month. I’d plunged in after her, equipped with a critical care kit and a guilty impotence, murmuring prayers and platitudes as we scraped her broken body off the concrete. When you can’t afford school past pre-med, you either sign up to be a combat medic or become an EMT. Serve the community or serve the nation; I’ll let you guess which one I picked.

Some claim it’s easy (but then, of course, they wouldn’t be here if it were). Wherever you turn your gaze, strategies to end it all are evergreen: every sheer rock cliff and briny river bend; freedom hanging from every branch of every twisted, barren tree. Every plastic bag and pill and vein: a tool, a weapon—a means to set you free. Each and every one of these possibilities is a temporary stanch on a suicide’s journey: station after station, like a subway stopping momentarily on its way to a terminus. There’s no deluding yourself into disembarking or changing direction. I can’t be a jumper—on the tracks, from a rooftop, a bridge—I’m just not built for it. I’ve tried other approaches. There’ve been so many. My choice is slated. Inked in blood, it grips me.

I’ve been battling depression and anxiety disorders since I was an adolescent. Lately it’s gotten worse. You’d think that I’d have my shit under control, but this stage between youth and middle age is where life hits you with a series of premature bereavements. The withering ember of dreams. Finances. Aging parents. The future. We are promised the world, but by the time we hit thirty, life knocks us over the head with a baseball bat like we’re a fucking piñata at a gender reveal party and we’re struck by the futility of it all: our finances are indelibly fucked, our dreams are scattered ash and the future has been salted.

Yet, despite all that, I sometimes relapse into hope. Just as Orpheus, just as Lot’s wife, at times I turn, as a result of sudden, mad temptation for the lust of life, of love, of remembering, and look back upon living with fondness, and embrace uncertainty.

Heavy, the coat of habit that one drapes atop the shoulders of life.

Peel station, and the doors shudder closed. The subway is mostly vacant. I swap my attention to the stranger beside me.

“Where are you heading?” he says.

Away, for good.

“The beach,” I tell him.

“Montreal has a beach?”

“Sort of.”

It does, but it’s not the one you’re thinking of.

The closest body of water is the Saint Lawrence River, which travels south to Lake Ontario, and extends north-east into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and the Atlantic at large.

Not the picturesque and brutal North Sea, but neither was the River Seine, the Tamagawa Canal, or, in the case of Virginia Woolf, who filled her overcoat pockets with stones, the River Ouse near Lewes.

I had chosen this as my River Ouse. I will ride to the terminus, then disembark and walk east until I yield myself to the riverbank and break like a summer heat against the Saint Lawrence, devoured and swept away.

My life has been incredibly good, I have people in it and happiness, and some days I feel resolute, but let’s be honest: if at its best it’s not enough, then what can save me?

At Berri-UQAM station, the stranger stands and turns to me momentarily so I can glimpse his expression painted with that Dionysian impulse I know all too well. Then he disembarks. I follow him out and up the steps, trying not to think for a second.

By the exit butterfly doors, the lumpy silhouette of a man, knees drawn, dozes on a bench. A weathered arm, bruised and battered, dangles out from beneath his coat, fingertips nearly grazing the tile. I’ve been called to one too many scenes with someone sporting those bruises, just to take them away in an ambulance. If I were staying around in this world, maybe I’d see him next week.

We stride past him in silence.

There’s a public washroom just outside the station. The doors unlock after fifteen minutes are up, but that’s all the time we need.

By reflex of omission, I do not let him touch me. Being naked deranges me. Even like this, near the end, I cannot grant anyone the gentle, unconscious grace of taming my body, of warming it with pleasure. It is a poison, a stigmata I fear enough to spare others the contagion of. But I do break the fast with his lips, allowing small and subtle touches. I wonder if he can read death in my eyes. I look in the mirror and try to see if anything has changed. The choice that’s been made. Can people see it in me?

When we’re done, he gives his name. Felix.

“I’m Vicken,” I say.

He smiles.

What are you thinking?

I’m thinking I want to ask for more than just his name. The urge emboldens me, like a mouse daring to dash around a venomous snake, though I stifle it down. It’s hard to be so close to something just out of reach.

We go back to the Metro and cross an image of Psyche discovering the darkly sleeping Cupid, and sit once more across from Lot’s wife. This again, I think. The rising flames. Angels casting fire and brimstone. I want to white myself out of Sodom’s apocalypse and chisel it instead into the arms of Aphrodite’s son, Eros.

A couple stations pass in silence.

“Why’d they keep looking back if they knew the gods would punish them for it?” Felix nudges his chin at the poster.

I shrug. So very many theories. “Grief; a last taste of life,” I say. I suppose Lot’s wife was reluctant to tear herself away from the world she would leave behind.

“Grief?”

“If we don’t live in the present, we lose the very thing we’re trying to seize.”

“Philosophical,” he says, and his eyes go wide.

“Shut up,” I say, and again, he smiles wryly.

We sit in silence and it feels almost… comfortable. But I find that when I think about it, there’s a lot of moments like this, that feel briefly perfect, where my soul quivers. We’re constantly deceived by the largeness of life on movie screens, in literature. Overwhelming and fond memories of strangers, failed heavens. Slipping by someone in the street, meeting their eyes. Shyly looking askant.

It does make me want to jostle that metaphorical Magic 8 Ball, see what other answers might be divined from that blue haze.

Should I be doing this?

Shake-shake.

Yes.

Can I wait another day?

Shake-shake.

Concentrate and ask again.

I wet my lips. For a shocking moment, deliciously proud, I’m thinking of a million different verbal offerings, flirtations that might dock me at the station of love and not that of oblivion. I could turn this thing right around. A chance meeting could change my life. Maybe. Fuck it, I think. If he says no, I’ll never see this guy again, and anyway, this is my big day, baby. Big as a battering ram, trying to feel just as big; toothy grin, in case I fumble. Can’t let anyone ruin this moment. And no one can ruin it for me. Because there’s no one else on the Metro.

But, the moment I turn to ask, my lips forming the words I’ve rehearsed in my mind during the passage of the last two stations: want to see that show again, sometime—with me?, someone walks in and sits near us and suddenly, the exile of desire strobes inside me like a thunderclap. My wave of narcissism evaporates under the stranger’s wolf-gaze and I sit there, mutely.

Shake-shake.

My reply is no.

I feel like the nominee who, having the audacity to believe he might win, holds blissful unawareness, reacting blithely to all that shines on him the banquet evening, and, subsequently, is cast out of heaven by his loss. It is what it was always going to be. A kiss with the cold black-blue waves of the Saint Lawrence River.

Just as I think this, he gets up to leave. The Metro slows and the doors open upon Assomption station.

“Well,” he says. “See you.”

“See you,” I say.

It is what it is. It’s hard to talk when you’re depressed. The words carve intaglio calligraphy, wrap around your neck like a noose. Lord knows that’s not the only place. Other times, I write the pain on my limbs, opening words in sporadic mutilation across my skin. If Felix does remember me—remember that I existed—it’ll only be that I sucked him off in a restroom.

He stands at the threshold. I see him hesitate a moment.

Digging into his pocket, he pulls out a glossy white transport ticket and a marker. He uncaps the marker with his teeth and keeps it cornered between his lips as he bends down. Scrawls something illegible from my vantage point, then steps back two paces and hands it to me. Caps the pen.

I knit my brows.

Felix, it says. And then a phone number.

There is silence for a moment, followed immediately by that little three-note chime. The Société de transport de Montréal’s signature music-box jingle, the off-key overture of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” that signals the departure of a train. And before I have a chance to protest—to process, even—what