by Ray Wallace

Trunk Stories #1
edited by William Smith
www.trunkstories.com     


The debut issue of "Trunk Stories" is a black-and-white forty-four page print zine filled with fiction, reviews, a poem, and a smattering of artwork. This is a publication that, from a content standpoint, is trying to do something a little different, something slightly unclassifiable. Fans of D. Harlan Wilson's strange and surreal stories should enjoy this magazine as they will feel right at home with some of the bizarre premises and realities contained within the tales presented here.

The first story, "Any Other Name" by Kirsten Kaschok, is probably the most straight-forward narrative encountered within these pages and relates the sad tale of a woman disfigured as a child during an act of violence inflicted on her by her mother. Now as an adult she finds herself at the center of a fertility experiment conducted by the man she has fallen in love with. Of course, no good can come of this and the results are at once tragic and oddly poetic. Next we come to "A Girl & Her Dog" by Mark Bothum, a strange and humorous tale conveyed completely through dialogue which tells of a man whose life is completely co-opted by his unbelievably intelligent pet dog. Then there is Brett Alexander Savory's "Landscape" which depicts a man losing touch with reality. Or is reality that is losing touch with him? Each day he comes home from work to find that things have changed: pieces of furniture have mysteriously disappeared, his wife's car now resembles a giant pelican, and his daughter's obsession with piercing has transformed her into something not quite human anymore. It's a wonder this man can keep it together as well as he does which is, understandably, not very well at all.

The weirdness continues in James Morris's "Caryatid Torpor." Here a man finds himself in the passenger seat of an SUV driven by a woman he has never before met. They crash into a swimming pool, leave the accident, follow a hiking trail which takes them into a forest, and then. Well, you'll just have to read for yourself to find out. Suffice it to say that this one ends as oddly as it begins. And finally we come to Erik T. Johnson's "A Few Leaves from the Travelogue of Doctor Julius Jonnson, Cryptobotanist and Hylesoprotolist: Bay Ridge, or, The Belief in the Undead Still Exists in New York." This is a story that warns of the danger of searching out rare plants in an unfamiliar town, especially one where the citizens are hysterical over the possibility that a vampire exists in their midst. An appropriate finale to the collection of offbeat tales presented here.

As mentioned earlier, this zine also contains reviews, most of which are DVD reviews, quick and to the point, the positives or negatives of each film summed up in a few short paragraphs. One lengthy review (by Veronica Schanoes) of Diana Wynne Jones's novel Witch Week is a well written and insightful piece depicting the ways in which the book captures the fear and joy, the trials and tribulations faced by many youngsters during their years spent at school. Well worth reading.

All in all, editor William Smith has put together an entertaining little publication here, a debut that shows a lot of promise for any future issues that may come along. He has assembled an eclectic mix of solidly written fiction, the majority of which could be labeled as "slipstream" (i.e., rather unclassifiable). So if you're a reader in search of something a little different, a little off-center, then grab yourself a copy of "Trunk Stories." And let the works contained within show you the world in a slightly different way.