CD Story Review #9: "The Janitor"

CD Issue #1

Yes, yes. I've been away from this for far too long. 
Why? Writing. Advertising. Teaching. 
Blah blah blah. I'm back, so read on...

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #71 (May. 2014), there are more than 530.

STORY: “The Janitor” 

AUTHOR: Bentley Little
CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 9 of 12 

PLOT:

Steven is the new kid at his elementary school and the playground is filled with other happy children, but all he wants is to lay low and avoid making enemies. He succeeds in this, however when he turns to go inside he runs into the janitor, a man that looks like a pig and smiles too widely, and Steven immediately doesn't like him. Inside, Steven observes several watercolor paintings on the bulletin board. One of them is a green monster with pointed teeth, pushing a broom, and with the same ring of grey hair as the janitor. 

A nerdy kid named Timmy Turner sees him admiring it and claims ownership. Timmy is missing several teeth, and through the window Steven sees the janitor watching the two of them while fingering his necklace made of teeth. 

In class, the teacher asks who wants to take the erasers to the janitor to get them cleaned. Nobody volunteers. Eventually, a kid named Eddie Trerise gets pegged for the job, but by lunchtime Eddie hasn't returned. 

Steven & Timmy sit together at lunch, and Steven is surprised to find the food is not so bad. Timmy explains that the janitor is just as horrible as he looks. He claims the janitor stole Timmy's teeth and suggests that the two boys with broken arms and the two girls with limps are other victims of his abuse.

After lunch the teacher announces that Eddie Trerise had to go home sick, then asks for a volunteer to retrieve the erasers from the janitor's workroom. This time Steven gets chosen. When he gets there, the janitor leads him to a much larger, back room of the workroom.  In that back room Steven finds precisely what we expect to find: a horrorshow in the form of a butcher's workshop. Teeth necklaces hang from the walls, scalps hang from the ceiling, mason jars are filled with "red and squishy things", and the centerpiece of it all is a big chopping block in the middle of the room still wet with blood. On it is a piece of Eddie Trerise's shirt.

Steven screams. The janitor laughs.

Steven threatens to tell his parents. The janitor tells him his parents don't give a shit about him & that he is living with his trampy mom & his dad left them & lives in Oregon.

Steven is shocked by this accurate description, but fights back anyway. The janitor hardly notices, easily pinning him down, and picks up a pair of long shears before asking which Steven is more important to him... his little finger or his toe.

Steven manages to kick him, sending him off balance, which opens the opportunity to smash a mason jar over the old man's head. Except it does nothing. It doesn't even break the janitor's skin. Instead, the janitor explains that Steven has been a bad boy and must be properly punished.

The next day at lunch, Timmy Turney thinks the lunch that day is the best they'd had in a long time.


REVIEW: 3 out of 5 stars.
Before explaining myself, it's important to first note the following details about the name "Bentley Little":
1) I've heard many great things about Bentley Little over the years, and I'm embarrassed to say I've never read any of his novels. (He IS on my To Read list)
2) Little became a favored Cemetery Dance contributor over the years.
3) The little blurb offered by CD in this issue alludes to the fact that Little was already becoming a well-known name in horror, even as early as 1988.
4) Little was the winner of the Bram Stoker award for Best First Novel ("The Revelation", 1990) & was nominated for the Bram Stoker Best Novel of the Year ("The Summoning", 1993).
5) Little has written more than 20 novels in the past two decades, and is high on the list of respected horror novelists.

CD Blurb about author Bentley Little

When you put all that together, I think it's pretty obvious I was really looking forward to this story. Sadly, I was greatly disappointed.

The story is classic horror, this time of the psychological kind, but it is woefully simplistic in its execution. The characters are flat. The sentences are stilted and (other than the janitor's workroom scene) almost completely lacking in visual appeal. The plotline is so single-dimensional the climax was evident before the reader gets halfway.

(Why do I get the feeling that the gods of horror are about to smite me?)

The ending, though, is pretty cool. And it is perhaps that ending that saves the whole story. It's what kept it from being a 2-star story, and it's what nevertheless makes this story gut-wrenchingly nasty. What Little does do well is leave a bitter taste of unease in our mouths. School, after all, is supposed to be the one place outside of a child's home which can guarantee their safety. And while having one rogue janitor is certainly creepy, knowing that the entire school is in on it (enough to serve kids up for lunch!) takes it to a whole new level.

What is most intriguing to me about this story, however, is the TIMING of it. Little was presumably writing his award-winning novel, "The Revelation" at almost the exact same time this story was published ("Revelation" was published slightly more than a year after this one, and with edits, rewrites, & the slower pace of the publishing world back then, the timeline seems to fit very nicely). Whether the exact months match or not is irrelevant. The same Bentley Little that wrote an award-winning novel is- at the heart of it- the same Bentley Little that wrote this... well, this plainly sophomoric tale.

It's not that I'm trying to say "While he didn't quite nail it with this piece, I can nevertheless see the great
writer he would one day become". The point here is that he proves in another, simultaneous piece that he DOES have the chops to write great horror, and yet this one was completely lackluster. I guess what I've learned from this reading experience is that it's an illustration of that age-old saying: You can't win 'em all. If I keep this in mind, maybe... juuuuuust maybe next time I write a relative stinker of my own I won't let it get me down. (Fat chance).


I'd love to hear your comments if you have any. Thanks. :)

CD Story Review #8: The Departing of Debbie

CD Issue #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #71 (May. 2014), there are more than 530.

