Apocalypses Now and Then
Twisted Tails V

Edited by J. Richard Jacobs

        What fun to join the Double Dragon authors as they play the end game. You never know what to expect when you start one of these stories; the ending is nearly always a surprise, and the guys and gals at Double Dragon have done it again.

The theme that ties these stories together is entropy. That was my reaction too...what is entropy? According to Merriam-Webster it could be the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system, and in this case, it refers to the decay and eventual terminal condition of everything. These stories have poetic and cataclysmic endings and are such fun to read.

The Editor, J. Richard Jacobs, has four shockers in Twisted Tails V. Darkness is a very short, sensational piece that left me saying..."what?" In the story titled Soup, Jacobs finds the ultimate message in a bowl of alphabet soup. How do those letters re-arrange themselves like that? His flash-fiction Experiencing Technical Difficulty leaves you in a solar system that doesn't seem to exist.

Uncurable by Matthew Hance gives us a world in which you can trade ailments in and get something different...and that doesn't always work out so well.

Marilyn Peake gives us Dialing the Future which starts out in the psyche unit of County General and I'm not sure it ever really gets out of there.

Don't Blame Me by John Klawitter is imaginative and witty and reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock and Daphne du Maurier's take on The Birds, but set some time in the future, and inter-galactic style.

Other favorite Double Dragon authors include Kim McDougall, Vivian Unger, Ann Dulhanty, and Todd R. Snow. Read the book straight through or browse at your leisure.

There are things lurking here that you will never see coming and may scare you silly. Some of these Twisted Tails are laugh-out-loud funny...but none of the stories are what you expect. Serious entertainment.