DREAD Reviews 15
Dad Reads and Examines Authors While Distracted
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***DON’T PUBLISH WITHOUT DOING THIS PART***
blurb goes here
you emptied your bin of recycled self-quotes from notes for this intro part
remember to write something new and original
***DON’T PUBLISH WITHOUT DOING THIS PART***
I’m barely able to come to terms with my own fragile mortality. Now you’re telling me waking up is functionally a little death? Each morning groan snuffs out yet another universe? My dreams are a parallel existence to my conscious life?
Gwyllm’s got a poignant article that has me side-eying my pillow and wondering what lurks within. The notion of a shared consciousness field? Nope! I’m officially creeped out and my alarm clock is now the grim reaper:
I’m sitting out here at a campfire minding my own business trying to roast some marshmallows. Out of nowhere this smoky voice lights me up: “Yo, you forgot my NAME?”
“What seems to be the problem… uh…” was it Karen?
“MY GLORY SQUANDERED / BREAK YOUR CHAINS / CUP OF TRUTH”
Wait, is this a coffee order gone wrong? Karen… yes, one of the voices is definitely Karen:
Another story where Death is the MVP of dark humor. You can’t get enough? Neither can I:
“Don’t hang yourself yet kid! Look, your parents love you and society has a place for you. Check out all these other sad suicidal guys! They’ve had far greater hardships than you ever did, and you want to off yourself just because of a couple speed bumps? Well…” checks watch…
*WHACK*
“LOL JK.”
Death is a liar and a fraud who just needed the boy to live a little bit longer. The Fates really wanted this library to turn into a Barnes & Noble so that the community will actually go there and read stuff:
“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to… serve our new overlords.”
Rob’s got a technomagic freeze ray and he’s not letting David’s friend Pete ruin his martini moment. If you like twinkling evil villains who order their prisoners custom suits before offering them five-course dinners, check out chapter 14 of Victor’s Magnitude:
I can’t help but believe James Kenwood saw the Titanic four or more times at the theater like all the young ladies from our generation did. Nowadays he looks back on that movie not with nostalgia, but inspiration - he’s written his own Titanic, except this version is based. Oh, and because he’s a big softie, maybe this one doesn’t sink:
This tale is more twisted than a chocolate egg wrapper on a sunny day. A good absurdist fears nothing, so we hop right away into discussing Easter’s PR makeover like a courageous bunny sneaking across the border into Queensland. You know, that remote realm infamous for its hostility to bunny-kind and problematic terminology:
(Author)
(Author) (Publication)It’s a Wednesday in April in the year of our lord, 2025. Let’s take a break from fiction for a moment and make a convincing case that a real-life RoboCop would be the second coming of Jesus Christ:
This frosty fiasco left me shivering, and unlike Lenny’s unfortunate hand incident, I didn’t even have “skin” in the game! This story, colder than a penguin-run popsicle stand, features a forgetful Lenny boasting he’s too cool for the implant that lets you board the nice warm train - talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy? Sure enough he and his sister enter a subzero panic when they realize he’s lost his card to this dystopian take on the Polar Express. Lenny jetstreams back to the park, storming through frozen escalators like he’s in an Escher painting. Meanwhile, the cold front spreads at the speed of polar bear on a Slip ‘N Slide. As if that weren’t enough, this world also experiences nightly waves of gamma rays from thundering ion storms - leaving Lenny’s glowing like a human nightlight.
Then Alice texts that, actually, she’s got his card. ALICE!!!
I’ll leave you to find out whether Lenny makes it back rocking a new story to share at the next frostbite-and-rad-fry party:
(Author)
(Publication)Read this vivid anthropomorphization of the Archean Era and the dawn of life and tell me what you see!
