It's a Good Life

This is a “good” story, despite being horror, a genre I generally avoid. I was captivated by the unsettling fear, most which happens between the lines and in one's head (except for some brief but revolting cruelty to a rat). From the start, there are unsettling turns of phrase: “Anthony thought at it”, and even his own family aren’t safe around this small child with “a bright, wet, purple gaze”.

“Everything had to be good. Had to be fine just as it was, even if it wasn’t Always. Because any change might be worse. So terribly much worse.”

Image: What joy to have a tin of Campbells soup (Source)

This was written under the shadow of McCarthyism and the Cold War, and the 46 residents of the mysteriously isolated village show more live in existential dread of forces they don’t fully understand and cannot control. Whether at the mercy of a vengeful god, an authoritarian government, or an ungovernable toddler, positive thinking and appeasement are sometimes the only way to survive - but is the price too high?

Image: "This is fine" meme of a hatted doc happily sitting in a burning building (Source)

Short story club

I read this in Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 24 March 2025.

You can read this story HERE.

You can join the group here. show less

Another short story read with The Short Story Club group from the anthology Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic.

I'm giving it 3 stars, but that's really not fair. It's my way of saying, "Yes, the author did a great job at what the story set it out to do, but dang, I really didn't enjoy it!"

So, imagine that a person can read thoughts of people, and animals too.

Then, imagine that person can control the actions of a person or animal via their thoughts.

Now, imagine that person is a child!

Yeah. The story is the horrors of a life under an all powerful child tyrant. Forgive me if at the moment I am especially repulsed by child tyrants, even if they are 78 year old ones. Cruelty and chaos reign to satisfy one immature person's idea show more of what a good (or, ahem, "GREAT") life is.

The Short Story Club is a GR group that reads one short story per week. It's my favorite group. You can join here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1187035-the-short-story-club show less

Yikes, almost as scary as if an incompetent, self-centered rube were to act out as leader of the free world, oh wait