STORY SHOWCASE #19

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LICKETY’S GOT THE TOUCH

by Doris V. Sutherland

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A little taster…

Two robots fight on the television screen. Good versus evil; integrative versus detrimental. Plane versus car, cone versus wheel: doubtless a Freudian is wanking out an essay. The boy watches, a plastic figure in each hand ready to mimic the conflict. But the fight before him changes, metal fisticuffs giving way to touches of a softer sort. The robots rub each other’s heat-sensitive stickiness to reveal true colours. A round of shapeshifting later and the robots have become assorted tools and orifices. Then the penetration begins, their animated mouths emitting moans of mechanised ecstasy.

The boy, obedient, copies these movements with his plastic replicants. His mother looks up from the pages of a ghostwritten reality-TV autobiography and sees him. She gasps as she realises what the plastic robots are doing, and yelps when she witnesses the on-screen orgy. She jumps up, grabs the remote control and aims it at the telly, hoping to end its pollution. Before her thumb presses the red button, the remote alters in shape: it slides from a hard-cornered oblong to a smooth semi-cylindrical shaft. She feels the wiry veins beneath her fingers as the tool starts to slide up and down within her grasp. She drops it with a heated exclamation just as it begins ejaculating infrared.

About the author

Doris V. Sutherland is a UK-based author whose writing credits include the creator-owned comic series Midnight Widows and licensed tie-ins for Doctor Who, Survivors and The Omega Factor. Her short fiction has appeared in Dracula Beyond Stoker, Red Cape Publishing’s A-Z of Horror, The Bumper Book of British Bizarro, Eerie River Publishing’s Year of the Tarot and October Nights Press’ Tales from the Clergy, among other places. She has also written a copious amount of media criticism and analysis, including a short book about Universal’s The Mummy for Liverpool University Press.

We asked Doris …

K&R: What was the spark or idea that led you to write this story?

DVS: I can’t recall where the original inspiration came from, but I can remember that, when I put pen to paper, all I had in mind was that first scene in the kid’s house. I had enough fun writing it that I was able to spin a whole story out of the thing.

K&R: Do you have any other work do you have out there, for folks to dig into?

DVS: My latest short story is in the November 2025 issue of Dracula Beyond Stoker. That’s a pretty groovy publication I’m proud to be part of. Each issue’s themed around a different character from Dracula; this one’s Mina Murray. On a similar note, the third issue of Midnight Widows is very nearly complete; it’s a independent comic about the continuing adventures of Dracula’s three brides. I’m writing it, with a team of talented artists led by Marcela Hauptvogelova drawing. This issue’s a trip through time with werewolf decapitation in the 50s, video nasties in the 80s and undead serial killers in the present day.

I’ve got a run-down of my work, going back to 2018, on my personal site:

https://dorisvsutherland.com/my-work/

K&R: What’s next for you as a writer?

DVS: I’m really close to releasing my book A Long Year’s Dreaming. It’s nonfiction, and it’s about the state of fantasy and sci-fi in 2020, with the start of the pandemic and everything else going on at the time. So, I’m covering horror films made in lockdown; Australian fantasy stories inspired by the bushfires; hilariously awful dystopian fiction warning us about the terrible things that’d happen if Joe Biden became president; weird conspiracy theories about Dean Koontz predicting COVID-19 or evil wizards taking advantage of the pandemic to rig a sci-fi novel award (yes, really). That kind of thing.

K&R: What does “trashy fiction” mean to you, and what do you love about it?

DVS: To me, it means the good old days where you could walk into a charity shop, and it’d be a safe bet that some combination of James Herbert, Guy N. Smith, Anne Rice and Graham Masterton would be on the shelves. Sometimes it’s good just to throw away any sense of taste or decency and read about killer crabs on the rampage.

K&R: Hit us with your own favourite “trashy” fiction recommendations!

DVS: Kristopher Triana is my favourite writer in the contemporary splatterpunk field. I appreciate how, even with all the filth and deparavity, he always keeps his characters well-observed and credible. I’ll always have a spot for Graham Masterton, as well. To me, he’s the true heir to Bram Stoker: he sets folkloric monsters loose in modern-day cities and he keeps them properly monstrous. And I can’t finish without mentioning the late Charlee Jacob, a writer I find genuinely fascinating. Trash, poetry and outright nightmare all mingle together in her work.

K&R: If you’ve read the rest of the stories in Trash Tales, what’s your favourite, and why?

DVS: SJ Townend’s “You Always Drive Too Fast” is one that’s still stuck in my mind, even though it’s near the start of the book. It’s got that quiet sense of outright oddness that’s harder to pull off than you might think.

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