Jesse’s Reviews > This Strange Way of Dying: Stories of Magic, Desire and the Fantastic > Status Update

“Snow”

Emma is comfortably isolated on campus during winter break. She has recently suffered a bad breakup with Colin, taking her anger out on a snowman. She considers visiting her friend, Sophie, but she doesn’t appear to be home. There is a bad winter storm coming, “storm of the century” type stuff, and Emma dreams of giant penguins.

“Shade of the Ceiba Tree”

The village sends a virgin to the Ceiba tree every year. The girl never returns. Sak Imox has seen her sister, Hun Kay, go, and she discerns why she cannot return. She resolves to take the place of the next girl and will go to the Ceiba tree in her stead, to see what happened to her sister and perhaps to put an end to this cycle of innocent bloodshed.

“Bloodlines”

A matriarchy of witches in Mexico and the story of how a low-powered witch gets on the bad side of her cousin Elena, who is trying to curse her ex-boyfriend. Our MC is in the bloodline but unlike the rest of the witches she is far from devastatingly beautiful and she has only a fraction of their power. She spends her days with Jascinta, who has no power because she’s descended from the male line.

“This Strange Way of Dying”

Local girl bargains with Death to keep him from claiming her grandmother. A promise in seven years. Then, when her grandma dies, he comes to collect on his bargain. He wants… marriage! What does a bride of Death even do?? We don’t find this out, but we DO find out that Death has a family, and that this one is a death of Ages, of old ways of life.

“The Death Collector”

I’m not entirely sure what is going on here. The creep is a time-traveler, maybe? He is numb to the human suffering of statistics and instead goes to witness, I guess, the murder of a famous actor in 1960, and then goes to break the news of another famous actor who had a crush on him so that he can take a photo of the exact moment that his heart breaks.

“Cemetery Man”

An origin story for a gun-toting superwoman that has shades of Re-Animator… until they namedrop West, that is. The cool horror twist: the man is producing undead by having bred a parasite that resurrects the dead to varying degrees of success. Catalina fights against it when she sees it, but the truth is that she’s already had one planted on her: she IS one of the resurrected.

“Flash Frame”

A journalist looks into a story about a religious cult that screens films at a porno theater. It sounds like it’s describing a parody of Caligula… and then there’s the flash frame image of a woman in a yellow dress. In 1982 it seems that indeed the QUEEN is in Yellow. Will her sickly seduction usher in aeons of untold madness and horror?

“Driving With Aliens in Tijuana”

A young woman gets tapped to hang out with an alien tourist and his handler, Rollo. It’s Tijuana, so it’s not great and virtually everyone is being exploited, but it’s a living. The big question at the end—the woman stumbles in on Rollo having sweet, sweet alien sex and then has a litany of questions on her mind as he drives her home, none of which she asks.

“The Doppelgängers”

Anatomy of a dysfunctional family. The girl’s parents move around a lot and finally hunker down with the aunt. Their indulgent habits—both spendthrifts, his drinking, her flirting—progressively disillusions their daughter. All the while she is stalked by unearthly doubles of her parents—subdued, but responsible simulacrums.

“Nahuales”

A young woman is stalked by a group of nahuales, shapeshifters who also take the form of black dogs. They terrify her on her way to the bus stop but her folk-magic keeps them at bay. They only get bolder during their campaign of terror, though. Apparently the only way to make the nahuales vulnerable involves some sort of a sacrifice that they can’t help but feed upon, like a goat…