WHERE YOU LINGER

Characters in this debut collection of dark short stories struggle with escaping their pasts—often with terrifying results.

In this volume’s opening tale, “Skeletons,” five friends, one of whom seemingly mesmerizes the others, go camping. They live in a bizarre world where animals roam in skeletal form, from dinosaurs to saber-tooth tigers. The other stories follow suit, blending familiar characters with disturbing imagery and circumstances. “The Lifespan of Shadows,” for example, sees a house go to spooky lengths to ensure that feuding sisters will not leave behind their inherited childhood abode. Stufflebeam infuses her collection with a somber theme of letting the past go, with nostalgia as a glaring detriment. In one tale, Nostalgia is literally a drug. In the title story, a woman, using a machine to relive her long-ago relationships, likens it to an illness without a cure. While the author shrouds her narratives in metaphors, it doesn’t make horrific sights any less gruesome. That’s certainly the case in the superb “The Split.” Emma moves away from her parents to live with her girlfriend, a decision that literally splits her—half of her body stays in the Texas home where she grew up. Recurring characters among the predominantly female cast link many of these tales, including the collection’s final three stories, which form a short but grand SF trilogy. It begins with a woman named Robin Kirkland, who works at a company that makes synthetic companions. She becomes obsessed with the glitchy, damaged ones, many of which end up in a subway mingling with the homeless. The second tale explores shady tech firms that may be harming female employees, and the concluding story focuses on hackers infiltrating a billionaire’s beta virtual reality game. Throughout the volume, Stufflebeam writes with masterful pithiness and genuine insights. At one point, the woman in the title story muses: “I grip her skin and remember why I loved her. But, also, why I stopped.”

These extraordinary tales prove to be both spine-chilling and profound.