Body Horror/Literature: Difference between revisions

* ''[[The Witches]]'' by [[Roald Dahl]]: In the chapter "Metamorphosis", {{spoiler|the witches hold down the boy protagonist and feed him Mouse-Maker, which transforms him into a mouse ''permanently and painfully''. The transformation isn't permanent in [[The Film of the Book]], but the visuals make it even more disturbing}}.

** They did the same thing to his friend, at least in the film, which he gets to watch in horror.

* ''[[The War Against the Chtorr]]''. In ''A Rage for Revenge'', the leader of a cult that worships the alien invaders removes his clothes to reveal that his body is covered in 'worm fur', the neural symbionts that act as sense organs for the Chtorran worms. And in ''A Season for Slaughter'', {{spoiler|an expedition discovers that Chtorran cities are somehow capable of transforming the lifeforms within them-- including captive humans.}}

* "Metamorphosis" by [[Franz Kafka]]. Average Guy {{spoiler|wakes up as an unknown human-sized insect, unable to perform many of the actions, natural for human.}} It gets even worse when {{spoiler|his father throws some apples at him in anger and second one penetrates his body armor and stuck, rotting and eventually causing his death}}.

** Not only. Many of his short stories are fond of that.

* ''[[Thinner]]'' by [[Stephen King]] had this as its general theme.

** ''[[The Tommyknockers]]'' had some teeth-losing, skin transparent...ing, ''genital morphing'' hideousness. It was inspired by ''The Colour Out Of Space'' (see below), as King is a huge Lovecraft fan.

** In the short story "I Am the Doorway" (also in ''[[Night Shift]]''), aliens inhibit the main character's body, and eyes appear on his fingertips.

** In ''[[The Dark Half]],'' villain Stark's body "loses cohesion" and he starts to decay and rot.

** In "The Colour Out of Space", a meteorite with a [[Cosmic Horror]] in it causes people to crumble into dust -- ''while alive''.

** In "Cool Air", the learned doctor melts. {{spoiler|He's actually been dead for years.}}

** Mr. Motley is made of this trope.

** Not to mention the Remade, criminals who are punished by having their bodies altered in horrific ways. There's also a [[Squick|Remade brothel]].

* The ''[[Mistborn]]'' series by Brandon Sanderson includes some of this; the process of Hemalurgy, specifically, {{spoiler|involves killing a person in order to transfer his or her powers (and/or soul) to another person by piercing them with a piece of metal, usually a large spike.}} This results in {{spoiler|Steel Inquisitors, whose creation involves having gigantic metal spikes ''[[Eye Scream|shoved into their eyes]],'' among other places, and who are easily controlled by a [[Cosmic Horror|dark god]]}} and {{spoiler|Koloss, who the Hemalurgy mutates into monstrous, inhuman war machines whose skin is replaced by that of a different Koloss and which never grows larger (thus a newly-created Koloss will have baggy skin that would fall off if it weren't fastened on with spikes, and the oldest and largest Koloss have skin that has stretched so far that it's torn off of them).}}

* Scott Smith's novel ''[[The Ruins]]'': When a character thinks that the man-eating vines are ''growing underneath his skin'' and begins obsessively cutting himself open to try and get rid of the tendrils. The worst part? {{spoiler|HE'S NOT HALLUCINATING.}}

** {{spoiler|No, the WORST part is that they did that scene in the movie too, only with a weeping, frantic young woman as the victim. And it's clear that she's torturing herself ''for nothing'', because the vines are visibly creeping all over her body, guaranteeing she'll die even if she flays herself completely.}}

* In the later books of ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'', there is body horror all over the place when the Dark One's prison weakens and he can begin to "touch the world". [[It Got Worse|What's worse]] is that it always strikes out of NOWHERE. One man is feverish and then suddenly bursts into flame and slowly burns to death. Some people are found as charred corpses in their beds. Another guy explodes into a swarm of bugs. There are several more as well.

** The fact that they occasionally [[Did Not Do the Research]] (notably, characters' knees reverse themselves when transforming into dogs, which isn't how a dog's leg works ''at all'') just makes it worse.

** Morphing explicitly doesn't work "logically" or consistently -- thus Cassie, with her talent for it, is able to mimic a centaur at the half-way point between horse and human, despite neither form having six limbs.

** Morphing in general is described as pure [[Body Horror]]: the body mutates and changes in a random, uncontrollable sequence, in ways that look disgusting and horrifying (one morph involved a character's bones briefly becoming visible before flesh flowed over them). It isn't painful, but it feels like it should be. Only ''estreen'', or people with a natural "talent" for morphing (like Cassie), can avert the horror aspects and make the process look beautiful.

