When I first mention to people Rigor Amortis, the anthology of flash zombie erotica edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt, it elicits laughter and looks of disbelief. Until they realize I’m serious. As I understand it, the concept was born as a joke but grew as people realized there was material to be mined. And rest assured that this anthology is not one done for laughs.

There are humorous pieces among the 30+ shorts: black humor, slapstick and grossfests can be found in these pages. But more often the tales are more serious, questioning what remains of love and sex once a body dies but the flesh continues to move?

The stories cover a broad range of undead options that could fall under the mantle of “zombie.” George Romero’s mindless flesh-eating risen dead are a common approach but not the only one. Thrown into the mix are animated corpses, bodies that have come back to fulfill a task and even technological creations. Some are more mindless than others. Above all else, the stories are often macabre in their tone. There are few stories that don’t touch upon the grotesque nature of death.

The book is put together with an eye towards establishing tone. The cover art, which I would dare to call beautiful, tells you exactly what the books is going to be like. Each section of the anthology has interstitial art and most of the stories have a black and white piece tied to its content. After the opening messages from the editors, Gates and Holt kick things off with a sweet and dark poem by Lance Schonberg entitled “And Yet in Death.” It is a beautiful and short piece filled with love lost and love returned with a hunger for human flesh.

From there the editors break the stories up into four thematic sections. With so many flash pieces crammed into this collection, I hope you will forgive my brevity in not highlighting each one.

The first part, Romance, presents the sentimental and tender hearted tales of love beyond death. A few authors use the theme of a dead spouse coming back from the dead due to occult influences. My favorite among those was J.R. Campbell’s “Returned,” the final piece in that section. The sweet, almost fairy tale, structure of this story really captivated my heart. Another standout for me in this group was Nathan Crowder’s “Dancing Tonight! Live Music!” Evoking memories of the mall in Dawn of the Dead, his zombies carry out the same rituals they did in life, in this case the rituals of courtship they once went through. Through death I thought the story said much about life.

The next section, Revenge, told tales of love going wrong. Lucia Starkey’s “Erzuli’s Chosen Few,” for example, was a moving tale about a woman using voodoo to gentle an abusive lover. It was a painful and beautiful story of the complicated nature of love. “Swallow It All,” by Jennifer Brozek, is a dark and twisted story of a man who has his wife made into a zombie to make her more submissive. “Traveling a Corpse Over a Thousand Li” was an amazing tale of star-crossed lovers set in China. Many stories in this section focused on revenge between the lovers, but this was one of the few that focused on revenge on behalf of the lovers. “Syd’s Turn,” by R.E. VanNewkirk, was an engaging dark tale of recreational zombie drugs and mutually abusive lovers, a sort of erotic zombie Trainspotting. My love of Revolutionary France made the Wendy N. Wagner’s “Head” a delight to read, though I don’t know that a fellating severed head will be everyone’s cup of tea.

Risk, the third section, revels in the undead condition. Some of the stories are about undead lovers, others are about those who delight in the undead nature of their companions. Sarah Goslee’s “My Summer Romance” is a touching story of zombie-curious lesbian romance. A sharp contrast to this is Steven James Scearce’s “Second Sunday in September,” a campy lampoon of a high society wedding that will not let undeath stop the proceedings. Kay T. Holt presents one of the few sci-fi pieces in this anthology, “Obligate Cannibal.” Holt presents a near future world of cybernetic implants that provides a symbiotic relationship between the living and the undead.

The final section, Raunch, is a grab bag of pieces that wouldn’t fit into the other parts. This proved to be my least favorite section, though “Mitch’s Girl,” by Carrie Cuinn, was a gem that stood out amongst the other stories. It was one of the other sci-fi pieces, focused on a coin-op brothel that uses the lower half of women’s corpses for their customer’s pleasure.

I found this to be an excellent anthology of zombie stories, but it didn’t satisfy my interest in erotica. Beyond the necrotic undertones of the stories, the sexual content is often minimal. More often the stories focus on the romance, with sex either implied or entirely absent. In some stories, sex and romance are all but absent from the tale. The parts I loved the most were the thoughtful pieces that explored the human condition through the lens of undeath, but there are also fine pieces that are just about zombies and sex. If you enjoy zombie horror, this could be a fine piece to include in your collection.