Deal Me in Challenge Stories #1 and #2
I love the concept of the The Deal Me In Challenge, hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis. For this challenge you choose 52 short stories for the year, reading one each week. What makes this challenge more fun is that you assign each story a different card from a deck of standard playing cards. Then each week you draw a card at random and read the story assigned to it.
This is my first year participating, and I decided that my theme for the year would be “The Macabre.” I have several Alfred Hitchcock anthologies that I’ve owned for decades and never got around to reading, so I decided to use them for this challenge, along with a book of ghost stories by M.R. James. Here are the specific titles, along with the suits assigned to them (you can see the full list of stories here):
- Diamonds: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 12 Stories for Late at Night
- Hearts: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 12 Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV
- Clubs: Alfred Hitchcock’s Hard Day at the Scaffold
- Spades: Ghost Stories of An Antiquary by M.R. James
I’ve always enjoyed shows like The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and these anthologies feature stories in that same vein: mysterious and eerie with a little dark humor thrown in for good measure. Many of the stories appeared first in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine or in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, two magazines that feature some of the world’s best mystery writers.
The Challenge Begins
I started the Deal Me In Challenge last week, but I didn’t like the story enough to write about it. I drew the 8 ♥, which was assigned to the story “Love Lies Bleesing” by Philip MacDonald. It was too bizarre for my tastes, though it was well written.
This week, however, I drew the Q ♣ and read “Flora and her Fauna” by C.B. Gilford, which was much more entertaining. Flora has a menagerie of pets that she absolutely adores: cats, dogs, parrots, fish, hamsters, rats, even an alligator. Unfortunately, her husband Howard does not share her love for them:
He had to get out. The heavy stench of animal odors, accumulated over the years, threatened to choke him. There was a layer of moulted fur and feathers over everything, turning into dust, and thence permeating the air. But worst of all were the Presences, the constant Presences, staring at him, watching him.
Howard’s aversion to Flora’s fauna is so bad that he spends much of his time in their abandoned stable drinking rum and contemplating his future.
Animals had evicted the man from his house. Now the man inhabited the abode of animals.
The rest of the story tells how Howard deals with his animal-loving wife Flora and her fauna. Though the end was predictable, author C.B. Gilford tells his story efficiently, and I appreciated his dark humor.
I look forward to seeing what’s in the cards next week.
