The Sentimental Vessel

A chilling and profoundly original novel from the world of the Grief Eater. Arthur Finch paid to have his heart broken. After a devastating divorce, the pain is a physical weight, chaining him to a future that will never be. Desperate for relief, he turns to "Clean Break," a revolutionary new service that promises to sever emotional ties to the past. Using a patented chemical process, they disconnect the pain from his memories, allowing him to finally let go of the relics of his dead marriage. It works. The grief is gone. But it has been replaced by something else. First, a patch of skin on his hand takes on the soft, faded texture of a tiny knitted bootie. Then, the skin of his back hardens into the rigid weave of a picnic basket. Arthur discovers, to his horror, that "Clean Break" didn't erase his sentimental attachments—it transferred them. The objects he tried to discard are now incorporating themselves into his own body, turning him into a living, breathing reliquary of his loss. He is not alone. In the dark corners of the internet, others like him—"The Amalgamated"—are slowly becoming collections of their own discarded pasts: porcelain, parchment, and denim. And the man behind the procedure, the enigmatic Dr. Thorne, is far more interested in studying his "vibrant portfolio of loss" than in providing a cure. As Arthur's body becomes a grotesque map of his grief, he must make a choice: surrender to the chilling "peace" offered by his creator, or embrace his monstrous new form to expose a truth the world isn't ready to hear—that some pain is not a cage, but the very thing that makes us human. The Sentimental Vessel is a masterful blend of body horror and deep emotional insight, a terrifying and poignant exploration of what happens when we try to outsource our heartbreak, and the monstrous cost of a clean getaway.