Beneath the Surface

Below this world lies another — a world from which all nightmares are born, and to which all our dreams are sacrificed for our very survival.

Collected here for the first time are a dozen tales culled from the surreal genius of Simon Strantzas. Tales of grief, of loneliness, of guilt. Tales of things that live beyond our understanding, that watch us with malignant indifference. Tales of the liminal places that separate our world from that other world, and where all barriers between the two have begun to fail...

There, can you feel it? That shiver down your back? Something horrible is rising from beneath the surface.

Contents:

• Introduction by Mark Samuels
• A Shadow in God's Eye
• It Runs Beneath the Surface
• The Constant Encroaching of a Tumultuous Sea
• Behind Glass
• A Thing of Love
• In the Air
• You Are Here
• The Wound So Deep
• Something New
• The Autumnal City
• Thoughtless
• Drowned Deep Inside of Me

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Description of the revised and expanded edition (Dark Regions Press, 2010):

Revised and expanded, the startling debut of Simon Strantzas resurfaces with tales of dark gods and monsters of the flesh, emissaries from a world beneath our own, a world from where nightmares are born. Here, a man searches for truth in a universe that has forsaken him and pays the price for that knowledge, and a woman with out hope travels northward to find the place where her life fell to pieces and discovers of what she truly is made. They say no man is an island, no matter how much he wishes to be, but what then is that ship that sails toward him, and what pray tell is that lashed to its bow. These are tales that infect our dreams, tales of things that live beyond our understanding and watch us with malignant indifference. They are tales of grief, of loneliness, of guilt. Tales of the liminal places that separate our world from that other world, the world to which our souls are merely a gateway. Come inside and witness what resides in us all, deep down beneath the surface.

Contents:

• Foreword To Beneath The Surface by Matt Cardin
• A Shadow in God's Eye
• It Runs Beneath the Surface
• The Constant Encroaching of a Tumultuous Sea
• A Thing of Love
• Off the Hook
• More to Learn
• Behind Glass
• In the Air
• You Are Here
• The Autumnal City
• The Wound So Deep
• Thoughtless
• Leather, Dark and Cold
• Drowned Deep Inside of Me
• Afterword: Excerpts from a Writer's Journal

"One of the most important debut short story collection in the genre." - Stephen Jones