Ever since an editor told me that in anthologies and collections the best short stories are traditionally placed in the beginning (to get the reader hooked), I have been wondering about the placement/arrangement of short stories and whether or not what he told me is even true. Is it like an album where there's a sort of continuity between the pieces? Or was he right and you get hooked with the first story and the rest of your read is but a chase for that same high you found in the beginning? How do they even decide which the “best” story is?
In my own reading experience, I have seen it all – anthologies that start strong but fizzle out, anthologies that have a strong middle streak, collections that end with a banger, or those that suck all together.
And this year's Best Horror of The Year begins for me with a lucky strike of a series of extraordinarily good stories, only to fade away at the middle mark, but to end with a true banger, one of the best short stories I've read this year; Robert Shearman's I Love the Very Flesh Off You.
Let's take a look at my highlights;
The Cleaner by Victoria Dalpe: The story starts with a seemingly regular crime scene clean-up, but changes its direction towards the build-up of a whole new universe in which supernatural predators search for human prey and make unlikely allies. It's interesting, because some stories are good at describing single incidences, and others discuss a complete dystopia that could easily fit into a 500 page toe crusher in only a few paragraphs. This one is like the latter.
Summer Bonus by Lee Murray: It is scary and uncanny to be at the other end of the world as a teenager, or generally as a young person. Lee Murray explores that feeling in this story of two English girls living on a New Zealand farm for a work and vacation opportunity where the accommodation conditions keep getting weirder.
Like Furies by Epiphany Ferrell: Like Hitchcock's The Birds, but with pterosaurs.
Body Worlds by Tom Johnstone: If you live in Europe you surely must have heard of or even seen the exhibition Körperwelten/Body Worlds that sprung out of the crazy (arguably) genius of Gunther von Hagens who invented the plastination procedure with which dead bodies can be preserved and exhibited. The exhibition puts these bodies, that once were real humans, into weird, sometimes ridiculous positions and even though many of the subjects volunteered to be in one of his exhibitions (sometimes for the prospect of money to save their families from poverty), it always has been polemical, even problematic. And finally someone discovered this creepy, but also insanely popular exhibition's potential for horror.
An Act of Sorrow by James Cooper: We're following a moirologist, a person hired to attend funerals and make a show of their grief by crying loudly. Our protagonist is hired by one the oldest families in his town, but he knows something is off when he's asked to sign an NDA. What follows is peculiar to say the least.
Fancy Dad by David Nickle is a whirlwind of a story in which a bunch of drunk people enter the realm of ghosts; The Rock Statue by Mark Falkin confuses its readers as to who is the victim and who the perpetrator when a group of middle aged women staying in a remote cabin are visited by two teenage girls knocking at their door in the middle of the night, and Dan Coxon's In Flickering Light focuses on an ominous film director who ruins women's lives.
Finally, I Love the Very Flesh Off You by Robert Shearman: Alistair has lead a luscious life and had more than any man could have asked for: skin soft as a baby's bum, five ex wives; Sasha, Tricia, Portia I, Portia II, Letitia and (his current wife) Marcia, all of whom turn his funeral into an interesting happening where absurdly scandalous things happen. Told from the point of view of Portia I's current husband, things take a very unexpected turn when Marcia appears to the funeral dressed in her husband's skin. Yep. And that's not even the most shocking thing in this awesome short story. They still need to discuss the inheritance.
All in all, this seventeenth volume of the horror of all horrors comes as successful as an anthology can come, can't wait for the next tome.
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