![]() “Some say the seven doors are portals to the gates of hell. From here on in, the classic Western transmogrifies into a disorientating fairy tale, as Charlie and Sonny climb to the first floor of the house and find themselves confronted by seven doors. ![]() Having seemingly dispatched the unfortunate Jo Bobby but no longer convinced that he was the Bobby-Jo they were after, Charlie and Sonny make their way into the man’s house and look for things to steal. Sonny ends up firing a “gunshot blast so loud that the nearby sheriff, prune-skinned with a handlebar white moustache, woke up in his bed with a start, adjacent to a snoring whale of a woman who wasn’t his wife.” The bounty allows for him to be taken dead or alive, but things don’t go to plan when the pair confront a man they have tracked by the name of Jo Bobby. Two bounty hunters-the balding, leathered Charlie and the teenaged Sonny-intend to make a quick buck by bringing in wanted fugitive Bobby-Jo. The opening story in the collection, “The Oddity of Jo Bobby and the Seven Doors,” is a heat-soaked, dust-parched Western set during the hottest day of August 1830 in Wormwood, Tennessee. There’s certainly darkness and danger aplenty throughout the collection, but there’s also hope and the possibility of salvation for the unfortunate protagonists who find themselves living in interesting times. Whether set in the contemporary world in the time of COVID-19, in a post-apocalyptic future ravaged by the devastation of nuclear war, or in another time and place altogether, the included tales tackle very human problems in extraordinary settings. ![]() Lafayette’s Kaleidoscope: Dark Tales is a genre-busting collection of five short stories and a novella that all explore the shadowy corners of the human experience. Reviewed by Erin Britton A collection of peculiar, mind-bending, and sometimes outright troubling tales spanning time, space, and genreĭerrick R.
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