In Fabulous Bodies, body-snatcher’s snafu leads to rollicking gore-fest

What if you got the chance to meet your hero? The one catch: they’re dead (sort of), and you’ll have to steal their body and embark on a grim road trip of blood-soaked destruction.

Such is the basic setup for Chuck Tingle’s latest, more mainstream offering, Fabulous Bodies.

If you haven’t heard of him, Tingle is an oddball. The pseudonymous writer churns out a seemingly endless supply of queer, monster, sci-fi, satirical (and fabulously goofy) erotica such as Space Raptor Butt Invasion and Bisexual Mothman Mailman Makes a Special Delivery in Our Butts. Tingle is also a frequent presence at conventions and literary events, where he is always dressed in a suit jacket, sometimes shorts, sporting large dark sunglasses and a pink pillowcase over his head with the words “Love Is Real” scrawled on it.

In recent years he has broken into the “mainstream” horror market with novels such as Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays. In his latest, Fabulous Bodies, Tingle dabbles in a few tropes and conventions: the road trip story, zombies and why you should never meet your heroes.

Poppy curates an impeccable online life for herself. She describes herself as an aspiring influencer, with a little over 200,000 followers. But that’s not quite enough to secure the kind of branding deals to finance the life which would attract millions of followers. So to supplement her inadequate luxury-focused income, Poppy moonlights as a body snatcher.

One night she’s offered a sum for a gig that’s simply too good to be true. The catch: the body that needs snatching is megastar singer/songwriter Eddie Michaels (a mashup of Elton John, Freddie Mercury and maybe some Alice Cooper). Poppy discovers another, more serious catch after she manages to snatch the body: Eddie Michaels isn’t exactly dead. His body certainly is, but Eddie still manages to talk, walk and belt out his songs without issue.

Eddie is also able to psychically control people around him, including Poppy, whom he has now enlisted to drive him around for the night as he completes a mysterious grand plan. Every time Poppy tries to escape or help other people they encounter, Eddie uses his psychic hold to convince them to turn on themselves, leading to some gruesome and often cartoonish acts of self-mutilation.

Tingle certainly knows the tropes and the standard plot twists, and he pokes fun at them throughout the novel. Knowing the conventions and pointing them out is not the same as subverting them, but this novel is going for fun, over-the-top silliness, and leaning too hard into deconstructing tropes or themes would unravel the bright, sequined tapestry Tingle has managed to weave together here.

Poppy’s character development does feel a little forced, mostly occurring during the blisteringly paced finale, so readers don’t actually get a chance to see her progress out of her self-centred influencer schtick — we’re just told that she does. Similarly, the mystery surrounding who or what Eddie really is does have some B-movie fun baked into it, but the novel leaves out what could have been some pretty interesting back story.

At the same time, these elements would have slowed the narrative, which really only works if you blast through it as quickly as Poppy and Eddie cruising down the road.

If you were able to look past the ludicrous premise and get onboard for a movie like Malignant, then Fabulous Bodies is the perfect summer read — a fast-paced, completely far-fetched and pink glittering gore-fest that can be quite fun as long as you don’t think too hard about it.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His latest story collection Donner Parties and Other Anti-Social Gatherings is out now from At Bay Press. He also co-edited the horror anthology What Draws Us Near, published by Little Ghosts Books.