Dark: a collection

by Michelle Merz

Dark: A Collection of thirteen unsettling tales that take the reader along a journey from which they might not venture back. Prepare to mentally hold onto these stories for a while; although short, they have lingering, almost festering, qualities. Ranging from the bowels of humanity to the supernatural, these shorts won’t disappoint.

155 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 13, 2018

Reviews

[Stacy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found none of these stories to have original or unpredictable plots. Most of these read as though they came off of Creepypasta.

[Sarah Arnette · Rating 3 out of 5]

It'd have been a lot better with a real editor.

[Bothsams Publishing · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Dark" is a short collection of trimmed tales of disturbing and horrific moments of realization. Michelle Merz has a way of rendering a story in such a way that it seems like a hi-def photograph. There are no nuances or soft edges, just a kind of precision that threads her stories through the sliver of a needle's eye. She stitches these sparse explorations of the horrible together like a snatch of tatted lace. Her descriptive ability in the first offering, "The Reunion", stuns. Authors endeavor to keep the mind's eye on a subject as if it were a camera, to make language visual for the reader. Merz's mind's eye, then, is a 360. She examines her subject in 3D, in extreme close-up, in one of the most eerie pages of text we have engaged in a very long time. Some of the tales are well-crafted, but lack the retort of the strongest. "Sharp-Bladed Tongue" is not as sharp, in comparison. "Charlie" is...well..odd. But after a little detour, she lands "Silence", a simple, immediate narrative of a single terminal moment that will not leave the reader any time soon - and that's what you want from a horror collection. She brings the reader not only what is horrifying, but displays her ability to render even the most sacrosanct relationships horrible ("Mother"), and relationships are at the core of all her stories. The twisting of the hale and natural into the uncanny and horrific is what horror fans appreciate the most. They will be, no doubt, asking more from Merz in the future.