[REVIEW] Shredded: A Fitness & Sports Body Horror Anthology

Getting a body that looks this good isn’t easy, but sometimes the ends justify the means. Shredded: A Fitness & Sports Body Horror Anthology flexes its muscles with horror stories about the pursuit of the ideal form, be it ripped or monstrous. While you might instantly think of football or soccer or whatever sport is most popular in your neck of the woods, the stories in this anthology never come across as repetitive, featuring weightlifters, rodeo clowns, yogis, and more. Eric Raglin of Cursed Morsels Press compiles an anthology that stretches the limits of body horror, continuing the press’ streak of original, evocative anthology themes. This is an anthology about the devastating costs of transformation, satisfying even the most seasoned body horror fan with monstrous metamorphosis, body mangling out the wazoo, and a heaping scoop of yuck for your protein shake.

Shredded: A Fitness & Sports Body Horror Anthology features names you might recognize in indie horror, such as Joe Koch, J.A.W. McCarthy, and Red Lagoe, but also impressed me with their selection of new-to-me authors as well as LGBTQ+ and minority writers. “More Weight” by Joe Koch and Michael Tichy is a story of insatiable gains, as weightlifters test their muscles to their limits with another fifty or two hundred and fifty pounds to achieve a body that is by no means soft. While many of the anthology’s stories come from the perspective of the athlete themself, Matthew Pritt’s “It All Comes Back” follows a wife who struggles to care for and control her former football star husband as he’ll do anything to relieve his college football glory days. “Avulsion” from Madeleine Sardina chooses not to focus on the buff, muscular physique we might expect from extreme athletes. Instead, a figure-skater suffers her father’s desperate attempts to preserve her lithe figure as puberty threatens to bench her from the sport permanently. 

While some authors focused more on the maintenance of certain physiques, I found myself impressed by the stories where athletes who hadn’t achieved their goals chose to seek a drastic transformation without putting in the work. Nikki R. Leigh’s “I Am The Ring, My Heart Is The Mat, My Bones Are The Ropes” opens the anthology dripping with voice and strong, distinct prose as a queer woman wrestles to uphold her family’s legacy, only to turn to the help of mysterious, illicit drug when the competition gets tough. My favorite story in the collection, “Testo Hunky, or; FTM Twunk Pounds XL Bear” by RW DeFaoite, tells the story of an overweight cis-male who seeks out the hormonal help of a trans gym bro to pump himself with testosterone and achieve a more typical masculine form, only to get more than he asked for as his transformation doesn’t quite go as expected.

Shredded: A Fitness & Sports Body Horror Anthology has something for everyone, regardless of if you’re a sports fan looking for a scare or a horror fan scared of a tough workout. The authors in this collection put the body in body horror, offering a diverse slate of sports-inspired horror. As I was reading the stories in this collection, I occasionally came across stories that excelled at their sports elements, but whose body horror elements felt a tad strange and incongruous with their respective physical activity; however, body horror is a genre that is uniquely personal, as the body is frightening in a thousand separate ways. Pick up Shredded: A Fitness & Sports Body Horror Anthology and prove you’ve got the muscle to make it through this body horror anthology.