I feel like I just finished perusing a really appealing buffet except instead of delicious food it was all stories of the most unfortunate protagonists just going through it.

And really that analogy is more accurate than I originally intended when I remember how I read this book; I could've easily blown through a book of this pagecount way quicker than I did, but after each entry I set it down to actually think about and process what I'd just read. I remember feeling like I was digesting and appreciating each short story before moving on to the next one.

The unifying theme seemed to be: 'what happens when we find someone in a really difficult phase of their life - I'm talking just absolute rock-bottom - and then hand them a shovel and tell them to keep digging'? Hell, this was marketed as a Horror short story collection, but not even all of the fifteen stories here have supernatural elements. But it also didn't come across as a, "hey, wouldn't it be fucked up if this happened?" kind of approach, but more like a genuine look at people pushed to their very limits of their spirit and sanity and what happens if you push them a little more. This wasn't exploitative, but it wasn't written out of pity either.

Which is to say nothing of the prose, which felt refreshingly unique and just so interesting to me. I wanna share two of the more captivating opening paragraphs that stood out to me. From "Yes, We Are Duly Concerned with Calamitous Events":

Twenty-three days after the world kind of ends, we all watch as Human Resources Randy strangles the temp with a mouse cord. Right there in the hallway in front of the men's bathroom door. If the tone hadn't been set yet already, well. There you go. Jesus.

And from "This World Or The Next": Sissy limps before the stragglers, the last few locals who shyly drop in her basket their sweat-dampened dollars, their fistfuls of change. It gives Sissy a seaward lean, her limp; she can't use her walker and hold the collection basket both, so her steps are careful, halting, intentional things. They stand in a rented room in a community center in Macon, Georgia, and most of the remaining audience - women in Walmart blouses and men who favor trucker caps, the frayed bills bent in a half-moon - pull back from her even as they drop money in her basket. There is still foam at the corners of Sissy's lips. Blood dots the blue tarp spread out beside the lectern. The room is still electric with unease.

I don't even remember how I first heard about this book or where I even bought the physical copy that's been sitting on my shelf for months now, but I'll definitely be checking out this author again in the future.