Euphoria and Other Stories

Euphoria and Other Stories by Steven Bruce takes readers to the darkest and horrifying places through short horror stories. In this collection, a serial killer meets someone who challenges him, clearly different from the victims he has interacted with before, and a father's love for his daughter reaches its limit. A gnome and a widower look out for each other. A phone call about a job opportunity excites a plumber, but who is on the other end? This collection puts together ten horror stories. We meet a plumber doing his job dutifully, and it turns nightmarish for him. We meet a daughter lost and trying to find her way back, only to find herself swept into darkness. Violence confronts a widower and nearly loses his life, all thanks to the thing he recently brought into his house. A man who once lived nobly now kills to survive and has rats for companions. Overall, these stories are diverse and told from an array of protagonists. Bruce's writing is evocative. The sentences are short, clear, and descriptive. They rhyme with the collection's genre. In the first story, Hunger House, the reader feels for Bill Brown as he walks into the client's house while thinking this is going to be just another job: “The fingernail is black and gnarled. The flesh around it is swollen and weeps yellow pus. It traces a list of names in the phone book. It stops. ‘Bill Brown,’ she whispers. ‘Plumbing Expert.’” And some ending surprises, clearly not as a reader would've expected. They remind the reader that yes, it has been all horror, which means there's no guarantee the protagonist will walk out alive. Horror fans will find enough fun and scares here. You'll empathise with Bruce's characters.