Wretch by Eric LaRocca Summary: A Dark Tale of Grief & Horror
TL;DR: What Wretch Is About
A short briefing for readers in a hurry:
Thirty-eight-year-old Simeon Link sits in a workplace bathroom stall with a razor blade in his hand.
Three years earlier, his partner Jonathan died of brain cancer, and the grief has not loosened its grip.
Wretch; or, The Unbecoming of Porcelain Khaw by Eric LaRocca follows Simeon through job loss, isolation, and an online grief community that leads him toward something far older and hungrier than sorrow. The novel mixes straightforward prose with chat logs, emails, forum posts, a police report, and a short play script.
Set in the Greater Boston area, the story moves from drab accounting offices and city parks to a windowless redbrick house where an ageless figure named Porcelain Khaw waits.
Who Will Enjoy This Book? Readers of queer horror, body horror, and transgressive fiction will find familiar ground here. Those drawn to epistolary storytelling, cosmic entities, and stories about grief that refuses to heal may also find it fits their interests.
- The setup: Simeon Link loses his partner to brain cancer, then loses his job. He searches photographs for Jonathan’s hidden face.
- The pull: An anonymous online stranger points him toward “The Wretches,” a grief support group that practices picture therapy.
- The bargain: The group connects him to Porcelain Khaw, an ageless entity who offers reunion with the dead in exchange for submission.
- The cost: What Simeon receives is not comfort. It is consumption — physical, emotional, and literal.
- Core themes: Grief as a parasite, the living haunting the dead, bodily transformation, and the choice between painful truth and comforting illusion.
The novel runs 288 pages across fifteen parts and framing sections, blending chronological narrative with emails, chat transcripts, forum posts, journal entries, and a theatrical script.
Wretch Book Summary: The Full Story (Spoilers Ahead)
The novel opens with a sequence titled “Reverse Haunting.” Forty-seven-year-old Genevieve Doyle arrives at a windowless redbrick house in Boston and surrenders a framed photograph of her dead husband, Laird.
A stern man named Clovis Morrow takes her phone and leads her down a corridor crawling with silver beetles. In a bare room, a trim man in white named Porcelain Khaw waits on a bed.
Genevieve tells him she does not want to be haunted. She wants to haunt others. Porcelain warns her that she will have to suffer.
A police report later appears on the forum “The Grim Laurels.” Genevieve Doyle is missing. A commenter writes that police will never find her because she is “with Porcelain now.”
The main narrative turns to Simeon Link, who is placed on unpaid leave by his vice president, Mr. Whittaker. He returns to an empty apartment and eats leftovers alone.
Browsing forums, he finds a post titled “The Ordeal of Porcelain Khaw.” It describes parents selling their son to an ageless entity in exchange for money.
Simeon begins chatting anonymously with a user called babyfacexoxo, who mocks his grief and mentions The Wretches. The group meets Thursday nights in a church recreation hall on Spruce Street.
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Members practice picture therapy, photographing ordinary objects to find hidden faces of the dead. Simeon receives a formal invitation from Daniel Westmacott.
He buys a used DSLR camera with help from Kent Simmons, a young photographer he meets at the electronics store. Kent tells him there are doorways in this world that cannot be closed.
Simeon photographs a vine-covered trellis in a park and sees Jonathan’s outline in the shadows. He prints the image. When his ex-wife Evelyn looks at it, she sees nothing.
Loneliness drives Simeon into a sexual encounter with Evelyn on his couch. When he checks the photograph again, Jonathan’s face has faded away.
Simeon presents the trellis photo at a Wretches meeting. The group responds with cold indifference. To recover his standing, he performs a short play called Predator and Prey with Kent.
Afterward, Kent pulls him aside in the parking lot. He hands Simeon a black business card for Clovis R. Morrow and explains that Porcelain Khaw can bring Jonathan back.
Simeon mails a letter of submission. Clovis replies with a checklist: a sentimental item, a fee, a crate of live silver beetles, and an unmonitored session with Porcelain.
Evelyn sends money for his overdue rent. Simeon uses it for the consultation and drives to the redbrick house, a silver beetle crawling across his car seat.
Clovis takes his phone. In the suite, Porcelain is tied to a metal grate. Simeon unties him, strips naked as ordered, and enters a trance.
Inside the vision, Simeon makes love to Jonathan again. Then Jonathan says, “ignore it,” and the vision collapses. Simeon wakes sobbing in Porcelain’s arms.
Driving home, Simeon recalls a forgotten three-way encounter with Jonathan and a stranger, where Jonathan whispered the same phrase. He also remembers that Jonathan once hesitated about having a child.
