The DuskHouse

Love, Lust, Passion, and Obsession: The Human Condition — The Darkest of Deceits. The seductive style with which Ms. Gardner writes is stimulating in an intellectual sense, but softened by emotion. Immersion into Gardner’s macabre settings is inevitable for the reader. She writes with the eloquence of a literary master, uncovering the beauty that lies within the grotesque.” BreeniBooks Now, some might say Ms. Gardner is a little touched in the head, clinically disturbed, that is, and some might say that she goes way beyond a mild case of scab-picker. Just between you and me, it’s the company she keeps. She knows a guy, who knows this other guy, who knows a guy’s cousin or something, who can sit for hours in a corner, extracting the fossilized dust mite lint from his belly button. It’s the only way he can get a quiet moment. All those damn voices, blathering at him all the time, who wouldn’t want to hurt them, hurt them all, and hurt them bad. And that guy she knows, who knows that other guy with the frizzy hair and the lint fetish, he is mercilessly cruel: killed, tortured, and maimed cruel. He’s had characters lie, cheat, steal, and self-flagellate all in the name of a story. That’s right. He’s even had little girls in frilly dresses eat turd and dead rat kebabs. You see, there’s Cheryl Anne Gardner and there’s him, and they’ve got this thing they do. Been doing it since they were kids. They’re not afraid to go there, wherever there might be, no matter how dark, dank, or putrid. They’ve got their suitcases packed — all liquorice and lace knickers — because that’s what it takes. Flash Fiction Stories in this collection include The Duskhouse, Beware of Dog, Persian Cat, the prize winning Debt Collectors, and many other previously published and never before seen in print tales of the ludicrous, the absurd, and the macabre.