STORY: “The Departing of Debbie” 

AUTHOR: Anke M. Kriske
CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 8 of 12 



PLOT:
Jim Conant has just finished a clandestine evening with his mistress. It was some rough sex, and they both liked it. The problem is that she dies immediately afterward, presumably of a heart attack.

[He's later revealed to be in his early 40s, so while a little odd, it's not impossible.]

He surveys the situation- scratches on her back & his arms, bodily fluids on the car seat, ripped clothes, a missing earring- and he realizes he'd easily be pegged as her murderer. And even if an autopsy eventually proved otherwise, his wife probably wouldn't appreciate his innocence. He decides his only course of action is to hide the body.

Conant (as the author calls him) is also a high school science teacher, and they had been having their fun parked after hours in the school's vacant lot. He quickly determines his best option is inside the school itself. Thanks to his coaching position for the track team, he has a key.

Inside his classroom, he struggles her body into the aluminum sink and gets to work. Using rubber gloves, an apron, a collection of the little knives used for the classroom frog dissections, and twenty years' experience teaching anatomy, he begins to dismantle her body piece by gruesome piece.

He starts with the skin and muscles on her back and soon moves to her internal organs. As he works, he names the various parts, feeling like one of his own students for the first time in years. It takes several hours, but with the addition of a limited amount of hydrolic acid & the cafeteria's garbage disposal, he reduces Debbie to nothing more than bones.

THE AWESOME PIC THAT
COMES WITH KRISKE'S STORY

And then comes his "crowning achievement." Conant reasons that if the best place to hide a book is in a library, the best place to hide a skeleton (no, it's not the local cemetery... his is near a highway and practically next door to the police station) is in a science classroom. Taking another few hours to accomplish the task, he arduously strings together Debbie's bones. When done, he exchanges the classroom skeleton, Clyde- who is old & who he's been asking to replace for years- with his beloved Debbie.

[The story could pretty much end there, topping out around 1,800 words,

but Kriske give us so much more story in only 700 more words.]

Weeks and then months pass. Conant has gotten away with it. His students suspect nothing, his wife is none-the-wiser, and every morning he gets to have a brief chat with his old flame, often to his happy arousal.

Then, with only days before the end of the school year, tragedy hits. Another teacher presents him with a gift... a replacement skeleton for the one he's been asking to dispose of for years. The exchange, the teacher explains, has already been made. Old 'Clyde' is currently on his way to the incinerator.

Conant rushes to the boiler room just in time to prevent the janitor from destroying the collections of bones he has come to love. He screams at the mild-mannered man ("You are not to touch Debbie!") and pulls at the box containing her bones. His mind, however, is not quite entirely gone. He knows enough to let the janitor do his job and bring to an end the details of his own crime.

But the loss of Debbie pushes Jim Conant over the edge, and the story ends with him living in a mental ward. And he lives there with not one secret, but two. At the last possible moment, he stole a little part of her- a finger bone. But since the patients at the ward aren't allow to have pockets, he has kept her hidden inside his mouth.


REVIEW: 5 out of 5 stars.

CD BLURB ON AUTHOR ANKE M. KRISKE

Simply put, this story rocked. It has hereby set the bar for all future 5-star stories in this blog. As a reader I was entranced from the beginning. I was shocked to shivers several times along the way. And that ending... wow! Kriske has in one fell swoop reminded me what horror can be. The first thing I did when finishing was to look her up & see what other gems might await me since I decided immediately to read more of what she has to offer.

[The results, btw, showcased one of the problems doing this blog will bring. 

Many of the authors in the early issues will have only been published in magazines that are now out of print. While www.isfdb.org lists a total of 21 short pieces published under her name, 

only 3 are actually available for sale on Amazon]. 

Though the vocabulary is simple, "The Departing of Debbie" is far from a simple story. It begins with an affair gone wrong. We see the confusion, the fear, and the rationalization of the primary character. Next we are given the meticulous cleaning up of the body, a thing Kriske does with fantastic detail (the scene where Conant uses a coffee spoon- "the only appropriate instrument he had handy"- to scoop out Debbie's brain from her skull is particularly nasty & memorable). Here we are given detailed gore mixed nicely with the slow undercurrent of growing insanity... Conant doesn't just name the body parts as he removes & disposes of them, he is constantly impressed with his progress as he goes. Finally, we get the twist ending which not only takes the story further than we had expected, but also gives us that great and true feel of horror as we close the magazine. For me, the story was a 5-star going into the final paragraphs. The ending was a welcomed exclamation point.

I've read plenty of getting-away-with-murder stories before. They can be entertaining, but they also sometimes leave me wondering if the author is using fiction as an outlet for deeper problems. And even if they don't, the point of these storis is almost always to showcase the cleverness of a born killer. Creepy, yes, but also somewhat ho-hum. Kriske's story is light years better than these predictable pieces. Her protagonist isn't a killer; he's a (mere) cheater and liar, a thief of his wife's devotion. Moreover, he starts the story in perfect (albeit pig-headed) sanity and works towards insanity as the story progresses.

As a writer, I was struck mostly with the story's final 700 words. But I don't mean the power of the events themselves. I'm talking about the structure of the story. Think for a moment about the standard design of a piece of fiction. It goes something like this: Character A has Problem B which forces him/her to take Actions C, D, & E until Climax F solves the problem and leaves us with Resolution G. What Kriske has done is sneak in an additional part of the narrative plotline between F & G. Call it "Climax 2.0."

