In That Endlessness, Our End

By: Gemma Files

Narrated by: Deanna Anthony, Neil Hellegers, Steven Jay Cohen, Bronson Pinchot, Andi Arndt, Chelsea Stephens, Zura Johnson, Sarah Beth Pfeifer

Come closer, friend. Let me tell you a story.

Heard the one about the Airbnb that eats your dreams or the iron-crowned king who preys on his own bloodline from the air, still smoldering centuries after being burnt alive? How about the cloudy antique bottle you can wish your excess rage inside, or that crooked alley down which something waits to replace your disappointing child with a far more pleasant facsimile? We all know the truth, especially in times like these—in an anxiety-ridden, sleepless world such as ours, it’s only ever our very worst dreams that come true. Here streets empty out and people pull themselves apart like amoebas, breeding murderous doppelgangers from their own flesh; houses haunt, ideas possess, and a cold and alien moon stares down, whispering that it’s time to spawn. New myths rise and ancient evils descend. From the seemingly mundane terrors of a city just like yours to all the most dark and distant places of a truly terrible universe, nothing is as it seems … not even that dimly-recalled cinematic memory you’ve been chasing all these years, the one you think might be just something you stumbled upon while flipping through channels after midnight. The one that still disturbs you enough to raise a cold sweat all over your body, whenever you try to will its details clear.

Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award–winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

©2021 Grimscribe Press (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

Well narrated

I’m not usually one that enjoys a collection of short stories, they seldom impress and are often reminiscent of others that I had heard. These, however, were unique. Each story is told by a different narrator, or narrators depending on the story.

To be honest, I almost turned it off right out of the gate. I don’t know why, but for some reason the first sentence was a turnoff. It just didn’t seem like the right way to start it. But… the story was definitely very interesting and I’m very glad I continued listening. There were only two or three in the collection that I didn’t care for.

amazing shorts

each story is fascinating creepy full of emotion and character. each different and full of creeping dread

Outstanding short fiction

What a gifted writer!

I love everything about this - Gemma Files’ creativity and nuance, the diversity of her characters and their unique voices, and the language and structure of her fiction, all make this an outstanding collection of short stories.

These are the type of stories I try to tell other people about, so that they’ll read them too.

Many of these stories lived in my mind when I wasn’t listening to them. Most of them I listened to more than once.

People always want to know if horror is “scary.” Fear is so subjective that I can’t really answer that for anyone else. I can tell you that there are some moments of body horror that were truly disturbing to me. Or that most of the stories I’d describe as “existential horror” - which is the gift that keeps giving. They’re stories I’d rather not contemplate at 2 am because the implications they contain will keep me from sleeping any more that night. They’re not full of jump scares, and the gore or body horror is there to further the story, not just to gross out the reader.

Files strikes me as a “writer’s writer” whose work is also completely accessible to anyone who just wants a good story that’s told well. But if you’re someone who also enjoys deconstructing stories to look at their structure, I found a lot to interest me in these.

The narrators were well suited to the pieces they read, and all did an excellent job. This collection is a keeper for me.

Solid collection, if a bit repetitive

I enjoyed this collection quite a bit, it generally maintains a high quality and I enjoy the author's distinct voice in writing. My main complaint was that the stories often felt like they were treading similar ground in their content, and often fell into similarly abrupt ambiguous endings. These aren't problems for the stories on their own, it's just something that starts to stick out while reading them back to back.

Another small gripe was in the narration - most of them are ok, but I feel like I've heard stronger performances from the readers I recognized. And I felt like there was one bad choice on the production end, where a character spends their entire story using a vocal modifier of some sort. The production carried that through to the narration, so the reader spends the entire story using a grating characteristic that's just unpleasant to listen to. I'd rather just sacrifice some "realism" and have them read it normally.

Oh well, those are minor complaints, it's a good collection overall and a solid recommend.

Another Great Collection

While I keep hoping Files will produce another novel, she keeps writing and releasing excellent short stories. There’s something about her dry, laconic tone coving themes of desperation, defeat, and bleak acceptance that really makes her stories hit hard. “Cut Frame” and “The Church in the Mountains” return to the subject of Canadian film, “Look Up” is a great mix of social anxiety and bewildered horror, and “Cuckoo” ends the collection with biting anger. If you’ve never tried Files, a couple of her stories should be available on the podcast Pseudopod, which may spark your interest.