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Who made it?:
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What is it?: a short story featured on Lovecraftzine
Title / Author: "Jar of Mist" by Jeffrey Thomas
Length: About 23 pages of 13pt font but it felt like half that when I read it in an afternoon. You can too!
Where is it?: [Lovecraft ezine]
Who's it for: Fans of Lovecraftian fiction, fans of fantasy horror who love the theme of madness, anyone interested in the upcoming Lovecraftian web series Whispers From the Shadows, sponsored by Lovecraft ezine.
Lovecraftian fiction has long intrigued me though I never knew quite where to start. The cerebral glimpses of battles with madness and hypnotic siren call of cult worship are intriguing, but many of the stories in the Lovecraftian universe end in despair and doom. The difference with Jeffrey Thomas's story is that it starts with the despair and doom and finds a silver lining, albeit a macabre one.
It begins with rather than ends in death. A father is investigating the death of his daughter and unraveling the life she had built for herself towards the end with macabre influences on her actions. There are a few characters but most of the story's conflict is internal, with one man fighting his own mind to cope with the death of a loved one. The atmosphere in the story is thick with despair but also curiosity and exploration.
This story is one of three short stories from Lovecraft ezine that are being adapted into short films by Alien Jungle Bug, and "Jar of Mist" is a particularly good one because it is so very visual with assorted cult fetish and art props and a hallucinogenic trance sequence that I'm looking forward to seeing them execute for the internet screen. I've seen their previous film "Silence of the Bell" and think its dream logic prepared them perfectly for adapting these nightmarish stories into the Whispers From the Shadows series this year.
Anyway, this story drew me in and made me feel its morbid fascination with death and other planes of existence. I recommend it to fans of Lovecraftian fiction who have the emotional reserves to step into this violent, maddening world.
More info on Jeffrey Thomas's science fiction and horror fantasy fiction is available at http://punktalk.punktowner.com/