When we see Conant hang Debbie's skeleton in his classroom, he has solved his problem. We suspect the final paragraphs we have yet to read are the resolution- showing how he goes on with his life- and we also suspect something will go wrong (this is, after all, a horror story). Possibly he'll get caught. Possibly Debbie's bones will come alive and strangle him to death (for a supernatural twist). Possibly he'll eye that skeleton day after day, slowly working up the courage to commit a real murder just so he can dismantle another body. And at first it seems Kriske is giving us just that. Conant gets away with it and starts to develop an unhealthy connection to Debbie's skeleton. But then, just before we get the final results of his deeds... WHAM! That awesome twist. The other teacher brings in a new skeleton, Conant fully loses his mind, and we see him in a mental ward with her finger bone hidden in his mouth for... how long?... oh, I don't know, but years it feels. Years, certainly.

It's another, higher climax than we had been expecting, and it works simultaneously as a resolution. I love what Kriske has done here, and I am certain I'm going to find a way to buy old copies of magazines her work has appeared in, if nothing more than to see if its a common theme in her stories or if this one was unique in that regard.

What I've learned from reading this is that not all stories need to follow a prescribed format. Better still, having the courage to break the mold- a little anyway- can have very powerful results. In the future, I'm going to open my mind to other ways to lead my readers to the emotional state I want them.

CD Story Review #7: Rock of Ages

THE COVER OF ISSUE #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #71 (May. 2014), there are more than 530.

 

 

STORY: “Rock of Ages” 

AUTHOR: John B. Rosenman
CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 7 of 12 



 

 

PLOT:  Steve Marsh is indulging in childhood nostalgia by visiting the county fair. He feels foolish for dishing out a buck fifty to visit the fun house [remember, the year is 1988], and his wife Bette is outside, waiting impatiently to 'carp' at him when he is done. But for now he is remembering when life was better.

The carnival barker pitched that Steve would see "the most frightening thing in the world" inside the fun house, and as he turns the doorknob & steps in he wonders absently what it would actually take to meet such high claims. He expects nothing more than paper mache monsters, sliding platforms, trick mirrors, and "air holes that goosed you from below".

What he sees, however, is a scene from his own past. A day from his teens when he & Bette made love for the first time. It had been outdoors. It had been hurried and clumsy. And it had been a set-up. Bette, three years his senior, had easily seduced him and told him a few days after that she'd gotten pregnant. Weeks later they were married and Steve's life of hell had begun. Except Bette hadn't been pregnant. She had lied, Steve realizes now that he is about to watch the single event that ruined his life.

In a (final?) release of all those pent-up years of frustration and hatred, Steve steps forward, flings his teenage self off of the teenage Bette, picks up a rock, and brains Bette in the face multiple times.

Moments later his visit to the past is over and he is back in the fun house. He steps outside and realizes that his wife is nowhere to be seen. Better still, a different woman, beautiful and kind-faced, seems to be smiling and waving at him. They walk towards each other, but she veers aside and greets another man. He suddenly realizes the rock is still in his hand. Then Bette makes her reappearance, changed only by the new horrific scar on her face and the ominous words: "Steve, you didn't think you had escaped me, did you?
 

REVIEW: 5 out of 5 stars.

As a reader, I appreciated how Rosenman shows us that just because a story is short (only 1,000 words) doesn't mean it's necessarily simple. "Rock of Ages" has so much packed into it. (Seriously, look how long my summary is. It's practically as long as the story itself!) In it we find good characterization, a great build-up to the ending, and (perhaps most importantly) actual horror. What is the scariest sight in the world? Answer: Having to re-live the worst moment of your life.

CD BLURB ON AUTHOR JOHN B. ROSENMAN

Not bad for a thousand words.

For a moment, let's go back to that ending. By showing the beautiful other woman, Rosenman gives us just the right touch of hope before reality comes crashing down. Twice. Even better (worse?) we are left dealing with a gruesome message too: if you're weak-minded or gullible, watch out. You're in for a world of hurt, and if you dare try to fix that world, it's only going to get worse.

The story has another advantage to which I must give an appreciative nod: Working time travel into any story that isn't primarily about time travel is just cool. I'm a big fan of that subgenre, and I've come to believe it's HARD to do it right in a short space.

I also love the title. "Rock of Ages". I see what you did there, Rosenman. You took a cliché & gave it an entirely new meaning, and a witty one at that.

As a writer, Rosenman's story reinforces that age-old rule in fiction that shorter is better. If this were a 3,000-word story, I'd give it 4 stars and explain that he dragged it on too long or over-described. But seeing the sheer depth of this piece not only warrants it's 5-star accolade, but also reminds this writer about the dangers of verbosity when brevity will do.
 

CD Story Review #6: Fury's Child

THE COVER OF ISSUE #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #70 (Sept. 2013), there are more than 500.

STORY: “Fury's Child” 
AUTHOR: David B. Silva
CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 6 of 12 

CD FEATURED A FULL-PAGE
PIC FOR "FURY'S CHILD"

PLOT:  Nick Fury is a musician. He plays guitar. But the story starts out telling us he should be dead.

The day Nick almost died he was working on a new riff in his basement when a thin sheen of leaking water makes contact with his guitar amp. Though he acted fast to unplug his equipment, Nick was nevertheless electrocuted and thrust into a surreal out-of-body experience. He first floats up through the ceiling, then through the roof of his house, then through the atmosphere, and eventually through the far reaches of the universe.

Nick sees a brilliant blue light at the end of a long tunnel and hears the most amazing music of his life. His mother (who is presumably already dead) then makes an appearance and speaks to him briefly before negating his belief that today is his day to die. The entire experience is much like we expect such a thing would be. It is- in a word- beautiful.

Then the story turns on us. A black, deformed hand pulls Nick's mother away from him and everything goes black. A moment later he wakes up in a hospital bed.

