Nightmare “Here I Go Again” by Lindz McLeod
“Eleven Songs for Another Lover” by V.H. Chen
“Edgar Addison the Author of Dévorer (1862 – 1933)” by Ben Peek
Reviewed by Geoff Houghton
The first new story in the June issue of Nightmare is “Here I Go Again” by Lindz McLeod. It is set in an unnamed present-day city and tells of the motiveless murder of a female walking home alone. The use of multiple viewpoints rather than a single POV character is complex to follow but stylistically interesting.
This piece feels more like a fictionalised report of an actual event than classic fiction. The senseless nature of this unprompted murder is all the more unsettling for the knowledge that this sort of purposeless killing has already happened multiple times, and will almost certainly happen again on the streets of some town or city in the near future. The writer’s own purpose is not entirely clear, but it is possible that the sheer randomness and pointlessness of this murderous aggression against an innocent woman may actually be the author’s main point.
The second offering is: “Eleven Songs for Another Lover” by V.H. Chen. The time and location of this brief story is not detailed, but it is somewhere in the Western World and close to the present day. It initially appears to be the narrated accompaniment to a musical playlist assembled in memory of the rise and dissolution of a relationship. However, there are a few cleverly planted clues in the early text that warn that this was never going to be a normal ‘assertive alpha male meets willing but subservient girl’ relationship. By the second half of the playlist, the tone changes to a darker one and the fate of the departed lover and the identity of the narrator become crystal clear.
The final story is “Edgar Addison the Author of Dévorer (1862 – 1933)” by Ben Peek. This is a fictional biography, deliberately written in the typical passive third-person style of such works. It explores the unusual lifestyle and self-destructive behaviour of a deeply-troubled minor member of the British gentry from the final decades of the 19th century until his death in 1933.
This account is sufficiently well-constructed that the entirely fictitious principal character appears convincingly real, although it is probable that ten readers selected at random would report ten different emotions, ranging from pity, through sorrow, to disgust at a lifestyle so alien and a life wasted. If such was the author’s intent, then he has succeeded.
Geoff Houghton lives in a leafy village in rural England. He is a retired Healthcare Professional with a love of SF and a jackdaw-like appetite for gibbets of medical, scientific and historical knowledge.