Horror

Stories that make me afraid and anxious.

  • Back Into the Light

    SPOILERS On a rainy night a bus suffers a mechanical error and goes careening off a bridge into the river below. The driver and the passengers on that bus wake from unconsciousness to a city of perpetual night. Only a very few of the people on that bus realize where they have been taken. I

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  • The Sound of Blackened Teeth

    I needed to be told the story to fully appreciate it. I wasn’t a fan of Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth when I first read it. The audiobook changed my mind. Its narrator, Suehyla El Attar gave Cassandra’s words a rhythm and an “oomph” that the voice in my head could not. Listening. I

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  • The Tsundokuist

    I learned a new word: Tsundoku. It’s a portmanteau (another new word I learned) of the Japanese words tsunde-oku (to let things pile up) and dukosho (to read). Tsundoku is the act of buying books and letting them just pile up without reading them. According to Tanner Garrity, it’s supposed to be an expression of

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  • Dementia 21 might be my Steppenwolf

    SPOILERS! There may be spoilers in this post. Do not read further, if it concerns you. It is definitely my age that gives Shintaro Kago’s Dementia 21 a little more bite. A little more darkness. A little more sadness. And a little more humor. A friend once told me that Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf tells an

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  • Grotesquerie in the Twilight

    THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS POST. DON’T READ FURTHER IF IT MATTERS TO YOU. I finally binged Grotesquerie on Hulu. I had no idea of what the show was about before starting it. I was drawn in by the “gothy” color scheme and religious imaginary, deep reds and purple hues over Christian crosses hung over

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  • Dandadan: Allegory or just immature fun

    Dandadan by Yukinobu Tatsu can be read as an allegory about male pubescent ascendance and anxiety. Or it can just be fun. It can be a silly immature schoolyard joke that the author has imagined into an exciting fast-paced supernatural horror comedy. According to Anime Hunch, Yukinobu Tatsu wrote Dandadan as a desperate final effort

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  • “helping” in James Tynion IV’s Something is Killing the Children

    James is the sole survivor of an otherwise innocuous sleepover game of truth or dare. He and his friends go into the ravine in the back of his house in search of a monster he swore he didn’t make up. Unfortunately, there is a monster there and it kills all of his friends. The book

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  • The Twist, Collateral Damage, and Subversion

    Each Kazuo Umezz story has a supernatural or mystery element and ends with a twist. The more provocative stories just end! Like “Combat” in Volume 3. It left me wondering if its “cliffhanger” ending were intentional pun (not sure if “cliffhanger” has the same meaning in Japanese as it does in English) or a conclusion

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Vincent Young