Don’t let anybody ever tell you life’s fair.
Not as long as I’m in it.
William Colton Hughes’ life changed because of a yoga instructor. Now he never goes outside, but he doesn’t need to because everything he could ever want is delivered to him. Vegetables. Duct tape. Victims.
It’s not as far a leap as you might want.
Have you never thought about it, how easy it would be? That you could get away with it.
Except now the deliveries have stopped.
I love it when a book lulls you into false confidence, where you’re convinced you know where it’s heading, when you’ve read the reviews that mention a twist, but you essentially scoff to yourself, ‘What twist?!’ What twist indeed!
I love it when a book surprises me. With what is essentially one big stream of consciousness, this book did exactly that. The writing style initially unbalanced me and it only makes sense that it did because you’re inside the head of a serial killer, one with a wet-dry vac, mannequins and, sometimes, robot arms.
I love it when I feel the need to immediately return to page 1 when I get to the end of a book so I can experience it all over again, to uncover the clues I missed the first time around.
This was a different reading experience for me than The Indian Lake Trilogy has been so far and I certainly didn’t expect it to be such a compulsive read. I was already sure that I needed to read everything Stephen Graham Jones ever writes. What this book has done is bump up the timeline.
If you’re squeamish or have emetophobia, this isn’t the book for you. Maybe don’t read this book while you’re eating a rare steak.
Once Upon a Blurb
You haven’t heard of William Colton Hughes. Or, if you have, then you’re not telling anybody. Not telling them anything, ever. He’s not the serial killer on the news, in the textbooks. He’s the one out there still punching his card, and a few other people’s too. He is a nightmare come to life, waiting in his apartment for you to knock on his door.
William Colton Hughes is living his fantasy: his victims are delivered to his apartment every few days. But when he’s suddenly alone, no visitors, nobody to talk to but himself, he begins to lose what little of his mind he has left. Has his benefactor, his employer, been his prison warden all along? His apartment complex a hospital? Is he going to have to go back to heaving dark plastic bags into dumpsters when nobody’s looking?
Or will Dashboard Mary, a mysterious woman hell-bent on revenge, get to him first?
This is William Colton Hughes. Come and knock on his door.
Schizanthus Nerd 