The next scene is at an undisclosed time later and Nick's (girl?)friend, Sadie, is begging him to come outside for just a few hours. He insists he needs to work on his new song, and we come to realize that Nick is obsessed with capturing the music he heard in the outer cosmos and that this has been going on for some time. Slowly & sadly, Sadie leaves & Nick barely notices.

Over the next 15 days, Nick composes non-stop, constantly frustrated as he attempts to recreate the music from his near-death experience. Little by little certain notes and chords click, and on the 15th day he finishes. He plays it through once to confirm it is the most important creative work of his career then invites Sadie over to hear it. She comes, listens, and cries at its beauty. It is further confirmation to Nick of what he has accomplished. Sadly, Sadie soon leaves and on her way home throws herself off the Golden Gate Bridge. The impression we get is that she could not handle the beauty of Nick's song.

The story comes to an end with Nick Fury coming to realize his brilliant song is dangerous. He wants to destroy the sheet music, but can't bring himself to do it. Instead, he locks it away and fends off calls from his manager about his lack of production. He loses fans, falls heavily to drug use, and appears to lose his sanity. The final paragraphs show Nick wondering once again what had reached forward and pulled his mother away as he stood at the threshold of death. He concludes only that Sadie now knows... and that if he picks up his guitar, his fingers would happily tell him.

REVIEW: 4 out of 5 stars.

SILVA GOT BOTH HIS PIC & AN
INTERVIEW IN THE PREMIER ISSUE.
IF YOU CLICK TO ENLARGE &
READ HIS BLURB, YOU'LL
UNDERSTAND WHY

I was oh-so-close to giving this one 5 stars. Indeed it probably deserves it. Silva's story is told far better than the others preceding it and leaves the reader with a much greater sense of wonder & appreciation than any CD story to date. However, it also had one thing missing... something that took me many minutes of consideration to nail down. That thing is a clear & distinct connection to the Horror genre. That's because this story is almost the antithesis of story 5 in this series of reviews... "Leg Man" was, if you recall, too gruesome for my tastes & lacked a certain finesse of story-telling. "Fury's Child" is, by comparison, too tame. I think it's only because Cemetery Dance billed itself from the outset as being a horror magazine that I had to make this distinction. In a standard fantasy magazine, this is easily 5 stars. Even in science-fiction it might have qualified. But for Horror... well, for Horror it is somewhat lacking in that key element to the genre that sets it apart from Fantasy or Sci-Fi: namely the ability to creep out the reader in some fashion. The only genuine creepiness is the vague suggestion that the blackened hand which took his mother was Nick's own... it was, after all, the contact point of his electrocution.

What really matters in this story, however, is the overwhelming ethereal feel Silva's words give readers. The description of what Nick Fury has gone through... the process by which he goes about discovering his song... the lingering image of his need to play the song again at the risk of his own life... all are- in that same, perfect word- beautiful.

Yet as a writer I must ask myself why Silva's images & concepts are the kind that stick. Allow me to quote my favorite passage from this story in order to explain what I think I've come to understand:

"Later, as he closed the basement door behind her, 

Nick smiled and slapped an open palm against the cinder-block wall. 

He had done it." 

This simple motion- this slapping of one's hand against a wall in exasperated contentedness- is what makes Silva a great writer. He doesn't push this moment in our faces. He doesn't feel the need to explain it. He merely shows us his character in the throes of a specific emotion and trusts we will get it. We do, and accuracy of what it looks like combined with his trust is- you guessed it- a beautiful thing. 

Regardless of the lack of the elusive 5th star, Silva has impressed me. I look forward to more of his works and to what he can do when he decides to actually prickle my skin. 

Torchwood: A Review

THE TORCHWOOD TEAM:
GWEN, OWEN, JACK, IANTO, & TOSHIKO

I am utterly… blown… away.

A spin-off show I thought was merely OK or even cheesy just rocked my world.

But I am also broken. Fractured. As dismantled as the very characters themselves.

This is among the most powerful writing I've ever seen.

And it is called Torchwood.

As mentioned above, “Torchwood” is a television show. It features 4 seasons of hour-long episodes that is a spin-off of the illustrious “Doctor Who”. In it, Captain Jack Harkness is our overly charismatic protagonist. He and his little team (called the Torchwood Institute) routinely hunt down and deal with aliens in and around the Cardiff, UK area. Most of those aliens are hostile and are either killed, returned to whence they came, or subdued. Some rare benign aliens are given aid. Chief among the characters’ quirks (& the center of the show’s best moments of intrigue) is Captain Jack himself, stolen directly from Doctor Who and utilized to his fullest extent. You see, Captain Jack cannot die.

CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS

Or to be more precise, he cannot stay dead. In truth he dies all the time (and in one memorable episode near the very end of season 2 we learn this has been the case at least 1,000 times) but always resurrects. There are the inevitable scenes where Jack is murdered only to reanimate minutes later (much to the surprise of the overconfident trigger-puller), and henceforth save the day. But the show doesn't stop at these obvious cliches. Jack’s history is sometimes given center stage in a manner that leaves us not exactly near tears, but certainly empathetic to the woes of any man who has made a mistake and suffers the act of living through it.

And Jack, of course, has lived for hundreds of years. Perhaps thousands.

Fans of "Doctor Who" already know this entire show is only the beginning of his amazing journey through life.

