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”Did you listen to his stories?��
“Fairy tales.��
“Now I know you didn’t listen. He was telling horror stories to seven-year olds.��
“Fairy tales are horror stories.��

There’s much to unpack in this short story. And it’s all contained within a deceptively low-key, mundane tale that gradually goes sideways until we’ve completely lost our footing and are adrift in the twilight zone.

The story opens with some of the real traumas that life serves up �� a too early death, the real life horrors of the affects of mental illness, passive aggressive disfunction between adult children and parents, disturbing childhood memories stirred up. While none of these things are far outside normal experience, the author skillfully weaves them together to set an uneasy mood that feels unsettling, putting us in a place where falling off the cliff into the absolutely uncanny takes us by surprise.

The best horror plays on common doubts and fears. What is more common than questioning identity? Who am I really? How did I get here? Is any of this mess even real? Those secret thoughts we have when lying awake, removed from all distractions, body tired but brain going furiously that challenge the very core of our identity �� that’s what is in play here. When the bottom suddenly drops out of the protagonist’s self identity it is a smack right at those suppressed secret thoughts in us all. This is horror well done.