4 out of 4 stars
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Macabre Menagerie by C. L. Clark is a neat little book of short stories of the creepy, strange, surreal, unnerving and unexplained. Published by TreClark, Inc., it’s available as a paperback on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and it’s also available for Kindle on Amazon. My ebook comes in at 158 pages and contains twelve stories.
The first story, entitled Under Your Skin, introduces us to the author’s writing style: lots of descriptive adjectives, a nice attention to detail, and stories that don’t contain a lot of superfluous literary flotsam and jetsam. Which is exactly how short stories should be written. Get in, grab us, keep us turning the pages, surprise us, satisfy us, and get out. Ms. Clark does this very well.
In Under Your Skin, we meet Casey, a woman who is heading home from work on the train. She casually observes other passengers until she sees one passenger, “Mr. Twitchy,” who “jerked and jolted his way down the aisle at boarding” and continues to jerk and twitch and scratch and fidget in his seat. The tension rises, she has an unpleasant encounter with him when deboarding, and then the ride really begins. That brief exchange plunges her into a quickly dilating nightmare. She arrives home, notices a welt on her arm where Mr. Twitchy grabbed her, and things rapidly escalate from concern to panic. The story builds to a nice crescendo, and the ending is…well, no spoilers.
We meet different uglies in different forms as we wend our way through these spooky stories. It’s not so much ghosts and haunting as it is real people in unreal, surreal situations where reality is just a little off kilter. The antagonist could be just a shadow. Or a computer. I hesitate to say too much, because part of Ms. Clark’s skill as a writer lies in her ability to refrain from telling the reader too much too soon; each story is a little path to some discovery, and it’s fun to be surprised. Like riding a roller coaster in the dark, you never know where the next turn, twist, or drop will be. With some stories, you have to wait until the very last sentence or two for the denouement.
One of my favorite stories is The Pitch. A little boy named Tommy has a strange encounter with a mirror – he inadvertently finds himself in the world inside the mirror – and things will never be the same again. Yes, it sounds like an old, worn-out idea, but Ms. Clark’s take on it is fresh and fun and interesting and unique. I also liked Coffee and a Slice, a first-person tale of a man who sits down for a delicious slice of apple pie a la Mode at a greasy spoon called “Mo’s” and innocently engages another patron in conversation, but, of course, everything is not quite as it appears to be. There is lots of attention to quirky details, and a nice, dynamic vocabulary. It reminded me of O. Henry’s writing. (Coming from me, that’s a great compliment.) Abundance of Light is a story about a man named Alex intent on picking up a woman at a bar. He decides on Shelly – “She would be the one” – and the encounter between the two of them is very well written, with more than a little tension – sexual and otherwise – sprinkled in. Of course, this isn't just a one-night stand, but you’ll have to wait until the very end for the reveal. The last story, Open Wide, lets us in on what happens to Scott during an emergency visit to a less-than-benevolent dentist. This one may make you squirm a bit.
Ms. Clark is a capable writer with an energetic vocabulary. She sometimes uses phrases which are cliché, and this bothered me a bit. But this is forgivable, as most of the writing is engaging and original. She is also a good storyteller, with an excellent sense of what to reveal and when to reveal it. The main characters in these stories are well-developed considering the page count within which the author is working. I never lost interest in any of these stories, and the endings, although not always wrapped up tidily with a nice bow, are nonetheless satisfying. She writes with purpose and direction.
I rate Macabre Menagerie four out of four stars, with this codicil: on a five-star rating system, I would also rate it four stars. If I could give it 3.5 out of four stars I would, but I think it’s better than a three. So four stars it is. I recommend this book to those who enjoy short stories, who have 10-15 minutes at a time and like to read something simple and fun, and those who like this particular genre.
***
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