THIS IS A WEEVIL, A COMMON ALIEN THAT
LIVES MAINLY IN THE SEWERS OF CARDIFF

As I said before, I first thought this show to be mediocre at best, with moments of intrigue worth sitting through the worst bits. However things picked up a bit about halfway through season 2 when a secondary character attained his own unique version of life-everlasting. You’ll be happy to know I won’t be “that guy” in this blog who ruins the fun for you by revealing too much (spoilers!), but I feel safe enough to tell you that the season 2 finale was genuinely amazing. In fact, it bordered on *literally* amazing. Take that in for a bit. I was damn-near actually amazed at what I had seen. And I've seen and read a lot of good Sci-Fi stories. Therefore, I hereby solemnly promise that if you can sit through the doldrums of season 1 (so as to gain the relevant back story) you will certainly be rewarded by the overall story presented in season 2.

And then there is season 3, the very reason for my spontaneous blog post this late evening. 

It is a mere 5 episodes in length- clearly some kind of salvaging of a contract gone awry- but each one plays like 2 or 3. More importantly, this collective miniseries begins with a true bang and only increases in tension, moments of zen, heart-wrenchers, and scenes worthy of epic praise with each passing minute. For the overall show I have but one mid-sized season to go now, and I am already content with what I've seen. Season 4 could suck giant, hairy wildebeest balls for all I care… I am already more than satisfied, entertained, and educated as both viewer and author alike. Bravo, Torchwood writers. Bravo.

Now then, on my actual (if not elusive) analysis of Torchwood’s awe-inspiring third season...

INSIDE THAT TANK IS THE EVIL ALIEN OF SEASON 3
THEY ARE CALLED ONLY "THE 456", NAMED AFTER
THE RADIO FREQUENCY WHERE THEIR MESSAGE WAS
FIRST DISCOVERED. ALSO INSIDE IS THE POISON IT BREATHES.

Episode 1 concludes with an “Are you fucking kidding me?!” game-changer. Episode 2 raises the stakes and brings down the hammer, reminding us that Science-Fiction can tackle some seriously important shit, and I’m not talking about theoretical physics… I’m talking about the very questions that define humanity. As if that wasn't impressive enough, episode 3 takes it even further, almost laughing at the simplicity of the opening duo, flaunting in our faces the notion that our imaginations are our own worst enemies. Indeed seeing our greatest fears brought to life with faces and names and stories and pasts is oh-so-much-more devastating. Episode 4 adds layer after layer of political intrigue without dowsing the action and mind-fucks we've already come to expect. There’s also more of that great back story we love to get, and boy does Jack Harkness have a memorable past. Finally, the season finale somehow manages the impossible task of completing nearly a full dozen story arcs, each with satisfying nods of approval from my author’s side even as my viewer side cursed the writers of the show and held back tears. To be honest, this was a fight I eventually lost.

As you have probably discerned, I am refraining from revealing many specific details of the show in my analysis (again, spoilers!) for the sole reason that I don’t believe in them when the story matters. Instead, I am attempting to write an honest reaction to the levels of emotion and raw entertainment I have experienced, all in the hope that you will hop on over to Netflix and follow in my footsteps. Nevertheless, I feel a basic description is in order. I will therefore steal the Netflix single-sentence description blurbs and allow your imagination and curiosity to begin overflowing. They are as follows:

Torchwood: Season 3, Episode 1. “Children of Earth: Day One” An ordinary day becomes one of terror, as every child in the world stops and delivers a message to all the governments of Earth: “We are coming”.

Torchwood: Season 3, Episode 2. “Children of Earth: Day Two” Members of the [Torchwood] team are hunted down, Britain risks becoming a rogue state, and only one person holds the key to Torchwood’s salvation.

Torchwood: Season 3, Episode 3. “Children of Earth: Day Three” The eyes of the world turn to Britain, and members of Torchwood must battle to protect their own families as the fight gets personal.

Torchwood: Season 3, Episode 4. “Children of Earth: Day Four” Torchwood finally learns the truth and everything now pivots around one man. Old allegiances are destroyed and true intentions are revealed.

Torchwood: Season 3, Episode 5. “Children of Earth: Day Five” As violence erupts and anarchy reigns, an ordinary housing estate becomes a battleground where the future will be decided. Torchwood is defenseless.  

Overall I cannot yet fairly give this show a rating since I’m not technically done, but for individual seasons I’d rank them as follows:

Season 1: 3 of 5 stars. Considering the potential they had to work with by stealing one of Doctor Who’s greatest companions, this felt like there could have been more done here. It’s a fun show, though, and one I was happy to put on each evening after my wife falls asleep watching our shared viewing experiences. :D

THE OFFICIAL TORCHWOOD LOGO, VISIBLE ON
VARIOUS OFFICE WINDOWS, DOCUMENTS, AND
GADGETS THROUGHOUT THE SHOW.
IT'S ALSO ON MY NEWEST T-SHIRT.  :) 

Season 2: 5 of 5 stars, though the first half was only a 4. As I already explained, things really kick into gear when a secondary character has his life altered in a meaningful and permanent way. This storyline is carried through to the end of the season even while Captain Jack’s own back story is filled in, much to our simultaneous satisfaction and frustration. Also, there's that season finale to watch out for. Yowzer.

Season 3: 5 of 5 stars. Can I change the rules and make it out of 10 stars then give this season a 12 please? I am rarely surprised by a turn that a storyline takes, unless I’m both surprised and annoyed by poor writing and/or cheap answers to important questions. This season/ miniseries continued to take me places I didn't expect, yet I appreciated and loved every minute of it. Example: Far too often the climax of a story (in this case I’m referring to that of the full-season story arc) is predictable. I’m not saying I’m saddened the evil aliens were vanquished thanks to Captain Jack Harkness’ flare for the dramatic… I’m saying each of the characters behaved as they should even though none of them was in their comfort zone or following their normal methods of problem-solving. I love it when characters are forced to do new things but still act in a manner befitting their identities. It’s not easy to do, and season 3 can safely add this accolade to their wall of shiny medals.

