Review of Creepy Sheen by Rebecca Gransden

An entertaining and thought-provoking collection of scary stories to peruse in the half-light of sun-baked twilights.

A moody, unhurried taste of dreamy apocalyptic nostalgia. With an appreciation for film and music, the author frames the scenes in enigmatic layers of imagery, where molting skyscrapers and abandoned stores abound, where dead rats leak opioid crystals into alleyways. Ballard gave us a sandblasted bleakness, but Gransden offers a neon-drenched small town quietude. It feels like the unfolding of a psyche frozen in an era, committed to an aesthetic, bleeding out over a desolate land of kitsch and bleached bones.

I think her themes speak to an isolation we all feel when we interact with dated art, how the past cannot belong to us but through our interpretation of it. That feeling when you’re marathon driving through a surreal landscape at night, slipping in and out of sleep at the wheel, being chased by disembodied headlights. Or that experience of wandering around a mall, surrounded by muzak and dull reflections, when you see someone completely out of place, transported out of another time.

There is an underpinning of paranoia in the characters’ actions, as if they cannot believe in the virtual-seeming reality around them, whether they’re trapped in an arcade as the world evacuates its inhabitants, leaving a crusty residue of humanity, or they’re sunk in daymares, staring at eerie infomercials playing on endless repeat.

the warmth of a fuzzy tv screen. A conspiracy in every moment. The author’s beautifully rendered states of mind, provocatively told stories, and delicious aesthetic exploration captivated me.