Pretty much everybody's reaction to the title of this anthology is probably something like “Wtf is pizza horror?” Having now finished this bizarre 28 story collection, I still can't answer that question, but I'm 28 stories closer to maybe understanding the concept.
The printed grease smear stains on the first page of
each story are telling for these partly messy, partly outright revolting
stories - some of them are scary, unsettling and some even philosophical.
In any case they either center around pizza, pizza parlors, delivery
people, death cults or the mafia. Every way in which you can connect the beloved pie
to horror has been done here, this is the ultimate work on pizza and
horror.
Here are my highlights as usual with anthologies:
The Vegan Wendigo by Cody Goodfellow
This story gives the label “100% vegan” a brand new, literal meaning!
Mickey and the Pizza Girls by Sheri White
Oh pizza, you're so great,
You're so great, you fill our plate
Hey, pizza! Hey, pizza!
This story has everything a successful short story needs – at only four
pages it builds a completely new universe and gives us compelling
characters; a post-cataclysmic world where everybody in the small town
of Dodge woke up one day mutated bodily, like with extra organs
protruding from their bodies or fused together. We're following Mickey
get harassed by the cheerleader twins Zoe and Chloe who are of those
fused together and run around town singing songs, pretending they still
are delivering the pizzas they used to deliver when everything was
normal. Wonderful.
Cenobio Pizza by Joshua Chaplinsky
A
complete pizza menu consisting of pizzas with genre toppings and
corresponding explanations; The Lecter and The Baby from Eraserhead
sounded good, actually.
Pizza_Gal_666 by Emma Alice Johnson
Sarah's
search for love on a dating app leads her to a date with Vannie, who in
turn introduces her to the mysterious and chilling subculture of
pizzavores. Is this all real?
This was an absolute delight to read!
Phosphenes by Matthew King
Matthew
King truly is the king of this anthology because I think this story is
by far the best of the bunch. A simple pizza delivery turns into a
psychedelic nightmare and brings about extradimensional apprehension.
Amazing.
The Ultimate Pizza Club by Michael Allen Rose
Another simple pizza delivery turns into a gory nightmare.
Despite
the amount of grossness in these stories they indeed made me think
about pizza all the time and although I hadn't eaten any in months prior
to reading this book, I ordered pizza not once but twice while reading.
And it was not 100% vegan.
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