Six O'Clock House & Other Strange Tales by Rebecca Cuthbert is a weird little collection that takes reality and shifts it just slightly enough that you're not second-guessing why a ghost is showing up to diner every morning or how a therapy session leads to an infestation of the various versions of yourself that you shed as you grew older.
While I tend to like my weird fiction to go off the walls until you're squinting to make sense of what you're reading, Six O'Clock House & Other Strange Tales takes a more subdued approach, which brings its own kind of magic. The strange here lies in the mundane - the croak of a frog, a visiting bird, the hidden dangers of a Danger: No Swimming, No Fishing sign. Paying attention can mean the difference between salvation and death and watching how each person navigates these odd moments will make you squirm and sit in memories of your own anxieties, failures, and triumphs.
The Six O'Clock House isn't strange for the sake of being strange. One of its strengths is how unapologetically human it is. The characters are flawed, dealing with issues that are entirely too relatable, which is exactly why it's so easy to root for them in their moments of triumph and mourn with them when things go wrong. Seriously, a scene in the "Six O'Clock House" brought me back to the deep-seated pain that comes from being constantly rejected as a child, and that's only one emotion this collection brings up.
Being a short story collection, some stories will hit harder than others, but you can expect unease, tension, and even a bit of comedy as you make your way through these tales. My favorites include: Hey, Stranger, Infested, Six O'Clock House, and Danger: No Swimming, No Fishing,
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