Here’s my mental picture: baby bacteria throwing tantrums in a primordial hot tub, chubby and squirming in a bubbly gunk nursery, totally cut off from the cosmic Wi-Fi (a.k.a. the “ether”). Germ babies thump-rolling in a murky kiddie pool, reacting to every poke like hyperactive infants throwing sippie cups and causing ripples they can’t see. The idea of no light reaching them but their “surface feeding” brings to the imagination little grabby hands banging glow sticks on the floors and walls as their little chipmunk voices go from gentle pleasant babbling “da da!” to outraged “MA MA:”
(Author)
(Publication)Sasha, tsk tsk. An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded. Did your Emperor-fearing parents teach you nothing, child? Were you raised in an unsanctioned orphanage run by a chaos cult? You’ll be lucky if you get out of this with just a few mutations. More likely you’re due for a date with an Inquistor from the Ordo Hereticus! Remember, kids, the Emperor protects - and blessed is a brain too small for doubt:
A human replaces every cell in their body every 7 years (on average). If you think about it, you are slowly reinventing yourself in your seat this very moment!
Franco isn’t waiting that long:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
(1,800 words later…)
To save humanity by getting cloned on the other side, idiot.
You might not take this story seriously as I did. That’s offensive to veterans with PTSD. Apologize, then join us for a cab ride with a talkative chicken named Brorwck:
(Author)
(Publication)This story about Rusty and Tommy is so coo. Rusty is a big silly doggy. His tail goes wiggle wiggle superfast like a tomato - whoosh! He zooms at butterflies with Tommy. If I tried it I wood fall down and go boom on my butt, hehehehe! Tommy has got a little hat and runs real fast I bet his hat takes off like a hello-copter, hehehehe. But eww bugs they are yucky! I wood poke it with a stick. Go away bug! I like it when Rusty licks Tommy’s face. Eww dog slobber! I wood go, “Gross!” and wipe it off. But I wood also hug Rusty beecuz he is real real fun and feels fuzzy and stuffy. I want to go run too but no icky bugs okay:
(Author)
The Delinquent Academic (Publication)
As many of you may have noticed, I normally have no notion of what “Top” really means when it comes to DREAD Reviews, but this piece makes me think true understanding could be found atop a mountain in New Zealand. So my top spot this issue goes to the boldly-titled article “Stop Being a Pussy” by The Delinquent Academic.
Webster's Third International Dictionary suggests that pussy in the sense of "vulva" may be connected to Old Norse pūss and Old English pusa, meaning “pocket” or “purse,” carrying a connotation of “girliness.”
I have no comment on whether or not you should choose the purse life - but, setting that aside for the moment, the keen insight within this article belies its juvenile title. It explains an important part most health experts neglect when they advise their readers to “reconnect with nature.”
You heard it here first, folks; if you have a crack addiction, it’s likely because you didn’t make the cut for the school football team. If you want to be attractive then get out and break a few bones on the ski slopes - because breaking your soul at a rave only gets you second or third place in someone’s list of mating choices!
This is a great article and I can picture enjoying a beer with the author. I’ll have to pass on going skiing with him since I don’t have a spare patella handy, but I’d be happy to share one of many stories about getting concussed by soccer balls - if only I could remember how they happened, I bet it would be funny!
P.S. - I secretly loved the title. It caught me in a rare moment that had me laughing so hard I fell out of my chair. Probably not the kind of risk the author suggests, but close enough:
Enough time has passed that I forgot half of what’s in this short story prequel to my unpublished book Bellageist: Burning Angels. Imagine my pleasure rereading it the other day and discovering these four cybernetically-enhanced badasses anew - Famine, Death, Hatred, and War, looking like they stumbled out of a dive bar brawl and fell into a sci-fi horror show. Famine whines about his lasagna getting squished by 5G’s, War laughs so hard he wheezes like a deflating balloon, and Death literally turns his brain off like it’s a light switch. Oh, and Hatred, just sitting there fuming like he’s the butt of a joke he doesn’t understand. Finally, there’s Kee, a poor teenage girl who’s like, “I just wanted to party during the apocalypse, not get yeeted into a cyborg mercenary daycare!” Somebody get me a lock-suit and a vibro-gladius because I want to join this hot mess of a crew:
Thanks for reading!
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