Various (Editor: Holmes, Carly) - Uncertainties Volume VII

Late 2024 found the latest installment of this dependable series in my mailbox. Carly Holmes, no stranger to fans of Weird Lit, at the helm. Assorted riches, as always, so I will just breeze through a handful.

“Pond Scum” finds two brothers, battered from personal setbacks and Life in general, in Italy, traipsing lonely country. They no longer have much in common, except weakness for alcohol. And a thirst for trouble, diversion. My sympathy does not extend toward aggressive drunks.

After his wife dies from the slow rot of cancer, Graeme needed solitude, isolation to grieve in peace. He takes a room in a remote village near the beach. His landlady is cheap, sexually pushy, yet sly enough to loosen trousers. Oh, yes, the beach. Something strange there. A distant figure, one with the “Sad Face” unsettles Graeme. Then there are those queer black stones. He knows he ought to depart, he really ought to.

Grief of another cloth in “A Suit Of Darkest Blue” finds Joan on a seemingly endless cruise, trying to escape, to forget. With her, however, is the ghost, perhaps ghosts, as grief wars with anger. On the decks, on shore leave, she “sees” because she cannot, she will not, let go.

Do you have a parent or sibling or any loved one who is a hoarder? If so, best advice – die first. Otherwise, you might have to endure the joy of tidying their house. Are you claustrophobic? Does your asthma flare when the very air itself is squeezed out by mountains of junk? “Little Nothings” will be for you. Should I mention the bugs?

The writer, tapping dry on inspiration, spinning clichéd plots aloud. One may be forgiven suspecting he is more hack than scribe. One tired notion after another “Ends Abruptly”. That’s the trick, though, correct? The satisfying conclusion. And oh, how fitting this one lands.