What a lovely dip into the pool of blood after a long dry day on the sands of reality.
It’s been staring up from the pile with a horrific grin for quite a while, and I finally couldn’t resist Michael Arnzen’s "100 Jolts shockingly short stories" any longer. Under his introduction "Minimalist Horror", Arnzen has this to say: "Horror is a thrill ride that’s over before you expect it to be, yet none too soon." This book has 100 of the quickest rides I’ve ever read. Coming off a Contempory Fiction course that introduced me to the world of Flash and Sudden Fiction, I was still amazed at the half-pagers in this book. But then, the first story proved that a paragraph can hold a story as well.
Skull Fragments sets up the tone with a man and his daughter at a fast food restaurant. As the father rushes in answer to his daughter’s screams, he finds her desperately trying to escape the playpen of color balls after finding a skull among the colored globes. After they get home, he dreams of various skulls, each with its own little story:
12. Doofus. A boy tears the jaw off his brother’s skull. "Who’s the doofus now?" he asks, as if expecting the grim overbite to answer.
That one’s my favorite, although not the goriest, certainly the shortest story, complete with conflict and character. What Skull Fragments (including eleven more stories within it, as the above) reminded me of was the spontaneous writing exercises often part of creative writing courses, and knowing that Arnzen in another shade is known as Professor Arnzen at Seton Hill University may have convinced me. It could have easily been a self-induced brainstorming session that just as in a classroom, produces some of the best gems hidden within the caves of our mind. It also reminded me of the New Media course concepts of the many paths a story can take, and the manipulation necessary to be able to say, what the hell, I’ll put ’em all in and let the reader travel the maze. It certainly does offer many different little jolts no matter which skull you choose. Sort of a nasty little ending to the "mother" story as well. Rather a clever technique.
I’m looking forward to digging deeper into this anthology, and perhaps further, into how this author makes the transition into full length horror, avialable in some of his other books.
But for now, twelve down, eighty-eight to go. They must wait, however, as the night is getting late, and it’s awfully dark outside…
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology