When Something's Growling in the Silence: How Maksym Pokhyton Talks About the Horrors We Hide

Thirteen stories in which human anxiety grows into a monster.

In the collection Something's Growling, Ukrainian author Maksym Pokhyton offers readers 13 stories exploring everyday fears through grotesque, horror, and physicality.

The book blends strange, uncanny horror, bloody domestic horror, psychological thriller, and moral parable — all within one authorial universe where anxiety never falls silent. More on the book — in this DeTalks review.

What's Behind the Growling

Pokhyton structures the collection around a wave-like pattern of tension. It opens with something rather brutal, shocking discoveries in stories like 'Buzok' ('Lilac') or 'Liudyna Ryba-Mech' ('Swordfish Man'). Later comes a deep, lived-in immersion into the quiet, clinging anxiety of 'Sadova Vyshnia' ('Garden Cherry'). The author deliberately doesn't smooth the texts out, leaving each story its own rhythm and temperature.

Among readers seeking intense sensations, the collection has already found fans. Reviews most often highlight a few traits that make the collection unique.

• The text creates a paranoid, uncanny horror in which reality blurs. 'Buzok,' for instance, leads readers into a slow descent into its own violet delirium.
• 'Liudyna Ryba-Mech' combines bloody domestic horror with poetic prose, alternating shock with rhythmic, almost musical phrasing.
• The stories show people who, from the start, behave like creatures of a 'lower state,' living through total self-abandonment and psychological groveling.
• 'Khriak' ('Hog') builds a masculine-centered horror, working with male fears of being pursued and forced desirability.
• 'RATS,' 'Sitka' ('The Net'), and 'Sadova Vyshnia' offer classic horror with moral undertones, where betrayal, secrecy, and guilt sustain the story's tension.

'Here It's Too Quiet': The Anxiety of the Future

The collection's second-to-last story unfolds in a silent future. The protagonist works and lives in an apartment where nothing can be heard — not even his own breathing. And it's exactly at the moment he's contemplating his own death that the silence is suddenly broken by an unknown sound.

This episode was adapted into a mini-performance format to immerse readers in the emotions of an 'atmospheric trap.' The material works on the level of pure sensation — without relying on logic, just fear as a bodily reaction.

Maksym Pokhyton: An Interview on How Discipline, Doubt, and Honesty Shape a Writer

Maksym Pokhyton on the collection Something's Growling, balancing discipline and inspiration, illusions, and advice for beginning writers — in an interview with DeTalks.

What Unites All the Stories in Something's Growling

The collection's central motif is dehumanization. Pokhyton's characters transform psychologically, morally, or literally. The protagonist of the story 'Mil' ('Moth') watches as an innocent insect tears down the wall between rooms within a few days — and suddenly there's no boundary left protecting anyone from chaos. Anxiety in these texts works like a hum vibrating under the ribs — quiet or intrusive, but with no option to fall silent.

Something's Growling will appeal to those who appreciate unusual, uncanny, and sometimes repulsive horror and psychological tension. This book is for those unafraid to look into the darkness — both within themselves and in literature.

Read DeTalks' exclusive interview with Maksym Pokhyton at this link.