By skyforbes 
And Violence Can Be Feminine
Teenage Girls Can Be Demons is an anthology of thirteen stories. It’s centered around a diverse cast of thirteen women and girls and their experiences with a world on the edge of realism. In every story, the protagonist is confronted with some form of violence. They claim agency for themselves, not because of but despite their experiences.
These women and girls change, and they make choices for themselves. Even if their choices make them a little…inhuman. They fight back in the face of hurt. Read on to meet the first four female monsters, and check out the book if you want to read about the final nine!
“Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause;
But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.”
~Act 3 Scene 3, Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare
Meet Hailey Piper
“Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth, A Game in Yellow, A Light Most Hateful, The Worm and His Kings series, and other books of dark fiction. She is also the author of over 120 short stories appearing in Weird Tales, Pseudopod, NYT-Bestselling anthology The End of the World As We Know It, and many other publications. Her non-fiction appears in Writer’s Digest, Library Journal, CrimeReads, and elsewhere.”
Piper is a modern author using horror to explore Feminist and Queer themes. Crafting a story that speaks to today’s problems is not easy, and should always (in my opinion) result in something wonderfully horrific.
Piper is the author of Teenage Girls Can Be Demons.
Why We Keep Exploding
The first of the thirteen stories opens with a bang. Literally! “Why We Keep Exploding” is the story of a college girl named Laurie. It focuses on her experiences with and understanding of how men silence women. And when the build-up becomes too much, the girls explode with a bang and a burst of light.
Some of the boys do it intentionally. Some unconsciously enable it. This is an absurdist story, with a distinctly retributory and feminist spin. It shows Laurie caring for the other girls, even when she is hurting, and in standing up for others, she claims the ability to speak for herself.
Pros
For me, this first story has two main strengths. First is its representation; second is itss message. The protagonist is a trans woman narrating her surreal experience with misogyny and trans-misogyny.
“In the end, we girls will likewise be of one nature. [We will be silent.] I won’t be a different kind of girl anymore. Isn’t that the dream?
As my skin ripples, filled with wolves and leopards and every growling angry beast that’s ever walked this world, I wonder — if that’s the dream, then what’s the nightmare?”
~Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, p. 11
The story handles the subject with the appropriate nuance and attention while also managing to paint a powerful picture. It is a vivid manifestation of feminine fear and rage that feels very true to life. It is a hopeful metaphor and a power fantasy for anyone who has ever been silenced, unfolding in clear and concise writing.
Cons
Warning: Contains Violent Self-Harm
Every character in “Why We Keep Exploding” exists solely to further the message that the story is pushing. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preference. Most of the characters come off as flat. Laurie’s change in attitude from silent to outspoken feels like it comes out of left field in the story’s final leg. This sudden shift in characterization really caught me off guard. It made me like the story less, despite the strong writing and narrative. There’s definitely a reason that this one is the anthology’s opener, but if you read books for the characters, then it probably isn’t for you.
Unkindly Girls
The second story is about a 16-year-old girl named Morgan, her serial killer father, and mermaids — sort of. It’s a depiction of horror that meditates on the demand for purity in girls, as well as the violence inflicted upon girls and women who, in the words of Morgan’s father, present themselves as “unkindly.” It investigates life under the control of a man who sees female bodies as temptations to be destroyed, and it shows how misogyny and female objectification make monsters out of men.
But “Unkindly Girls” also explores the sexual and emotional coming of age of a teenage Morgan (with a delightfully queer subtext woven throughout the piece.) It’s largely about Morgan’s struggle to do the right thing, even in the face of the person she loves and fears most in the world. I was shocked by what she did when her father forced her hand.
Pros
In addition to the story’s vivid turns of phrase, it also sports a bright spot of humor that blends well with Morgan’s continuous dread. It makes clever use of its imagery and mermaid lore to foreshadow events before they happen, all while keeping you guessing at the ending. I was pleasantly surprised to watch Morgan claim her agency. This was easily my personal favorite of the first four stories.
“The surface seemed far away, and [Morgan] was tired. Ghostly cold ate through her muscles. […] Lightning burned in ferocious flashes, the sky playing catch between two clouds, and the world flickered black and blue. An ocean of fish and seaweed appeared. Vanished. Returned full of faces. [… She] recognized them.”
~Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, p.26
Cons
Warning: Contains Murder
There wasn’t really much to nitpick in this story. While Morgan was a less fleshed-out character than Laurie was, she actually felt like her own person. That is very hard to do with so little space. My only real issue with “Unkindly Girls” is that there is a lost opportunity to properly characterize her father’s final victims. However, the one-dimensional quality of those characters really emphasized the complexity of Morgan’s relationship with her father. I would recommend this one to anyone with a love for suspenseful and succinct storytelling.
