Once again, it’s the everyday need for connection that haunts us most. Font expertly spooks with such turns, overshadowing the strange with the familiar. And, believe it or not, it is here that a deadly love triangle begins, which is even scarier than the melting bones. When their bones are too squishy they are placed in “skeletons,” which are described as painful Iron Lungs. They often sneak out of the pods to have sex. In the evening, they sleep in pods to hold their bones together. In the daytime, the patients receive nursing care as they group together to watch trashy TV shows. Think of any graphic comic, novel, or movie with scenes that illustrate the human body melting into puddles of either goo, jelly-like substances, or just a skeletal structure with bits of slime-like flesh hanging off. The setting is a medical center where the patients suffer from a mysterious bone-melting disease. The premise of the narrative is that women think, “What else can I do to meet someone? Nowadays, people seem to connect exclusively through dating apps.” What makes this story so unsettling is that in modern dating we are so hungry for love that we are willing to sacrifice so much of ourselves to find a genuine connection.Īnother story exploring the depth of our romantic needs is “The Bone Yard.” It is one of the creepiest stories in the collection. The purpose of the blots is to obtain their targets’ personal information for Russian hackers. However, there’s a catch: women know that many of the too-handsome-to-believe men who use dating apps are “blots,” fake humans who pose as eligible males. Here, a woman decides to break down and check out online dating apps. In the title story, the author takes getting a spam email to a whole other level. I would take a break to read something else for a while before returning to the book. Having said that, I want to disclose that I often felt a surrealism overload. I enjoyed these because they were very well done. I am not usually a fan of magical realism. Folk manages this by tapping into our deepest social and personal anxieties. What makes these strange stories almost credible is that they have elements of truth in them. They are creepy, bizarre, and filled with black humor, yet they have a sobering effect on the reader.
The stories of “Out There” offer a razor-sharp analysis of the madness found in everyday life in the digital age.
I went out of my comfort zone for this one. Genre: Short Stories: Science Fiction/ Horror/Black Comedy
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