“The Door” by Ann R. Loverock (2020)
“It looked the same as it had in the winter: standing alone, unfixed to the landscape.”
I love this one for that particular short fiction quality of just getting started immediately and then cutting off the story before a traditional ending. It’s creepy and the implication of these events in this environment calls back to that ancient fear of forbidden knowledge or advancement. We want it but there is a price to be paid. (Also, colonialism.)
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“Rainbow Sprinkles” by W. Maxwell Prince, Chris O’Halloran, Martín Morazzo, Nimit Malavia (2018)
“Arizona like in the movies of our dreams”
My first reaction was this isn’t horror (particularly after a more straightforward horror story in the first issue), but I think this is going to happen many times throughout the month. I’ve made the effort to seek out a more expansive range of voices and backgrounds in my horror selections and it’s going to require a broader acceptance of horror as a genre and medium for storytellers. All that said, this second issue of Ice Cream Man is more tragic and real, and horror fiction is, after all, a reflection of the horrors we face as real people.
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The Skin I Live In dir. Pedro Almodóvar (2011)
“The things that a madman’s love can do.”
First: I thought I’d watched a Almodóvar movie before but apparently I hadn’t watched a one before this. Second: my cynical side thinks any male director with power will absolutely leverage it to make an attractive woman be naked a lot in his movie and linger on it. Third: I am a very uptight American. Fourth: holy shit.