Book Profile: SAVAGES FOR REVENGE

“Imagine sitting at the beach facing the sea, enjoying the peace and quiet, having a long cocktail, lazy tunes at the background… pure relaxation..and then someone bangs you on the head with a ten-ton hammer leaving you at best dizzy and wondering what the f**K just happened”
Pan – Goodreads reviewer

The days of cannibal B-horror films set in the Amazon or some other faraway jungle have gone. The change in people’s tastes, as well as the production nightmares of Cannibal Holocaust and other films, have led to the decline in demand for such stories, in film and literature.

That’s where Savages for Revenge comes in.

Set in the spectacular wilds of Argentina, Alex Marroquin’s debut novella features a new kind of cannibal story. Instead of an indigenous tribe desperately fighting against drugged, sexed crazed white Americans, the cannibal is an armed Argentine willing to throw away his own life to achieve an impossible mission — taking an American protege with him along the way.

The Argentine cannibal, and the other like-minded killers known as “Savages”, are based on a very real group of killers based in Mexico, Chile, and other parts of South America. For readers interested in learning more about the obscure group, check out the interview link here.

In an effort to bring back the raunchy style of story-telling

“This story is raw, fast-paced, and absolutely glorious…”
Michelle Monárrez, Goodreads reviewer

TRIGGER WARNING: the novella contains extreme violence and other adult scenarios. Read with caution.

To those interested in reading the book for themselves, here is a sample from Chapter 7:

Cesar hands Derrick his pistol. “Kill him.” Derrick shakes his head, speechless, but his fingers grasp the weapon nevertheless. Cesar continues to cheer and approaches the priest. The old man’s shotgun clicks dry, and Cesar drags him beneath the burning Christ. Derrick’s lungs struggle to breathe through the heat and smoke, but his hand grips the gun tighter and his legs refuse to budge. The fires devouring the religious paraphernalia oddly brings a smile to Derrick’s face. Something about the burning saints brings back memories, unpleasant ones, unpleasant ones that involve his mother and a priest. “You can’t cast me to hell.” Cesar continues to rant at the top of his lungs. “Hell is my loving home!” He takes the empty shotgun and slams the wooden stock against the priest’s head. CRACK! CRACK! Each bash breaking the poor man’s skull gets louder, until his head resembles more of a hellish demon than human. “Here, Derrick,” Cesar offers the half-conscious priest. “I believe in you!”

Derrick holds the pistol against the priest as more memories seep into his conscious. The priest weeps dozens of fruitless bible verses, but none of them seem to break through Derrick’s sudden lust for blood. Derrick’s memory molds the sobbing priest in front of him into a more familiar one: a Portuguese Catholic priest from the Azores islands. Derrick remembers the thick, hairy lips of the Azorean priest berating his mother, taunting her as a ‘whore for African sons of bitches.’ A sudden rush of natural joy for the chance at revenge simmers inside Derrick until his fingers press the trigger. The bullet pierces the priest’s skull and kills him instantly.

Cesar lays the body horizontally across the altar. He growls with an insidious sneer and commands, “Tear him apart!”

Derrick forces his thumbs into the priest’s eye sockets until he feels two wet pops. He moves on to rip off the priest’s robe and bites chunks of flesh out of the shoulder until his teeth reach the bones. The priest continues to scream in agony, praying for his soul to leave his body. Unable to severe the shoulder joints with his teeth, Derrick grabs the priest’s arm and pulls it as hard as he can. Cesar assists the dismembering by shooting the priest’s shoulder bones until Derrick yanks off the arm, breaking the joint tendons with a single snap. Pieces of blood and tissue fly into the air and rain back down onto Derrick and Cesar’s faces. Derrick then finishes his first kill by snapping the priest’s neck and cuts open the stomach with a shard of mosaic glass. Cesar dances to celebrate the success of Derrick’s first act of murder. Finally, Derrick sinks his teeth into the shoulder of the slain priest and rips out a piece of human flesh.

“What the hell did I do?” Derrick asks with a mouthful of priest.

“You unleashed your potential,” Cesar replies and hugs Derrick like an old friend. “This is but your first step!”

Derrick looks again at his fingers covered in blood. The same rosy color as the paint on Danielle’s lips. Danielle…he thinks as a wave of guilt surges inside him, almost wiping out the joy of the murder he had just done. He spits out the meat in his mouth and induces vomiting by jabbing his uvula. cries out, “I’m sorry, Danielle! What the fuck is wrong with me?”

Cesar shakes his head and sighs, “And I thought you had made progress. You need more teaching.” He pulls Derrick out of the Church, and they both drive away as fire engine sirens approach. Derrick smiles at the burning church shrinking inside the empty darkness.

“Why did we do this?” Derrick asks as his tongue mixes the traces of vomit and blood.

“We’re what the Argentines fear the most. We’re Savages.”