Trauma, Facism and Kink - Alison Rumfitt's 'Brainwyrms' and 'Tell Me I'm Worthless'
Trigger Warning: BODY HORROR, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, PHOBIAS, DISGUSTING THINGS, BIG SPOILERS FOR BOTH OF RUMFITT'S BOOKS
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Reading is a strange hobby.
When I went to University, studying English, we had to read almost constantly. I would be lying if I said that it wasn't exhausting. There were some books that we read that I loved - The Driver's Seat, The Vegetarian. There were others that I loathed, but couldn't put down because of how fascinated I was by those feelings. The only sin, the one thing that would make me avoid a book, was tedium. If any of the books were boring I would run a mile. I think that I fell out of love with reading for a time and while I've always wanted to write it became a distant dream. It still feels like a pretty impossible mountain to climb.
However! After a good friend started a surprise venture into a brand new reading hobby, I was getting book recommendations for punky new horror novels with freaky covers. I started to wade through my to read pile and shuffle the most glaring stuff to the top and I've fallen back in love with cradling a good book and falling out of reality into the pages of something else.
The first two books that were recommended to me were Brainwyrms and Tell Me I'm Worthless, and I read them in that order. Each has its own message, and is telling its own little horrific story, so for starters lets talk about plot. Then we'll dig our teeth into theme, parallels and review.
Brainwyrms (2023)
Brainwyrms is the story of Frankie. She is a trans-woman existing in the UK and working at a Gender Identity Clinic. When her workplace is bombed in an anti-trans attack she is sent into a kind of dissociative daze. Frankie meets Vanya, and the pair fall in love and explore their relationship through shameful and humiliating sex. But Vanya has a secret - they are a victim of abuse, and they have let their passing interest in a strange kink lead to them, being effectively owned. Her master is a man who works as part of an underground conspiracy along with rich elites and influential people. This conspiracy frames transphobia, and far-right hatred, as a parasitic virus. As brain worms!
Rumfitt's work is intensely and unapologetically political. What surprised me more is how sexual these stories are. In Brainwyrms, Frankie and Vanya fall into a dominating relationship where both of the pair are dragging their trauma into their feelings for each other. Frankie exercises her power over Vanya by misgendering her and treating her horribly, while Vanya uses this mistreatment as an extension of their hatred for themself. What appears at first to be harmless - if extreme - kink, actually reveals much more about the characters and the way that they perceive themselves.
Frankie has an impregnation fetish, something that she is a little ashamed of but that creeps into her thoughts and fantasies consistently through the short novel. This, and her intentional jabs at Vanya's gender, reveal a kind of uncertainty and insecurity in the trans-woman's identity. She wants to be able to be pregnant - wants to be functionally biologically female - and although she is ashamed of where the line lies between her identity and her sexuality it becomes a bizarre reality in the horrific ending to the novel.
Vanya's 'kink' is stranger and is the focus of most of the body horror in Brainwyrms. She wants a parasite, that depends on her and is killing her from the inside out. The details of the parasites that they allow to inhabit them are revolting, while the way that they were groomed and these horrors were inflicted on them becomes clear to the reader while Vanya waves it away. So, for a turned on reader parasite and the pregnancy have obvious overlap. Both of the lovers want something inside them that relies on them but that weakens them. They want something symbiotic, which incidentally is what their relationship quickly becomes. The parasite goes further; transphobia is a parasite, English bigoted talking points are parasitic and find a host where they breed and infest, and self harm is a parasite that has to be managed and nurtured and slowly eats away at the host.
The theme of radicalisation is the other most upfront. A woman bombs the GIC, and the mistreatment of trans people slowly escalates and is justified by those in power over and over again. One of the most outright hateful people in the novel is an ex-children's writer turned Twitter activist - Jennifer Caldwell. These references to real people and real websites that have real sway over real people - like Mumsnet - are jarring and real and feel overt because they are. Rumfitt never shies away from pointing out the real hatred and the vicious way that the word 'dangerous' is plastered over marginalised groups. Vanya's mother is slowly indoctrinated through the seemingly friendly website and this leads to murder and terror attacks.