CD Story Review #5: "Leg Man"

CD ISSUE #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman) & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed. As of Issue #70 (Sept. 2013), there are more than 500.

STORY: “Leg Man” 

AUTHOR: Chris B. Lecher

CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 5 of 12 

PLOT:  A gruesome story told in 4 parts...

1) Slash is a taking a break from his band's set in an alley. He meets a girl there. She is shirtless beneath her jacket. She seduces him easily. As he suckles her breasts, her breasts suddenly seize his tongue and slash the inside of his mouth "like a frenzied piranha".

YIKES LOOK AT THIS
GRUESOME PIC

2) Izzy, another band member, comes out just in time to watch Slash flounder with his shredded mouth before bleeding to death. 

3) Time has passed and Izzy is still having nightmares and the band is seeing hard times. Many of his dreams feature a "girl-thing" that Izzy knows isn't human but is responsible for Slash's death. Then another band-mate, Axl, comes in and tries to convince him to have a good time with the two girls he brought back. Izzy declines and almost falls back to sleep when one of the girls (who he hasn't yet even seen) whispers "Night, Izzy." 

4) After successfully falling back to sleep, Izzy wakes to hear chewing sounds and Axl moaning. He thinks it's the sounds of sex and goes once again back to sleep. The next time when he wakes he hears what is clearly "hungry lapping sounds" and understands the girl-thing that killed Slash is now in his home and has already killed Axl. Izzy charges into the room and, after a brief fight, throws the girl-thing out the window. But she gets up from the bone-breaking two-story drop, and Izzy prepares for her return by stopping the kitchen sink, turning on the faucets, and plugging in one of his guitar amps. When she enters he tells her he's "Not much of a tit man," and then electrocutes her. After checking Axl's body, Izzy's girlfriend (who slept through the whole ordeal), comes out to see the carnage. She hugs him affectionately, but when her breasts graze Izzy's shirt, he swears he feels them move. 

REVIEW: 4 out of 5 stars.

CD BLURB ON LECHER

As a reader I was grossed out by this one, nearly to the point of not enjoying it. Nearly. While Lacher's abilities as an author are solid, the unbridled gore of this piece is simply not to my liking. In my experience there are three kinds of horror... Supernatural, Psychological, and Blood & Gore. Naturally we all have our favorites & naturally many stories overlap & use 2 or all 3 of these. This story is almost entirely Blood & Gore and as a fan of the overall genre, I wish Lecher had explained more about the background of the creature he invented rather than just the actions she takes or her physical... uh... abilities. Since my personal preference is low for Blood & Gore, I'd actually give this just 3 stars. But to be fair I gave it 4 because Lecher tells his story well. It's smooth & to the point without overburdening the reader, which is a marked improvement over many of the other (earlier & yet-to-be-reviewed) stories in this early issue. I can't go as high as 5 stars, though, because the story is nevertheless simple and Lecher's characters (the human ones at least) are little more than stereotypes plus his sentence structure is, again, very basic. 

As a writer I am reminded that a single great image can be powerful to my readers. Despite my personal distaste for it, the vision of a woman's breasts having an open cavity and shark-like teeth is not one I am likely to forget soon. And the scene that describes her using that pseudo 'mouth' to pleasure her victim... let's just say there are some things you can't un-see. Which is exactly my point. Lecher nailed this element of the horror genre, and for that I applaud him. 

To sum up, I don't prefer Lecher's style but I respect his basic talent. If gore & grue is your thing, you'll love this one. If not, save yourself a few nightmares & pass. 

CD Story Review #4: "Forever Angels"

PIC 1 FLANKS THE LEFT
 SIDE OF THE TITLE

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today (now managed by author/ editor Brian James Freeman)  & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered many of the genre's most famous and successful authors. Naturally, getting published in CD is one of the top items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.

STORY: “Forever Angels” 

AUTHOR: Ronald Kelly

CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 4 of 12 

 

PIC 2 FLANKS THE RIGHT SIDE.
BOTH ANGEL PICS ARE CREEPY.

PLOT (spoilers!): Deanna Hudson is a second-grader who learns there is a whole section of a local cemetery for children. When the other kids show it to her, they tease her by claiming that on stormy nights the corpses of the dead children crawl out of their graves and head towards the nearest house, which is Deanna’s of course. Though she’s too smart to fall for their lies, she is nevertheless creeped out by the children’s cemetery. When some of the older boys hide in the bushes and rustle the branches just as it starts to rain, poor Deanna loses her nerve and runs home in tears.

In the next scene we get a flashback from several years before when Deanna’s grandfather had passed away. Upon getting lost among the many mourning rooms of the funeral home, she comes across a tiny coffin and inside it the body of an infant boy clutching a plastic rattle. With her back turned as she leaves the room, she thinks she hears the sound of a shaking rattle. Remembering that day now, Deanna has a nightmare where she looks out her bedroom window and sees hairless, childrens’ heads bobbing and moving through the field of tall grass between her own house and the cemetery next door.

Some time passes and Deanna is part of the community’s annual effort to clean up and maintain the cemetery. While trying to enjoy a small picnic with her parents and baby brother Timothy, a drunken, old Cherokee man named Redhawk arrives and rants about sacred lands and the community’s desecration of the ancient Indian burial mounds. Deanna’s parents ignore her pleas to leave. 

