CHROMOPHOBIA

Colors haunt, unnerve, and kill in this polychromatic horror anthology of stories written by women.

In Sonora Taylor’s “Eat Your Colors,” Eve craves a healthier diet; she decides to follow a seemingly simple plan to eat foods of every color of the rainbow each day.However, she learns the hard way that not following the diet’s strict rules has sickening results. Most of the 25 tales in this collection instill a sense of dread into seemingly innocuous hues. For example, in Red Lagoe’s “Tangerine Sky,” a woman is repulsed by orange, as it’s shown to remind her of her lost sister. Elsewhere, the bright colors of a “radiant sunset” comprise Death’s wings in Nu Yang’s “Elegy,” and a man’s suicide precedes an unexpected “blazing array of blues” on display. Other tales take a more traditional approach by accentuating the glaring redness of blood, which tints many pages. G.G. Silverman turns the gloominess of an overcast day into full-scale horror in “The Gray” as a mist relentlessly terrorizes a town, draining residents of hope. These works make use of numerous familiar genre elements along the way, from ghosts and things with sharp teeth to unhinged murderers and terrible psychological torment. The book’s opening story, Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito’s “Hei Xian (The Black Thread),” is particularly sublime; in it, Taiwanese American Xing-Yun discovers an enigmatic black thread attached to his wrist. A red thread signifies love, but his symbolizes “inescapable death,” and his attempt to save himself leads to something unspeakable—and unforgettable.

Tantlinger, the author of the poetry collection Cradleland of Parasites (2021), has gathered a set of admirable stories featuring delicious twists, eerie creatures, and visceral imagery. They necessarily linger on assorted colors, befitting this anthology’s theme, but the prose throughout is vibrant in other ways. As Bindia Persaud memorably writes in “The Dyer and the Dressmakers,” “I forgot how to breathe for a moment. I wasn’t the only one. Elation, tinged with fear, rendered us immobile.” Throughout, the authors effectively evoke a range of senses, describing the touch of cool water, the loud hum of a passing helicopter, and any number of putrid smells. KC Grifant’s “The Color of Friendship” conjures impressive atmosphere as a woman continually looks for whatever is swimming in a nearby lake during her friends’ weekend getaway. These elements set the mood for stories that deliver shocks and ghastly plot turns. Women are frequently the main characters in these tales; Christa Wojciechowski’s “The Oasis” ably explores a woman’s post-abortion depression, and in Chelsea Pumpkins’ “Toxic Shock,” the protagonist’s “technicolor” menstruation is the start of a harrowing and inexplicable ordeal. In some stories, women initially seem to be passive victims only to be revealed as aggressors. Overall, readers will fly through these works, some of which could have easily been expanded to novel length. It’s a fine sampling of an array of voices in the horror genre that will assuredly garner a bevy of new fans.

Extraordinary tales of terror that are as grim as they are delightful.