The short story is the ideal vehicle for a particular, eerie literary mood…that uncanny, unsettling feeling reliably summoned by masters of the form including Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Patricia Highsmith, and Shirley Jackson. The abbreviated length of short stories intensifies the impact of the creepiness; there isn’t time to acclimate to their weird landscapes before they’ve left you disturbed, excited, and wondering what just happened to you. It’s there and gone, like a waking dream or the brush of a stranger’s hand in the dark. Some of the most exciting recent Indie fiction fits snugly into this tradition—these left-of-center collections brim with atmosphere and narrative verve.
The 2022 collection Banana Factory and Other Stories by Jon Fotch suggests the work of David Lynch with its queasily surrealistic touches and impossible-to-pin-down tone. Populated by the likes of an office worker who totes a severed head around the cubicles, a mother who lays horrific, bloody eggs for Christmas, and the surly workers manufacturing fruit at the titular plant, these stories cast a unique spell. Our reviewer says, “The material leans toward the fantastic, surreal, and macabre, and its often mystifying nature immerses the reader in Fotch’s eerie dream world all the more deeply.”
Bruce McAllister’s Stealing God and Other Stories (2022) gets its hooks in readers instantly with intriguing, baffling lines like “because she had four arms and a six-fingered hand on each arm, Sandy could look for four-leaf clovers faster than I could.” Our reviewer says this sui generis combination of biology, religion, and the supernatural is “fascinatingly textured—sometimes coldly scientific and at other times diving headlong into mythology and faith.”
Entry Level (2022) by Wendy Wimmer maintains a strong aesthetic throughline as the author touches on such varied subjects as dementia, piracy on the high seas, and roller-rink music—an elegant, wry, evocative voice animates these tales that range from the wistful to the terrifying. Our review praises the “vivid, thought-provoking stories” in which “even the book’s most sardonic narrators balance their misanthropy with a touch of curiosity.”
Arthur Smith is an Indie editor.
