Delirium’s Muse

The five unsettling stories in this collection of macabre fiction from Wertenberg (Stories to Tell Your Children (Assuming You Are a Very Bad Parent)) all feature characters whose disturbed psyches shape their experiences. In “What Happened to Melissa,” an adolescent boy’s increasingly outrageous pranks suggest an unspoken trauma in his past. A battered wife in “And Then Came the Slugs” imagines that the fatal affliction she wishes on her abusive husband is mirrored by a horrifying entity that shares their house. “Table for One” concerns a hypochondriac who, under the ministrations of a holistic healer, achieves a state of spiritual and psychological well-being—but with grisly physical side effects. Some of Wertenberg’s characters maintain a guise of sanity as they wrestle with their slipping grip on reality while others engage their delusions in spectacularly vivid fashion, among them the recovering addict in “I Touched a Demon on the Cheek,” who anthropomorphizes his addiction for a visceral fight to the finish. Wertenberg’s tales will make even the most devoted horror fans flinch. (Sept.)