That night poor Deanna has another nightmare where Redhawk (now sober and respectable in his chief’s full headdress) leads his entire tribe in a ritual at the children’s section of the cemetery. But when an earthquake starts to rumble and split the ground apart, Deanna has to escape to a tree where she finds Timothy already looking down at her from the topmost branches. The dream-brother has an ashen face and reaches to her with “cold, little hands.” As Deanna falls from the tree, she wakes from her dream drenched in sweat. Attempting to calm herself with a midnight glass of water, she hears a sound coming from the back yard. She opens the door and finds a single pink bootie on her back stoop. When her mother finds her minutes later, Mrs. Hudson calms her daughter and prepares a bottle of milk for her infant son. However when they goes upstairs to feed him, baby Timothy is found dead in his crib.

In the days after, Deanna cried and screamed and begged for her parents not to bury Timothy in the children’s cemetery, but of course they do. In the story’s final scene, Deanna is a full-blown insomniac who lays awake every night with her back to the window where she believes her dead brother watches and coos at her as he pays his nightly visit. And every morning another toy is found missing from his crib.

 



REVIEW: 4 of 5 Stars. This story is as complex as it is creepy. Deanna’s character goes through all five stages of grief and the subtle connection of the dead boy at the funeral home to Timothy (both infant boys/ both shown in those too-tiny baby blue caskets/ both clutching favored toys) is very nicely done. And despite a handful of minor errors ('century' instead of 'country', 'orthought' instead of 'or thought', 'her' instead of 'here', a double set of quotation marks to begin one piece of dialogue), there are a number of truly great similes, which never fail to impress me when they are done right. My favorites are: “Small, hairless heads bobbed through the tall grass and honeysuckle like dolphins cresting the waves of a stormy sea. The pale, hairless heads of a dozen lifeless babies," "A full moon was out, highlighting the tiny [tomb]stones, making them look like bleached teeth sprouting from earthen gums," and "The clouds boiled like the depths of a dark cauldron, lightning jabbing downward, gaunt fingers of blue fire upon the horizon." 


 

CD BLURB ON RONALD KELLY

As a reader I really liked this one and I would have given it 5 stars if not for the errors and the slight bit of predictability in the ending. Otherwise it was a fine read. Kelly writes his sentences with good form and his plotline with a natural arc. From beginning to end I was entertained, and well after the fact I have found myself pondering those bobbing bald heads through the field of grass, the myriad of toys (instead of flowers) placed around the children's tombstones, and the final image of Deanna lying awake with her back turned to her pale-faced baby brother at the window. If I had to describe my emotional state, I’d use ‘Haunted’, and that’s just fine by me.

As a writer, I’m struck most of all by Kelly's use of figurative language. There are a dozen examples beyond the similes I already mentioned. My appreciation is not in how entertaining each phrase is, but in how each adds to the overall story. When I came across them I could not help think, “Wow, this guy really nailed that one,” or “Damn this guy is good,” and I think that’s the point. A couple of truly well-written sentences in just the right spots really can have the effect of making me see an author as a whole step better than those that came before him. I’m making a mental note to pay more attention to my own choice of words in the future. It's not that every paragraph has to have unforgettable turns of phrase, but I am coming to believe that a great story should have two or three real winners. These are the kinds of things that help a story stick in the minds of readers, and they're always worth the additional effort.

CD Story Review #3: "The Double"

COVER OF CD ISSUE #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered some of the genre's most famous and successful authors. Naturally, getting published in CD is one of the top items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.

STORY: “The Double”

AUTHOR: Steve Rasnic Tem

CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (Dec. 1988: Vol. 1, Iss. 1), story 3 of 12 

PLOT (spoilers!): A mother and father appear to be playing with their son before bedtime, however the inclusion of the words "poking" and "slapping" make it clear their affections are actually abusive. They even pick him up and drop him on his head. They do this all while almost chanting the words, “Our son. Our only son.”

THE FULL-PAGE PIC
INCLUDED WITH
THIS STORY 

Meanwhile, the son observes their faces and reflects that this has all happened before.

When the mother and father leave, the son builds a crude doll from clothes, and takes the time to draw his own face on it and even constructs fingers, toes, and- wait for it- a penis out of peanuts left behind in a bowl. Looking at his finished product, he notices “with disinterest” that the face lacks a nose.

When the parents return, they see the doll, abuse it till it literally falls to pieces, and do a "merry dance" over the body while repeating their "our only son" mantra. The son, meanwhile, watches from afar and appreciates that these kicks and smashes don’t hurt.



REVIEW: 4 of 5 stars. This story is very odd, very hard to explain, and very short (less than 300 words in total). Because of its inherent ambiguity I teetered on giving it only 3 stars. After all, when it comes to grading on a numerical scale, it’s easier for a story to have clear flaws and merits to justify my decision. However I also appreciate and respect gut instinct, and this story also has one other major descriptor: it’s creepy as shit. I believe Chizmar nailed the decision to publish this one. I now have the difficult task of trying to explain why.

Despite the haziness of what actually happens, Rasnic Tem’s story leaves us thinking, interpreting, and shivering as we go over and over this one after the reading is done. The primary questions one has are the following…

1)      How could the parents mistake a doll for their son? Is it really a doll? Has it always been a doll? Is the son even real? Are the parents even human?

2)      Does the son make a new double every night? Is so, how long has this been going on? If not, how long has he been suffering alone?

3)      Why did Rasnic Tem include the detail about the doll’s lack of a nose? What significance does a noseless face have to an abused child? In a piece this short, it certainly was not included on a whim.

4)      Why did Rasnic Tem specify that peanuts were used to construct the doll’s various appendages? Again, in a piece this short, it must mean something, right? 