The Long Flesh of the Law
This third story is about a 15-year-old girl named Mira(cle) and her encounter with a policeman who is not a policeman. It delves into Mira’s self-doubts and into police brutality, with a subtext of male sexual aggression. It kept me guessing all the way through. Mira’s struggle to belong feels very intimate and relatable to anyone who has survived adolescence.
Pros
The highlight of this short story is definitely its writing. Piper does a great job of portraying The Not-Policeman as something other: something not quite alive, not quite natural, and by no means human. It seemed all at once to be a manifestation of Mira’s fears and of the audience’s. It really helped blur the lines between the violent context and the sexual subtext in the monster’s aggressiveness toward her.
“His arms pointed like a wolf’s snout, sniffing out prey before dashing in for the kill. Instead of teeth, plastic and steel now filled his mouth, coated in small hairs and pale porous tissue. His pistol stretched damp and veinous, throbbing with bullets.”
~Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, pp. 41–42
The depiction of the monster, and how it looked and moved, was especially unnerving. Something with no clear shape or voice, that seemed to know everything and be everywhere. A monster who wears the uniform of authority but has the personality of a man-child. A monster who views girls like Mira as toys to play with. I was terrified for her.
Cons
Warning: Contains Body-Horror & Police Brutality
If I had to pick one downside to “The Long Flesh of the Law,” it’s that Mira is a very static character. She is the same person at the end of the story that she was at the beginning, if not more traumatized. I had been hoping for the reality of her fears to either be clearly confirmed or denied. I was a bit put off by the lack of a full emotional payoff regarding that internal conflict. Of course, the ambiguity does make the story more realistic in some ways. It’s really a matter of taste, and it was a fun read for me regardless.
Thagomizer
The fourth and final story I’ll review here is about a woman named Jodie. Jodie is the mother of a teenage son named Clayton who didn’t feel quite human. Fortunately for Jodie, he’s dead now. Unfortunately, it seems he’s not quite ready to let his mother go. The story spends most of its time dwelling on Jodie’s mixed feelings about her son. It focuses on how she tries to be a good mother through it all, and how isolated that has made her. And then on the paranoia that sets in, as the stress and emotional overload start to get to her, after his funeral. But is it really paranoia if he’s actually out to get her?
Pros
For me, the best part of this story was its emotional nuance. The sorrow you feel for Jodie by the end is startling. And it’s more painful because you know that there was nothing she could have done differently to stop it. This is a story about the horror of isolation. It is also about how a parent can never truly escape the memory of their child. It’s an absolutely absurd romp, and it serves as a sharp palate cleanser to the sticky feeling “The Long Flesh of the Law” left me with.
“[Jodie’s] sedan might have turned into a time machine, only needing the speedometer needle to climb another few notches before she finds herself warped into a prehistoric epoch. She’ll wonder where all the autumn-stripped trees have gone, and the dinosaurs think of her, and how her fossilized body might someday be excavated to puzzle paleontologists. The mother who died before her son was born.”
~Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, p. 58
Cons
There was a sense of inevitability to Jodie’s story that was very unnerving. I was certain how the story was going to end from the first few pages, and I was right. This made reading “Thagomizer” both better and worse. The story was more about how the ending would happen for me, rather than if it would. The fact that we know nothing of Jodie save for her relationship and feelings regarding her son and absentee husband works in the story’s favor. It lends Jodie an absence of personhood that makes the story’s outcome all the more horrifying. The fun is in the details. But if you can’t take the premise of dinosaurs hunting a grieving mother deadly serious, you might want to skip this one.
Is this the book for you?
Now, you’ve met Laurie, Morgan, Mira, and Jodie. If you found any of them interesting, and you want to know what happens to them, then this is the book for you! If you didn’t like any of these four, but you did enjoy the surreal horror they all shared or the snippets from the stories I included, then I’d recommend picking up this book for a chance to get to know the other nine heroines of this anthology.
There’s Mercy from “Without a Face,” Elle from “Last Leaf of an Ursine Tree,” Kim from “Hopscotch for Keeps,” Erin from “Magical Girls Child Crusader Squad,” Lily from “Autotomy,” Krissy from “The Turning,” Lulu from “We Who Hold the Median,” Colleen from “The Many Sins of Clara Greenstone,” and Desiree from “Benny Rose the Cannibal King” (at 106 pages, a novella rather than a short story.) And of course, all the girls and not-girls, woman and not-woman, and female monsters and men that walk with them through their stories. Spanning a wide spectrum of styles and lengths and protagonist ages, this anthology is for anyone who’s a fan of horror.
It is a delightfully gory and disgusting book that dug a pit in my stomach. Be warned that some of these stories are darker than others. Mind your own triggers when reading, and take care of yourselves!
Learn more about Violent Agency: A Personal Review of “Teenage Girls Can Be Demons”