Following up on my previous review of author Miah Allsman’s work, I’m looking into the increasingly gruesome world of online entertainment. Hitting surprisingly close to home, the influencer-gone-instigator in Optics is a sight for sore eyes, and though you might subscribe online, you surely want to watch out if you ever met someone like this in person.
An influencer takes “views” to a gruesome extreme by walking her audience through a step-by-step tutorial on how she finds, collects, and preserves the eyes of her victims.
Optics, Amazon
Jumping back and forth between main character Bekka on camera and her going about in the outside world, we read about her job as a content creator focused the windows to our souls: our eyes. Boasting a feed-ful of eyeball pics (and beautiful face herself), she lures those with captivating irises to her studio where they are promptly taken care of in the ultimate vanity project.
Whereas Stalled leaned heavily into the scares, Optics had a more playful, delightfully demented storyline to it. Here, we had Bekka — dressed to the nines in pretty pink clothing and accessories — committing brutal acts on innocent people all with a smile on her face. A few influencer-based puns here and there, we see just how crazy about her “work” Bekka is and how far she’ll go for the glory. But even though she has a playful side, the horrors still reside in Optics‘ pages as Allsman describes the process of removing an eye with a melon baller.
I found Optics especially funny because it kind of felt like a call out to the real world. Even though Bekka is a fictional character, there are definitely people like her out there on social media — those who put themselves out there to be seen by the masses, those who feature morbid content, the whole lot of them. And here I am, a sort of mix of those two with the steel gray eyes to match. It feels as if this story was written specifically for me… and I can’t say that I hate that idea!
Optics was a B-movie written in ghastly guffaws. Bright and cheery but quick to paint everything in red, this short story pokes fun at social media stars, yet leaves you scared of them in the end. Because as fun as it is to get behind the scenes, you never really want to know how the sausage is made — or in this case, how the eyeballs are scooped.
Optics is available to purchase on Amazon. For more, follow author Miah Allsman on Instagram.