* A series by the same author, ''[[Remnants]]'', has a character who has his skin removed and replaced in small squares with a clear substance while his father is forced to watch. Like the morphing above, though, it doesn't hurt the affected person; it just looks ghastly.

{{quote| Without speaking Winston lifted his shirt, and Jamie had to hold back a scream. A burst of glowing light poured out like blood, and it looked as though the middle of his chest had been dug out and replaced with hot coals. The skin around it was smoking and blackened; there was a smell of cooking meat...}}

** Another of the Matter Manipulator's subjects is Tallow of the Freakshow, so named for the fact that his flesh is ''constantly melting like candlewax, and every so often, he has to reabsorb the pieces back into himself.'' The sign beneath his ''tank'' reads ''"This is Tallow: his every living movement is hellish,"'' and how true.

* [[Kim Newman]] (writing as Jack Yeovil) has lots of fun with this in ''Orgy Of The Blood Parasites''.

** Of particular note is a character who develops [[Natural Weapon|organic]] [[Chainsaw Good|chainsaws]] for arms.

* Dean Koontz's novel ''The Bad Place'' features a main character who {{spoiler|initially}} teleports involuntarily. However, the more he jumps, the more he loses focus, with parts of his clothes being patchworked and actually ending up in his skin. It's when he finds {{spoiler|half a cockroach has been melded into his shoe that the horror goes into overdrive, ruminating on whether parts of the roach have ended up in his brain or organs}}. And the big finale cranks it up a little more with {{spoiler|the hero grabbing the villain and forcing as many teleports as possible, purposefully meshing the two with garbage, roaches and detritus until they're just a huge mutant blob. With roaches sticking out of them}}. ''Augh''.

** Another Koontz novel ''Midnight'' features (among other horrors) people who alter their own bodies to merge with their computers - and try to assimilate others into their networks. At one point one of them is shot in the head. His body dies, but immediately the computer screen starts printing out "Where is the rest of me? [[And I Must Scream|Nonononono!]]

{{spoiler|The mad dream that vanished, however, is the dream that people ''weren't'' hideous ogres..}} }}

* In the [[Cordwainer Smith]] story "A Planet Named Shayol", criminals are exiled to a prison planet inhabited by an alien parasite that keeps the prisoners alive but causes their bodies to grow extra parts - which the planet's single guard harvests when he visits the prisoners, and sends off-world to be used in organ transplants.

* In ''[[Harry Potter]] and the Deathly Hallows'', the [[Orifice Evacuation|fate]] [[Face Stealer|of Bathilda Bagshot]] is pretty darned creepy and [[Body Horror]]-esque.

** And then there's the professor with Voldemort's face protruding from the back of his head!

* In Lawrence Watt-Evans' ''Obsidian Chronicles'', dragon venom that is ingested or absorbed into the bloodstream of humans grants them immortality while stealing many of their emotions and ability to reproduce. However, a final price is revealed in the first book when it turns out {{spoiler|that the venom is in fact slowly transforming the human's heart. When the incubation is complete, the heart undergoes a sudden metamorphosis and an infant dragon tears its way out of the human host in a spray of gore}}.

* In Julian May's ''Jack the Bodiless'', the titular Jack starts to experience his terrible mutation at the age of two, as intractable cancers destroy his body. Genetic engineering helps at first, but in the end nothing can stop the transformation. Various scenes over the course of months point out the effects of the cancers, culminating with nothing left but his eyeless, skinless head. {{spoiler|And then, in a moment of desperation, he completes what turns out to be an '''evolution''', leaving behind his dying body to become an independent disembodied brain.}} It's implied that if the doctors had left well-enough alone, his transformation would have happen a lot quicker with less mess.

** Not all. {{spoiler|Other Father was turned into a grotesquely misshapen and blind creature, left to crawl around the basement}}, while {{spoiler|Other Spink and Forcible's fates were similar, only they were trapped inside a cocoon}}. And let's not talk about what happens to them in the movie...

* ''[[Parasite Eve]]'' {{spoiler|Kiyomi's Mitochondria eventually control her, while her mind is still active. Yes, her MITOCHONDRIA. Her husband has the brilliant idea to keep her mitochondria alive (to be fair, he didn't know they were evil) and they end up possesing people, setting people on fire, and turning into what is basically described as Kiyomi, sans skin and with the ability to reform herself. And to top it all off, Eve rapes Toshiaki and impregnantes a young girl with the "baby" and the young girl goes through nine months of Pregnancy in what can't be more then a half an hour}} (Shuddder) made worse by the novel taking time to explain concepts behind the science and Mitochondria really do have their own DNA.

