DJSTORIES

A lifetime’s worth of nightmares, courtesy of 31 horrific stories from novelist (DJSturbia, 2016, etc.) and screenwriter (The Crow, 1994, etc.) Schow.

With nods to cinema, urban horror, and genre satire, Schow offers a feast for fans of his “splatterpunk” stylings, culled from 40 years of outlandish work. However ghastly they may find most stories, readers will find a surprising amount of wry humor and subtlety here and there. There are a couple of outright classics in the award-winning “Red Light,” about a girl gone missing, and “Obsequy,” a very acidic take on the walking dead. There’s a monster mash in “Last Call for the Sons of Shock” that finds Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Werewolf shooting the shit in a punk rock bar and a nod to the Creature from the Black Lagoon in “Gills.” Sure, there’s a love letter to Elvira in “Melodrama” and a full-on Jack the Ripper story in “The Incredible True Facts in the Case,” but there are plenty of surprising influences, too. “Watcher of the Skies” is a semisweet sci-fi story that’s not tonally far from Steven Spielberg. “Pamela’s Get” is a noodle-bending tale in which a character starts to question her own genesis. “Calendar Girl” offers a nightmarish account of one man’s obsession with a bewitching centerfold girl. “A Gunfight” is a spot-on homage to the Parker novels of Richard Stark/Donald E. Westlake, while “Sedalia” is a full-on Western, albeit one with “ghost dinosaurs.” “Life Partner” and “Jeff and Linda (aka “The Perfect Couple”)” offer stories of disintegrating relationships that read like Tom Waits songs. “The Five Sisters: A Fable” isn’t far from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman stories, while “Not From Around Here,” “Plot Twist,” “The Shaft,” and “Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” leave horror fans with the wetwork terror that Schow has mastered so well.

Macabre, bloodcurdling, funny, and shocking tales about things that go bump in the night.