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During day's luster, youth are immortal; there's no cliff that can't be climbed, no height that can't be jumped, no door that can't be kicked open. But deep at night, it's a different song that plays through your senses, and fear is the fiddle playing on your shoulder.
This night was exactly like that.
This night too, was Halloween. And everyone knows that the normal rules of life don't apply on Halloween.
- Eric J. Guignard, An Unpleasant Truth About Death
Short stories are the Great Riddle of the Contemporary Book Marketing. They are arguably the only form of fiction that is easier to create than to sell, hence the terrifying number of short story collections and anthologies out there that are complete commercial failures. There has to be a point to it, a concept, a theme if you will, or it's just not gonna fly readers who can get a better return on their investment with novels, a more thorough and engaging form. The kind folks running Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing took a honest swing at creating an anthology worth your time and money: TRUTH OR DARE? is what we call a ''shared world'' anthology, recollecting the individual experiences of kids playing that fate-altering game. The stories are hit-or-miss, like for most anthologies, but I'll be damned if I wasn't introduced to many new talents.
I already knew a handful of writers who participated to TRUTH OR DARE?, but the absolute best thing about this anthology is that all the best stories aside from Vincenzo Bilof's THE DOG METAPHOR and Nik Korpon's THE WHITED SEPULCHRE, were written by authors I didn't previously know. I can't even tell you how refreshing this is for a reviewer. It seems like not everybody got the memo that every story should talk to one another, so the collection counts a couple stragglers that don't necessarily connect to the theme. It's not always bad. Some stories, like Usman T. Malik's LAAL ANDHI, due to its imagery (and its size, it's one of the larger stories in the collection), felt like a phantasmagorical interlude more than a missed opportunity. Others though, weaken the anthology's concept by not connecting to the others and barely presenting any of the elements.
So, what are the new hot names you should be investigating furthermore? I thought THE SHADOW LIFE OF SUBURBIA, by T. Fox Dunham, despite being a tad overexposed, was deeply fucking disturbing. I won't say too much about it because I am terribly afraid to spoil it, but here's what you need to know: it's a horror story about twins. It's a reputably creepy theme in horror fiction, and T. Fox Dunham's Dickensian approach to storytelling creates a halo of loneliness around the brothers that is crucial to the story's success. I thought the story could've been longer (it's the second longest in the collection, though), it stops right when it starts to get fun, but it's the kind of story that instills paranoid fear in your reptilian brain. If there are twins in your life, the era where you trusted them is officially over. Same thing if the twins are your kids.
I already knew a handful of writers who participated to TRUTH OR DARE?, but the absolute best thing about this anthology is that all the best stories aside from Vincenzo Bilof's THE DOG METAPHOR and Nik Korpon's THE WHITED SEPULCHRE, were written by authors I didn't previously know. I can't even tell you how refreshing this is for a reviewer. It seems like not everybody got the memo that every story should talk to one another, so the collection counts a couple stragglers that don't necessarily connect to the theme. It's not always bad. Some stories, like Usman T. Malik's LAAL ANDHI, due to its imagery (and its size, it's one of the larger stories in the collection), felt like a phantasmagorical interlude more than a missed opportunity. Others though, weaken the anthology's concept by not connecting to the others and barely presenting any of the elements.
So, what are the new hot names you should be investigating furthermore? I thought THE SHADOW LIFE OF SUBURBIA, by T. Fox Dunham, despite being a tad overexposed, was deeply fucking disturbing. I won't say too much about it because I am terribly afraid to spoil it, but here's what you need to know: it's a horror story about twins. It's a reputably creepy theme in horror fiction, and T. Fox Dunham's Dickensian approach to storytelling creates a halo of loneliness around the brothers that is crucial to the story's success. I thought the story could've been longer (it's the second longest in the collection, though), it stops right when it starts to get fun, but it's the kind of story that instills paranoid fear in your reptilian brain. If there are twins in your life, the era where you trusted them is officially over. Same thing if the twins are your kids.
They see him now.
The clown. The object of their temporary amusement. The source of their derision. A topic of conversation for twenty-five seconds before he is forgotten until yet another episode, yet another moment in which the sun revolves around his turgid bullshit.
He has been silent through this ordeal, and now they have noticed him. They have not asked him to speak until this point, and he isn't sure why he has been silent. He doesn't know why they haven't noticed him until now. He thought he would test them, see how long it would take for him to take over this show, because it was only a matter of time.
But they chose to ignore him, and he found himself slinking into the shadows, watching the firelight dance in their eyes.
- Vincenzo Bilof, The Dog Metaphor
Other stories that stood out to me were Eric J. Guignard's AN UNPLEASANT TRUTH ABOUT DEATH, which highlights the destructive intimacy of truth or dare and understands the dynamics of campfire stories and urban legends very well. It's lively, sinister, oddly innocent and multilayered. Eli Wilde's story IZ probably was my second favourite overall after T. Fox Dunham's creepalooza. From a technical standpoint, it was probably the strongest story in the collection. The religious symbolism and the delirious imagery won me over in a heartbeat. Jay Wilburn's LUCY'S ARROW was also a lot of fun. It sees and extrapolates on the inherent dangers of playing truth or dare. Some would call it a paranoid cautionary tale, but nobody thinks teenagers can cause damage to one another until they do.
Most of the stories in TRUTH OR DARE? features a loner, or a bullied kid of some sort, like every kid around the campfire was a victim. I thought it illustrated the nature of bullying a lot better than all these boring, heavy handed stories ever could. It's the nature of a teenager to feel lonely and alienated, and to define themselves against these very feelings. It played an important part in making TRUTH OR DARE? enjoyable to me. It's a collection about teenagers that really felt teenage-y and not written by broken adults trying to deal with their demons. Not all the stories will appeal to you, but TRUTH OR DARE? has more than a few hidden treasures, waiting for you to find them. The ultimate appeal of a short story anthology like this is to find new authors to read and this one has a lot of talent on display.
Most of the stories in TRUTH OR DARE? features a loner, or a bullied kid of some sort, like every kid around the campfire was a victim. I thought it illustrated the nature of bullying a lot better than all these boring, heavy handed stories ever could. It's the nature of a teenager to feel lonely and alienated, and to define themselves against these very feelings. It played an important part in making TRUTH OR DARE? enjoyable to me. It's a collection about teenagers that really felt teenage-y and not written by broken adults trying to deal with their demons. Not all the stories will appeal to you, but TRUTH OR DARE? has more than a few hidden treasures, waiting for you to find them. The ultimate appeal of a short story anthology like this is to find new authors to read and this one has a lot of talent on display.