Short fiction
“Tymon” by Patricia Russo

“Retribution” by Rinda Elliott

“Faithless” by Jason Sizemore

“Johnny” by William Malmborg

Longer fiction

“Beauty Is” by Kim Richards

“Jack Peddler Comes to Town” by Erin MacKay

With issue #4, Surreal celebrates one year of short stories, poetry, interviews, reviews, and non-fiction essays. Described by Mike Miller, fiction editor, as “quiet horror…with a PG-13 rating,” Surreal wants to fill a niche for those readers who seek disturbing images without excessive guts, sex, or swearing. The most recent issue of Surreal takes on these goals with mixed results; despite the eminently cool poetry and non-fiction, the magazine’s fiction still lacks cohesion.

We start the magazine strong with some trippy verse, but oops…I’m not supposed to be talking about that, so I’ll just tell you to read Ed Lynskey’s earthy, sophisticated “Circe Rode a Blue Mule” and leave it at that. The initial short story, “Tymon” by Patricia Russo, continues the high-quality beginning with a first-person tale of a young woman who fears that falling in love will cause her to…er…blow up in her lover’s face. Her unwavering belief in her own disgusting misery telegraphs the ending from the very beginning; at the same time, you start wondering about psychological explanations for the ending. I found it a rather sensitive meditation on self-hatred and indoctrinated fear.

The next story, “Beauty Is” by Kim Richards, juxtaposes a perky, door-to-door cosmetics saleslady with a houseful of zombies. It’s obvious from the beginning that the potential customers are more than fading beauties; they’re actually decomposing, a fact that could be exploited for some explosive or at least sharp amusement. However, nothing out of the ordinary happens in this limp, disappointing tale.

Following “Beauty Is,” we have a humorous interview with horror author Graham Masterton and an overview of recent horror/splatter video games, but I’m not at liberty to mention these. Therefore I will regretfully move on to “Retribution” by Rinda Elliott. “Retribution” has an intriguing premise—a pathological criminal finds himself bothered by icky emotions and [shudder] conscience—but does not run with it. Instead, the short story contains mostly summarized chunks of the criminal’s sociopathic past and his stirrings of feeling. “Retribution” falls flat because it tells, rather than shows.

A brief chat with speculative fiction author Angeline Hawkes-Craig then whets your appetite for her peculiar blend of Judeo-Christian/Jungian/night-creature imagery, while an essay on Olde Spy Road in Sayreville, NJ, surveys centuries of haunted events along this thoroughfare. Then an interview with Max McCoy engagingly captures the quirky humor of this mystery/suspense writer. In the non-fiction high point of Surreal, Shannon Riley’s article, “The Lure of the Zombie,” describes how a combination of drugs, fake burials, and the power of suggestion may produce real-life “zombies” in flourishing Voudun communities. This eerie, fascinatingly executed report proves that you can learn something new every day.

Oh…wait a minute. In between these compact, clearly written articles is a fiction short, “Faithless” by Jason Sizemore, a pointless description of a murderous, snake-charming sect of Christians. I knew I skipped it for a reason.

“Johnny” by William Malmborg follows. Malmborg accomplishes what Kim Richards and Rinda Elliott cannot. He sets up a familiar premise—the monster in the dungeon—to which he then sacrifices a character. In the end, though, we find the true horror not in the monster itself, but in the monster’s keepers’ reactions. Combining customary tropes with understatement and tongue-in-cheek humor, Malmborg tidily epitomizes Surreal’s goal of “quiet horror.”

Surreal’s fictional offerings end on a puzzling note with “Jack Peddler Comes to Town.” Author Erin Mackay evokes masterfully the bleak wintry setting of medieval Europein in the grip of plague. Her protagonist, the gravedigger Jack, drifts through deserted towns, encountering the dead and the dying. Such an atmospheric protagonist and place would make for horror enough, if dwelled on correctly, but Mackay twists her story. I’ve read the story three times, and I’m still not sure what happens. To tell you the truth, I was too busy with the next article: yet another wide-ranging, well-written non-fiction piece [an overview of horror comics] that compensated for the uneven fiction. Breaking from the fiction-first bonds of my review, I urge you to read Surreal for everything else first and the short stories second.