** The following book, ''[[Ambergris|Finch]]'', features Partials, kind of fungus-cyborgs that go through a similar process as Jonathan, but specifically allow a fungus eat out one of their eyes, and replace it with a spore-based camera.

* [[JG Ballard]], card carrying futurist that he is, has dabbled in this genre. [[David Cronenberg]]'s Crash (see above) is an adaption of one of his novels.

* The [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] is fond of [[Body Horror]]:

** First, we have the Embrace of Pain. In fact, the Yuuzhan Vong in general are big on pain. It's not uncommon to see a Vong with dozens of piercings, some of them connected to other piercings by a too-short chain.

** High-ranking Vong are fond of surgically removing parts of their own bodies and attaching parts from other creatures in their place. This, coupled with the ritual scarrings and piercings mentioned above, are particularly common among the priest and warrior castes (since all of this [[Body Horror]] is an act of worship towards the Vong gods, and those two castes are known for excessive displays of devotion); members of the [[Mad Scientist|shaper]] caste prefer to avoid this in favor of more subtle alterations to their internal organs.

** Sith "alchemy" can border on this at times. Luke's clones in ''[[Dark Empire]]'' are a lot taller and more muscular (and dumber) than him. Luke's soul is actually severed from his body in the [[Jedi Academy Trilogy]].

** And of course every Jedi occasionally has [[I'm Having Soul Pains|soul pains]].

* ''[[The Stone Dance of the Chameleon]]'' runs on this trope. The Masters are completely obsessed with ritual mutilation. If common people see a Master unmasked, the least horrible punishment is [[Eye Scream|being blinded]]. There's an entire caste of people who have one eye plucked out at birth. Likewise, pregnant women are sometimes administered a poison that makes them more likely to give birth to [[Conjoined Twins]], one of which is always blinded at birth. Then there's a different people, the Marula, whose oracles commune with their god by having maggots burrow through their own flesh. Most grotesque of all, however, are the Wise, a political faction of the Masters. These people are stripped of all their senses except touch - eyes, nose and tongue and even ''eardrums'' are cut out. They are also castrated and communicate with the outer world through a homunculus, a personal slave whose growth has been deliberately stunted. By pressing the homunculus' throat in a certain way, they can relay what they want to see through the homunculus, who will speak for them.

* The main characters in ''[[Scorpion Shards]]'' are subject to some gross disfigurements by the [[Eldritch Abomination]] parasites that infect them. In particular, Tory develops an extreme case of painful and disgusting acne, and Lourdes gains so much weight that [[Up to Eleven|paper airplanes curve around her gravitational field]].

* The [[Big Bad]] of ''[[Rivers of London]]'' takes [[Demonic Possession|possession]] of it's hosts, then turns their face into {{spoiler|a lookalike of [[Punch and Judy|Mister Punch]] with the giant hooked nose and chin}} shattering the jaw and shredding the skin. Then when it is finished with its host, their face literally falls off. Oh, and they are still alive at the time it happens.

** In the sequel ''[[Moon Over Soho]]'' the Black Magici...sorry, [[Insistent Terminology|Ethically Challenged Magician]] keeps a severed head alive, conscious and enslaved for over four decades, plus has a sideline in creating real [[Catgirl|CatGirls]] by fusing people and with actual cats. There is worse, but Nightingale tells viewpoint character Peter Grant that he [[You Do NOT Want to Know|doesn't want to know]] and Grant decides to accept this since the clean up crew has to involve people who excavate war graves in Rwanda and Kosovo.

* In Yann Martel's ''Self'', after [[Fate Worse Than Death|being raped]], the trauma of the event causes Yann's body to revert back from [[Gender Bender|female to male]]. As if the detail used wasn't creepy enough, Yann is pregnant, and the fetus now has to find somewhere else to exist inside Yann.

* [[Robert Silverberg]]'s ''Downward to the Earth'' has quite a bit of it—even if {{spoiler|[[Asshole Victim|Jeff Kurtz]], at least, kind of [[Fate Worse Than Death|had it coming]]}}.

** His Abarat series definitely qualifies, especially with the accompanying illustrations.

* According to a scene in ''[[Bionicle]] Adventures #6: Maze of Shadows'', [[Big Bad|Makuta Teridax]]'s abandoned lair is littered with his experiments, in the form of the strangest of dying or dead animal hybrids. And in ''Bionicle Legends #9: Shadows in the Sky'', another Makuta, Icarax, experiences what it feels like to become an example, after his soft tissues and organs are squished by his armor, and then has to stay that way.