I first learned about Robert Freese from a cool little chapbook called The Drive-In That Dripped Blood, which was a title after my own heart. I liked it and then I 'met' the author online and have kept in touch ever since. Both in personal emails and on the Horror Drive-In message board. Robert is a good guy, passionate and knowledgeable about horror movies and fiction.
Robert has a recent chapbook out from Blood Moon Rising/Sapphire publications. It's called The Clinic and it's a solid piece of short horror fiction that also happens to be about a loaded subject: drunk driving. Most of us have done it, at least a time or two. Some got away clean. Others were caught and arrested; sometimes with repeat offenses. Still others have lost loved ones because of irresponsible drunks on the road.
The Clinic opens with a man and a young woman on a stakeout outside a bar on a late Friday night. It is immediately apparent that they are looking for an inebriate to leave the bar and attempt to drive away. Of course, the wait is not a very long one. I don't think it would be in any bar on a Friday night in the world.
The question for the reader is why they are taking the law into their own hands and what is the purpose of the clinic in which they take their prey. Is it for incarceration, or perhaps an unorthodox cure? Or is it for something darker?
This is a horror story and I don't think it's any sort of spoiler to the reader to say that things get nasty fast at The Clinic. Any time a back cover compares a story to Saw and Hostel, it's pretty evident that there is to be bloody business to come.
The Clinic is a story of retribution and the moral issues in it are murky. What is right and what is wrong when you're dealing with drunken drivers? Many think the laws are too severe. But they probably haven't suffered a devastating loss because of an alcohol-related accident. Others think that the penalties are not strict enough. Like many loaded issues that cloud today's world, there are no easy or simple answers. The Clinic offers up a scenario that might be too extreme for even the most mad MADD.
This chapbook is a no-frills affair, so don't expect the quality that White Noise or Bloodletting deliver. In fact, it's a very cheaply made little book, but on the other hand, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg and for my reading dollar, it all comes down to the words when I buy a piece of fiction.
Blood Moon Rising
Robert has a recent chapbook out from Blood Moon Rising/Sapphire publications. It's called The Clinic and it's a solid piece of short horror fiction that also happens to be about a loaded subject: drunk driving. Most of us have done it, at least a time or two. Some got away clean. Others were caught and arrested; sometimes with repeat offenses. Still others have lost loved ones because of irresponsible drunks on the road.
The Clinic opens with a man and a young woman on a stakeout outside a bar on a late Friday night. It is immediately apparent that they are looking for an inebriate to leave the bar and attempt to drive away. Of course, the wait is not a very long one. I don't think it would be in any bar on a Friday night in the world.
The question for the reader is why they are taking the law into their own hands and what is the purpose of the clinic in which they take their prey. Is it for incarceration, or perhaps an unorthodox cure? Or is it for something darker?
This is a horror story and I don't think it's any sort of spoiler to the reader to say that things get nasty fast at The Clinic. Any time a back cover compares a story to Saw and Hostel, it's pretty evident that there is to be bloody business to come.
The Clinic is a story of retribution and the moral issues in it are murky. What is right and what is wrong when you're dealing with drunken drivers? Many think the laws are too severe. But they probably haven't suffered a devastating loss because of an alcohol-related accident. Others think that the penalties are not strict enough. Like many loaded issues that cloud today's world, there are no easy or simple answers. The Clinic offers up a scenario that might be too extreme for even the most mad MADD.
This chapbook is a no-frills affair, so don't expect the quality that White Noise or Bloodletting deliver. In fact, it's a very cheaply made little book, but on the other hand, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg and for my reading dollar, it all comes down to the words when I buy a piece of fiction.
Blood Moon Rising
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