Everyone Is a Moon: Strange Stories by Sawney Hatton

 

From Sawney Hatton, the devilishly inventive mind who brought you the acclaimed Dark Comedy novel DEAD SIZE and the YA Noir novella UGLYVILLE, comes 12 twisted Dark Fiction tales featuring a magical finger, a cannibalistic memorial, an extreme piercing parlor, a Space Age monastery, a budding serial killer, and more.

Presenting three new, never-before-published stories, as well as re-mastered versions of earlier works, this collection is sure to disturb and delight readers who like to play in the dark. (Warning: contains some graphic material.)

Stories include "The Good Touch,” "Cutting Remarks,” "The Boy Who Cried Alien,” “Pet,” "In Memoriam the Ostrich,” "The Mortality Machine,” "The Lord Is My Rocket,” "The Beholder,” "Mr. Gregori,” “FYVP,” "The Dark at the Deep End,” and "Suitable for Framing."

I read horror for the scares. I'm all about the chills and less about the shock factor or the gore. Not that gore bothers me, it just doesn't terrify me. So with that in mind I took no heed of the "graphic material" warning, and plowed ahead. Not all of the stories were my cup of tea but I did  love the first 3. In The Good Touch we meet two friends with very different personalities. One quite selfish and the other his polar opposite. Perhaps that is why their friendship works. But when one comes into possession of a gift from God it sparks a jealousy in the other that is the undoing of both.

Cutting Remarks is the story of a bullied housewife who at last finds happiness in her marriage. It was both humorous and darkly disturbing. The Boy Who Cried Alien was another dark comedy, if only someone had explained about the birds and the bees to this boy it may have avoided such a catastrophe.

 When I got to the 4th story Pet I put the book down and almost didn't finish it. I am not a fan of animal cruelty. I don't care how many people may get beheaded or dragged to hell in any book but I need you to leave the animals alone.  To me the only saving grace to this story is that no such animal exists on this planet. I don't mean that it was badly written because it wasn't. It's just my own personal limit of what I choose to read. I do not actively seek out animal abuse stories and I guess this is what the graphic content warning was for.

I liked The Mortality Machine, in which a couple who is running out of time together don't really make the most of what they have left. I loved Mr Gregori who is the lonely ghost haunting an apartment, watching people move in and out but never being able to engage with any of them.. until now.

So although every story was not a hit with me, that is the joy of short stories, take what you like and leave the rest.  I would recommend this collection to all who have a dark sense of humor and those with a stomach for disturbing subject matter.

I received a complimentary copy for review.

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About the author

Sawney Hatton is an author, editor, and screenwriter. Other incarnations of Sawney have produced marketing videos, attended all-night film festivals, and played the banjo and sousaphone (not at the same time). As of this writing he is still very much alive.