New Arrival: Little Black Spots by John F.D. Taff

Many have said that the art of the short story is dead, but rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated (Or to use a more contemporary phrase, fake news). Short stories are the perfectly digestible tale for people on the go. Don’t have the hours and days to devote to a 600-page epic? There are plenty of short stories out there you can read on your lunch hour. This is especially true in horror. I was introduced to horror through short story collections like Stephen King’s Night Shift and Jeff Gelb’s Hot Blood series. While the horror short story has lay dormant beneath the public’s consciousness yet sprouting up in anthologies and magazines showcasing the cream of the carnage-laden crop, the short story is not only very much alive, but writers like John F. D. Taff are taking it in new, exciting directions while keeping it very much grounded in a reality very much like ours. If you’re not familiar with Taff, read some of the stories in his collection Little Black Spots. Then, be sad that you haven’t heard of him before reading this article.

Little Black Spots shows that Taff has explored different kinds of horror and is not afraid to incorporate what has come before him in his own unique visions of terror. If you’re a fan of Clive Barker’s body horror or Hot Blood’s erotic horror, you might like his tale “The Bunny Suit.” While shopping for Halloween costumes, a couple finds a bunny suit for the wife to wear. If you’ve ever read a story where there’s something bought from a mysterious shop (basically the premise of the Friday the 13^th television series) then you know that this item is more than just a discount costume and the wife becomes something else when she puts it on. But the real horror comes from the husband’s narration of the tale, as he reacts to his wife’s changes and how he is the one who is forced to remove his own disguise.

“A Winter’s Tale” has a group of children whose home life might remind people of Harry Potter, except with more parental alcoholism and neglect. However, it isn’t a giant or a wizarding school that comes for these children. A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Story, this tale works on a myriad of different levels, from the beautiful depictions of the winter landscape to the simple horror of the children’s home life, including the pressures weighing on protagonist and older brother David, the only caregiver for his family. His mother is a modern day below-the-poverty-line version of Lady Tremaine (Cinderella’s stepmother) and his father has been gone for a long time, so it is David who must deal with the horrors in his life, both supernatural and tragically mundane. The reader is shown in heartbreaking detail what kind of horrible person the mother is, but the father might in fact be worse.

“Purple Soda Hand” is a personal favorite of mine. The title alone was enough to pique my curiosity, but there’s also a solid, colorful addiction horror story that begins with a child discovering a bottle of soda with a surprise inside. It’s less a Cracker Jack or bottom-of-the-cereal box surprise and more the need-to-call-the-health-department-immediately surprise. But this surprise doesn’t make the soda taste any different. In fact, young Mike would do anything to drink that soda, including and especially the heretofore unthinkable.

Throw in some erotic horror, sad vampires, severed hands, and possessed parking garages and you have a collection that shows a willingness to experiment with subgenres and demonstrates the ability to tantalize as well as terrify. Fair warning: the publishers who made this book call Taff Modern Horror’s King of Pain, hence the collection’s title taken from a lesser-known song by ’80 band The Police (Is Sting somehow collecting royalties?).  Taff doesn’t write like he’s in pain, but he sure makes his characters experience pain, which you will also experience as you empathize with these well-drawn and downtrodden protagonists. Bring an ibuprofen and a nightlight as you partake of these little black stories.