Run Along The Short Shelves - Remains #4
Publisher - Remains
Price - £7.99 via https://remains.uk/products/issue-4
For this trip to the short story shelves it’s back to Remains the magazine of weird horror and a delightful mix of strange tales await.
Heavyness by Sean Padraic Birnie - a story of a unique family starts with the only surviving son living up his sister’s ashes. But as he tells his story we realise they are not a normal family. Our narrator needs a mechanical suit to survive and his sitter suffers from a strange condition she calls heavyness. It’s a claustrophobic tale of being wrapped in your own home and family but also it’s filled with grief as you slowly lose the people you’ve known best. The end is both eerie, poignant and moving.
Hearsten Lake by Kay Vaindal - I really liked how we jumped from an enclosed home to in this story the American Mountains. Our narrator here is an archaeologist who slowly revealed they have fixed a sight for the people who pay them to help get an industrial contract. However there are signs that the land’s history will show it’s not forgotten. The ominous signs of a storm on the horizon build tension as we await the inevitable reveal of what was done and this story is also in dialogue with America’s own past and efforts to hide it
Station to Station by Stephen Bacon - a very impressive story of a gay couple in the early 1980s and how our narrator’s world is broken when his partner disappears. We follow years of anxiety and guilt and even a dark theory as to his fate. Bacon then turns this on its head when a new lead is found and we go into another version of London. It’s a story about an endless search and never getting answers that really will haunt you long after reading it.
Letters From New America by Peter Sallis - a short tale of taxes and alledged freedom which for me is perhaps not the right audience.
Development Conversation by Stephen Hargadon - this is a fascinating office based horror. Our narrator is very fixed middle management knows the ropes and little desire to climb higher he meets a young but aimless new employee who says he wants to be like him. A very strange annual review then takes place involving strange imagery and Hargadon reveals what is really going on that change is set up beautifully and it’s a wonderfully sinister final few paragraphs when we see the consequences unfurl.
The Baby by Annie Neugrbauer - a woman is woken by a noise and finds a baby in her kitchen. This strange and u settling story explores a main character who has no maternal desires suddenly confronted with one. The pressures and losses of friendship, a partner and a doctor all tie together to remind us choices are difficult. A nightmarish final image resets the story but leaves a powerful mark on the reader. It’s complex and smartly does not fall on one side of the argument as to what is best as that is always for the woman at heart of the discussion to decide.
Scissors, Paper, Rock by Craig Bernardini - a man wakes up on a sofa with very little memory of what happened. Slowly images of him drink in a bar and an enigmatic bartender come back to him. It’s the realisation of have things gone well or badly that gives the story its tension and two doors with no clarity as to what lay behind them slowly amp up the sense of danger. The end neatly makes the childhood game the story used as its title as something a lot more dangerous.
The Block by Steve Toase - we enter the world of cosmic horror as three wooden blue boxes create havoc. Our narrator tells a secret history from the 1920s as an art group fixated by changing reality investigate magic. The boxes created dangerous and now in the present day our narrator attempts to catch them - things let’s say go wrong quickly. A wonderful sense of the uncanny awaits in this story with shifting dimensions and body horror all used very effectively. Like the boxes a wonderfully dense short story that distorts reality very well.
The Return of Benny Storax by John Possidente - more on the strange than fully frightening this tale is a slightly more hopeful story to end the issue on but in unusual circumstances. Our main character returns from an alien abduction after years away. But what does he want to do next? The abduction and aftermath is unsettling but for me this story is about refinding what really matters to you after a trauma. Hopefully a good answer can be found.
Another very good issue and highly recommended!
