Shock Totem 7: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted by K. Allen Wood

Author:K. Allen Wood
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Shock Totem Publications
Published: 2013-07-29T21:00:00+00:00

–John Boden

Isabel Jane, by Catherine Dale; Pendragon Chapbooks, 2011; 36 pgs.

Isabel Jane is a small, beautiful chapbook put out by Pendragon Chapbooks, an imprint of Pendragon Press. A high quality, well-edited chapbook with a striking cover by Neil Williams, it contains two stories. The title story, “Isabel Jane,” is a first-person tale of a teenage girl who is kidnapped and imprisoned in an older man’s home. It’s a timely story, especially after the horrors of the recent news story concerning three kidnapped women in Ohio who were held in their captor’s basement for ten years.

“Isabel Jane” is beautifully told from the protagonist’s point of view. There’s an alluring, almost disconnected reality that we see here and there. Vital pieces of the story are carefully laced throughout and I found it to be an effective way to keep the reader slightly off-kilter. I loved this story. It was satisfying and darkly lovely. I found myself thinking of it after I had finished the chapbook.

The second story, “Teething,” is an imaginative, surreal story about an antisocial man who finds a giant tooth growing from the ceiling of his bathroom. This tooth and his care for it—brushing it carefully, putting his arms around it, holding his ear to it in order to ensure silence from the chaos going on around him—juxtapose his non-relationship with the unfortunate woman who lives upstairs.

“Teething” is a study in loneliness and regret. Dale handles the story’s heavy subject matter with a delicate hand. It filled me with quiet horror.

Isabel Jane was an enjoyable, if sobering, experience. It was difficult to read about two women in different but terrifying circumstances. There is a sense of foreboding and danger in this chapbook, but it’s written in such a satisfying, dreamy way that it cannot be missed.

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