No Happily Ever After by Phil Sloman

Publisher – Northern Republic

Published - Out Now

Price – £1.99 Kindle eBook £6.99 paperback

British Fantasy Society nominated author Phil Sloman really gets under the skin of his characters in a way that is delivered with a deft touch and a slice of dark humour. His second collection, No Happily Ever After, brings us seven dark tales of the human condition. The childhood innocence of a woodland walk, a haunting by a dead lover, mysterious gifts on a family doorstep, humanity at the end of times, and more. Everyone has a story to be told, but will anyone get to live happily ever after?

Horror is in many ways the hardest of the genres to pin down. It’s the emotional response rather than the setting that the genre aims for. That can be demonic monsters, serial killers or sometimes the simple cruelty of human beings. We have the author providing that curious mix of giving us something unexpected and yet also confirming our worst fears. In Phil Sloman’s absorbing short fiction collection No Happily Ever After we are given seven disturbing tales all making me feel increasingly worried that something is very very wrong, but I won’t see or work out what it is until it is far too late.

A fine example of Sloman’s ability to hide the razor blades in a tale is disarmingly named ‘The Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ where our narrator a young child packs a pram with her toys and has a lovely adventure. Except as she tells us her story, we start to worry about a child who likes to play with dead animals she finds; whose father has done something terrible and whose mother sounds very disturbed. The sinking feeling carries throughout and then just when we think we have a handle on things Sloman sends us down a trap that was lying in wait all along. Not confirming what happens next makes us even more afraid of the outcome.

The humble ice cream van that travels UK streets offering lolly ices and whipped ice cream is not usually associated with horror. But in ‘The Debts We Owe’ Sloman again warps things. Our narrator a former financial whizz is out on the skids and so desperate for any work agrees to trial out for a ice cream van driver position. But then he takes the can into the side streets on the wrong side of town. Here a gang of kids asking for ice cream gets steadily more and more threatening and violence feels ever closer. Vicious and disturbing and without supernatural elements that makes it even more frightening.

We move into Horror via SF with ‘Samantha, Stop’ a woman decides enough is enough in her relationship and poisons her wife. But as she ponders how to now move on, she is finding that her home’s smart AI interface seems to have other plans and now a different yet familiar voice. I loved the dual horror of exactly why our seemingly placid narrator wanted to kill their lover and finding out exactly how this was going to go wrong – it captures the eerie weirdness of an AI home device that doesn’t quite do what you expect it to.

There is a horrible darkness at the centre of ‘The Girl With Three Eyes’ that focuses on a school shooting. We’re taking into the head of a young misfit who believes that one of his classmates is now not human and up to no good. This tale is concerning as being a fantasy and horror fan then of course aliens and demons are going o appear in every story…and yet exactly whose evidence can I believe here. Sloman gives me no firm answers and that is what made me feel disturbingly that I may have chosen the wrong side as the story concludes – powerful writing.

With ‘Not Simon’ a young man is bowled over by his new boyfriend Simon. But a stray glimpse of a strange patch on the ceiling sets up a dangerous level of curiosity that makes him reveal that Simon has secrets. Now lovers not being who they are is a classic horror format and yet this story excels at making you come to the wrong conclusion and the reveal is tragic and deeply unsettling as is the reaction of our amateur investigator when he realises the truth.

Horror as a magnifier of events is shown in ‘Gifts’ a young family moves to the country and start finding dead animals on the premises. Has their urban cat finally got the hang of hunting? As the offerings escalate in frequency and size, we soon realise that our family have a lot more than a simple feline to deal with. Sloman escalates the sense of panic and fear that a child is in danger to then erupt in violence and a deeply sinister final set of scenes. How far can anyone go to protect the ones they love?

Starting the collection with a child we bookend it with the splendidly tragic and disquieting ‘Dust’ where an elderly man talks us through his relationship. A tale of two people who find love late in life; live happily for a few decades and then tragically find it curtailed first by Dementia striking his wife and then a mysterious catastrophe affecting the whole world. It’s a tale that manages to be both horrific in how it explains the final weeks of our characters and yet its told with non-stop love. Poetic and haunting.

A great short fiction collection that delivers short sharp shocks that managed to unsettle and surprise me but also the warm satisfaction of reading a well old horror story. Highly recommended!