protean depravity

  It's truly crazy how fast this year went past. And although we were spared most of the dreaded catastrophes on the bigger scale, on a personal level this year has taken a toll on me - it was a rough year, to say the least. After watching my father, my best friend, and numerous good friends who returned to their own countries after the pandemic disappear from my life and the jarring legalities and heritage ugliness, I was very thankful to be able to at least travel in the summer to think about things, to soothe the hurt and confusion some.

Attila Veres is a filmmaker and an author from Hungary who got introduced to international horror readers as recent as last fall through the Valancourt publication The Black Maybe , an outstanding collection of ten of his short stories which has since been nominated for the esteemed Bram Stoker Awards.

Death can't be like life. Then it wouldn't be death, would it? As one of the few horror publishing houses that can look beyond their own local backyards, Valancourt did the worldwide horror community a great service by issuing Hungarian author and screenwriter Attila Veres' English debut short story collection, The Black Maybe: Liminal Stories . So, I want to give them a huge thank you to begin with. Where to start with this one? Maybe at the end, the very end. The moment I read the last page and closed the book. I was overwhelmed, appalled, fascinated and stirred inside, all in a good way, by the ten stories I had just read from an author who has the powerful talent to suck and tie in his readers immediately, no time lost. I'm saying this as a person who usually needs some time to warm up to new stories. I get attached to characters and when I go through an intense experience with them, as it is the case in a short story, I feel like it is hard to just quickly set tha...