Dancing with Demons and Other Bedtime Stories
“These bizarre short stories will have you looking over your shoulder and questioning everything you once thought normal.”
Writer’s Digest recently featured J. D. Young in their 2014 Fall Author Spotlight for her novel, The Woman on Pritchard Street, the first book in the Vasile Chronicles Trilogy. J. D. Young is a member of Windmore Foundation for the Arts, and has taught classes on writing for their members.
In Dancing with Demons and Other Bedtime Stories, she reveals her intense and often creepy view of life. She describes her dark anthology as, “Collected Fictions of Madness, The Macabre, and Murder.” She’s spot on.
The common theme to these horrific chilling stories is they occur during everyday situations. When you least expect something horrible to happen, J. D. Young plants a bomb that quickly explodes, raising the readers’ blood pressure at least 50 points.
In the first story of the collection, “All That’s Left Is The Scar,” a woman waits for a bus after her workout at the gym. It’s something she’s done time and again with never anything abnormal happening; however, this night she’s attacked and . . . well, to explain further would spoil the story. Suffice it to say, terror and mayhem are no strangers in this tale.
That offering sets the tone for the rest of the book that among other stories, features a neighborhood bar that attracts lonely women but exacts a huge consequence for any woman who dares satisfy their curiosity inside. And readers are sure to think twice about elevators after reading, “Weird,” a tale about what happens to two women who become stuck in an elevator.
Another offering, “Bits & Pieces,” is a brutal story featuring marital rape and abuse, but with a strangely rewarding ending—at least in a macabre sense. Yet another story involves a breakup and a chance meeting that rekindles a relationship, but with a twist readers might find quite satisfying.
Dancing with Demons features strong women who gather their courage in the face of evil and dare to respond aggressively. Victims no more, the women seem to welcome the challenge and rise above the demons that dare attack them.
This collection is certainly not bedtime reading, although it’s what’s advertised in the book’s title. Nor is it for the faint of heart. These bizarre short stories will have you looking over your shoulder and questioning everything you once thought normal.