One thing that is clear is that the son is the victim of abuse, and that one of the doll's appendages is a penis implies it's not just physical but sexual. What isn't clear is how he deals with it. Readers might assume it's a straightforward (realistic) piece about a kid making a double to stand in for his own abused self, but of course in a straightforward piece the parents wouldn't fall for that.

CD AUTHOR BLURB ON RASNIC TEM (click for close-up)

This implies there is something else- perhaps even something supernatural- going on. Maybe the son died long ago & is now haunting the parents in their dreams. Maybe the parents are some kind of monsters that can't tell the difference between a real boy and a doll. Maybe the boy has a power that makes his doll look real to his parents. Rasnic Tem doesn't provide enough clues for us to know for sure what the answer is, but I don't think that's the point. The point, I think, is for the reader to fill in the rest on his/her own.

My own interpretation is that it is a straightforward story, only it's the son who is the one misinterpreting what's going on. As someone who has done LOTS of research on abuse and recovery for my novels, one thing I can tell you is that the human mind is capable of amazing things, and I think the doll is how this boy's damaged mind has found a way to deal with his situation. To be honest, I'm not even sure there is a doll (perhaps he only imagines making it), but if there is I'm pretty sure he's only projecting that his parents turn so quickly to abuse it instead of him.

As a reader, I'm thoroughly entertained yet slightly annoyed by this story. I love how it continues to stick with me, but I'm frustrated that Rasnic Tem didn't give me enough info to know the whole story. Despite my initial hesitation to give it as high as 4 stars, the truth is this ambiguity is the reason I can't give it 5.

As a writer, I am reminded about the power and importance of not saying too much. Readers like to use their own imagination, after all, so leaving a story with an open ending (though perhaps not quite as open as this one) can, of course, be very entertaining.

CD Story Review #2: "A Breathe of Fresh Air"

COVER OF CD ISSUE #1

Richard Chizmar founded Cemetery Dance Magazine in 1988. It’s still in production today & is considered one of the best horror mags of all time, having published and even discovered some of the genre's most famous and successful author. Getting published in CD is one of the top five items on my bucket list. This blog series is my attempt to read, review, and research every story CD has ever printed.

STORY: “A Breathe of Fresh Air”

AUTHOR: Edgar F. Tatro

CD APPEARANCE: Issue #1 (December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 1), story 2 of 12

PLOT (spoilers):

Benji Drummond is in jail in Smalltown, USA. (Not literally. I’m waxing poetic). He’s scheduled to get out in a few days but for weeks has been complaining about the smell and heat of the place. Sheriff Olsen knows it’s bad. He even requested an air quality report to pacify Benji’s constant whining (and hacking up black stuff all over the walls) that has been making everyone else miserable. When screams come from his cell the morning of his release, the sheriff finds his cellmate beaten near death, Benji gone, and the air vent ripped open like a piece of cardboard.

SO CUTE YET SO DEADLY (for flies)

A captain arrives and assumes Benji escaped out the open cell door when the sheriff attended to the wounded man. But the sheriff insists his back was never turned. Yet the mystery remains. The only other exit- the vent- is too small & high on the wall for Benji to have used. Later, the air quality report explain everything. It cites high levels of carbon dioxide, poor circulation, and the presence of bat feces. The sheriff reads from the report that is was specifically Desmodus Rufus, and dramatically reveals this is the scientific name for a vampire bat.

The story ends in a lone separate paragraph with “the former Benji Drummond” hanging upside down inside the ventilation shaft of a day care nursery. There is a pile of fresh feces underneath him.

CD AUTHOR BLURB ON TATRO

REVIEW: 3 of 5 stars. Ok, first thing’s first. A typo in the friggin title!? Are you kidding me?! I swear I thought the story would somehow answer why it’s spelled ‘breathe’ instead of ‘breath’, but guess what… no dice. It’s an actual typo. I know every author makes mistakes, and I know my own list of words-learned-wrong has its embarrassments, but Tatro is described in the author blurb as a “veteran high school English teacher”, and his list of publishing accomplishments suggests he’d been at the game for a while. Yet the fault should not lie on the author alone. Chizmar was the lone editor in this issue, and while I must remind myself that he was in his early twenties at this point and certainly subject to the fallacies of the young, one cannot help but ask if he or Tatro had access to a dictionary.

The story, however, was decent, if not a tad on the predictable side. Tatro drops the detail of the air quality report and Benji’s physical state early and often enough that we know something is up. And while we suspect it’ll be something like what it turns out to be, the ending paragraph pushing the story to a darker level was a nice touch.

But the misspelling & the predictability did not prevent this from earning 4 stars. There are 2 other significant flaws. Chief among them is how the pacing of the story is moving along a pleasant clip but slows to a crawl when the captain comes in. A full third of the story is spent on this unimportant character yammering to Sheriff Olsen about how and when Benji Drummond escaped. All the same content could have been just as easily shared through the unnamed officer who had already been in an earlier scene or in the least written in 2 or 3 paragraphs instead of a full page. It’s pretty clear Tatro was providing a source of superiority and a reason to doubt Sheriff Olsen’s competence, however this point is unrelated to the primary plot and serves no real purpose.

The other big flaw was that when the sheriff proclaims the sample had feces in it, the captain asks, “Feces? What’s feces?” at which Sheriff Olsen explains, “You’re captain, huh? Feces is crap, excrement, number two!” I get the fact that Tatro is showing us the captain is the incompetent one, but I can’t help shake the feeling that he inserted it not to develop a character but to define a word he was concerned his readers would not know. Perhaps he was right, and perhaps not. But the word is by no means outside of the standard lexicon of English, and I felt it was an unnecessary dumbing down of the readers’ intellect.