At the skate park, Simeon meets Evelyn and their sixteen-year-old son, Carter. For a moment, Carter’s eyes appear as silver, mirror-like orbs.
Desperate for another reunion, Simeon begs Clovis for a second appointment. Clovis warns that the ritual happens only once, then agrees for another fee and another sentimental item.
During the second session, the vision of Jonathan accuses Simeon of misremembering their relationship. Jonathan tells him that Simeon is the one haunting the dead.
Simeon snaps out of the trance to find Porcelain bleeding from the nose. In confusion and rage, he stabs Porcelain in the neck with a golden butterfly hairpin.
Porcelain bleeds across the carpet and tells Simeon to “open me up further.” Simeon reaches into Porcelain’s enlarged navel, loses his emerald ring inside, and is pulled into the body.
He transforms into a tiny silver beetle trapped among other consumed souls. Genevieve Doyle is among them.
In the closing sequence, Clovis reads a letter from Evelyn. She has discovered that Carter was secretly the user babyfacexoxo, and that he orchestrated his father’s collapse as a deliberate mercy killing.
Grieving and guilty, Evelyn arrives at the redbrick house for her own consultation, carrying the trellis photograph. Simeon, now a beetle on the wall, tries to warn her.
She does not notice him. Porcelain delivers his warning that she will have to suffer, and the novel ends as she approaches the bed.
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Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Simeon Link | A thirty-eight-year-old accounting employee who loses his job and seeks reunion with his dead partner. |
| Jonathan | Simeon’s late partner, who died of brain cancer three years before the story begins. |
| Porcelain Khaw | An ageless entity who absorbs grief in exchange for submission and physical sacrifice. |
| Clovis R. Morrow | Porcelain’s handler, who manages payments, correspondence, and consultation protocols. |
| Evelyn Rhodes | Simeon’s ex-wife and Carter’s mother, who provides financial and emotional support. |
| Carter | Simeon and Evelyn’s sixteen-year-old son, who operates online as babyfacexoxo. |
| Kent Simmons | A young photographer and Wretches member who directs Simeon toward Clovis Morrow. |
| Mr. Whittaker | Simeon’s vice president, who places him on unpaid leave. |
| Henry | A coworker in Simeon’s accounting department. |
| Walter | The IT support technician at Simeon’s workplace. |
| Void | The leader of The Wretches grief group. |
| Philip Jeffrey | An elderly Wretches member who presents a photograph of storm clouds. |
| Genevieve Doyle | A missing Boston woman who consults Porcelain in the opening sequence. |
| Daniel Westmacott | A Wretches representative who sends Simeon his invitation. |
| Melvin Cartwright | The founder of The Wretches, who started the group in 2008. |
| Meryl | A blogger who wrote about The Wretches before leaving the group. |
Books Like Wretch – Eric LaRocca
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca — Written by the same author, this collection uses chat logs and emails to examine obsession, submission, and bodily corruption.
The Books of Blood by Clive Barker — Cited in the epigraph of Wretch, Barker’s stories center on visceral transformation and dark supernatural encounters.
Frisk and The Sluts by Dennis Cooper — Named by LaRocca among his influences, these novels explore message boards, vanishing identities, and psychological deviance.
Negative Space by B.R. Yeager — A surreal horror novel about alienated youth, internet forums, grief, and uncanny body horror in a small town.
The Troop by Nick Cutter — Body horror, parasitism, and psychological collapse among a group cut off from the outside world.
Come Closer by Sara Gran — A short, claustrophobic novel in which a woman’s sense of self erodes as an outside presence takes hold.
The Cipher by Kathe Koja — A transgressive horror novel about obsession, a mysterious entity, and the physical unraveling of those who pursue it.
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Horror — queer horror, body horror, transgressive fiction, epistolary horror
- Core Narrative Tropes: Eerie support group, cosmic entity, corporeal transformation, unreliable narrator, dark web epistolary elements, devouring horror
- Tone & Atmosphere: Lyrical, melancholic, visceral, claustrophobic, oppressive
- Primary Conflict: Simeon Link’s attempt to manage overwhelming grief after his partner’s death, which leads him toward a predatory entity
- Pacing Style: Slow-burn psychological descent that accelerates into grotesque body horror
- Book Structure: Fifteen distinct parts and framing sections, mixing prose with emails, chat logs, forum posts, a police report, a play script, and journal entries
- Pages: 288
- ISBN-10: 1668070103
- ISBN-13: 978-1668070109
- Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