The ending sees Frankie giving birth to a monster after she is raped by a cult of the parasite infected bigots. The giant white worm that is "the great oppressor, an enemy that humanity could by united it its stand against". While the motives of the beast are left ambiguous and it was created by bigots, the final note of the book is one of vengeance. Britain will fall because of its hate and because of the hateful, violent and monstrous thing that they have created.
Tell Me I'm Worthless (2021)
This was Rumfitt's first novel, and I think I would have preferred reading this first. I do think it is a stronger story than the one in Brainwyrms, much more accessible and much more important. Tell me I'm Worthless follows Alice and Ila after they are left traumatised and forever changed by a journey into a haunted house. Rumfitt flexes her horror expertise here with references to 'The Haunting Of Hill House' and a deconstruction of what a haunted house really is. Since the incident Alice has thrown herself into zone-out existence, nights out filled with drink and drugs and doing anything she can to numb the pain, all while looking at a poster on her wall that has started to embody all the things she is running from. Ila, meanwhile, has embraced TERF-ism and is making it her mission to make life as difficult as possible for Trans people like Alice. The haunted house is something existentially terrifying and through brief glimpses into what the house has been over the years we see that it has been a symbol of misogyny, homophobia, racism and every other sort of hate that has infected it. The house itself now stands as a kind of pus that is slowly poisoning everyone around it with hate and bringing out fascistic violence in people who give in to its influence.
Rumfitt's writing is hypnotic, letting us exist behind the eyes of her characters and see things through their eyes. Trauma is a constant theme, and is something that bleeds through the text in self-hatred and haunting visions that make the lines between horror and mental breakdown blur. The reveal of what happened in the house tears out the worst of what both main characters are, making Ila a transphobe, Alice an anti-Semite and both of the rapists. However, the portion of the book where this happens is written in two voices being seen at the same time where both and neither of their offenses happened. Each girl leaves the house feeling as though they are the one who was brutalised and both carry those feelings forward into their present.
Again, political movements that prey on themselves with a sexual glee are centre stage - this time the parasite is traded for leaders of bigoted gangs that decide it will easy to prey on survivors of sexual assault. Rumfitt ends the book with an act of terrorism that has been goaded by the remnants of the evil house. Her feelings are clear - violence is being enacted on gay people, women and trans people every single day and things only have a chance to change when that violence goes too far.
Should You Read Them?
The little chapter where sight is split into two realities in Tell Me I'm Worthless pairs with a chapter in Brainwyrms called 'Screw The Roses' which is the most excited I have been reading anything in a long time. Since finishing these books I've been reading and reading again, loving every second and it is largely because of these moments. The writer has her full ability on show - in 'Screw The Roses' it is introspective, speaks to the reader personally, dives into the minds of the characters to revolve the whole conversation and to shine a light on the perspectives of not only readers or characters within but of society as a whole. The prose turns to screenplay directions, text messages, devolves into gritty nonsense and then soars into beautifully written terror.
I would recommend Tell Me I'm Worthless to anybody who reads. I think it is a really important book, maybe one that will be held up a little higher in ten or so years when attitudes are a little different (we can pray).
Brainwyrms, though, is a harder sell. I loved the book despite its disgusting and difficult subject matter and I think the body horror and political messaging go together really well. It is phenomenally written but it is not something that I can see somebody jumping into without being scared off by some of the violent words within. But for those who want to explore some Splatterpunk, some very punky horror writing or modern political horror this is a must read.
Rumfitt is right, though. While it is hard to engage with, we do live in a world that is pointed and vicious to certain people who live on it. Sometimes it makes us want to scream, other times it makes us angry or makes us sad. But Rumfitt wants us to know that what matters is that we feel something, and that that struggle is important. Important, never-ending and so very justified.
Keep reading, keep letting me know what you think about these posts and go follow me on Bluesky! Also, leaving a link to my Ko-Fi below for anyone who wants to support me in my writing and in the blog going forward <3 thank you :)
