Abjectification

Abjectification mines our most intimate moments to flesh out the horrors of human interaction. In the isolated system of these stories, the past is animate and tangible, located in the body, fantasy & nightmare intertwined. Like matter, what we’ve loved isn’t destroyed, it merely changes forms. A man thinks he’s found a haven from the past with a new love in “Freak Show”; Meghan seems sensitive to exposure, but she isn’t the woman Jeff imagines he’s been sleeping with at all. A small family begins remodeling their home in “Shedding,” but their six-year-old daughter Emmy discovers unsettling things in the walls. In “Hand-Me-Down,” Carly Jo welcomes her high school boyfriend back into her life after he moves home to care for his dying mother; she’s haunted by the mother’s presence in their lives and in their bed. Old friends reconnect, disregarding “Boundaries,” only to discover a force is whittling the group down, their new spouses and partners in lethal danger. Kubasta’s collection is creepy, haunting, and unapologetically sexy.