Cursed Bunny, short stories that crackle with dread and horror

Cursed Bunny leaves nothing on the table. It’s a collection of short stories that weave between horror, mystery, absurdity, and humor with an amazing degree of aplomb. Aside from the brilliant title, there are clues on the book’s cover that allude to the trippy, byzantine, and unique nature of each of these stories. The titular bunny has that fuzzy, out-of-focus look that’s both attractive and annoying about the TikTok logo. There are parallel lines that run on the front and back cover, with the ones on the back being a continual, yet inverse color of the ones on the front.  There’s also some yellow goop on a couple of the letters that are dripping down from them. Cursed Bunny is horror, there’s nothing half-measured about the dread or disgusting appeal of these stories. They are also well crafted and unique enough to feel as though they’re from another dimension. If this brand of mystery or horror describes you then all you have to do is read the first seven sentences of the book and you’ll be hooked.

That particular short story is The Head. It opens with a woman about to flush the toilet when she sees a head inquisitively asking if she’s its mother. Not surprisingly, the woman screams in horror and flushes the toilet, but it doesn’t stop there. The Head instills a paranoia sense of horror, dread, and curiosity because it deals with something that everyone does, it just presents an absurd element.

How would we deal with it if our solid human waste started to speak with us? We’d question our sanity, wonder if it’s something that’s going to follow us-or stay unique to the bathroom where it initially happened. How would we react if the activity stopped? Some people would certainly be thankful, but others might feel they need to talk to someone about what they think they might have experienced. What if the head that you were seeing sometimes in the toilet got larger, grew shoulders, and appeared to start growing appendages?

This is the best kind of horror because it gets your mind thinking. The stories are just on this side of probable, they’re situations that you’ve most likely never thought of, but they’re within reach of the mysterious and disgusting corners of your mind. The short stories are also not too graphic. They don’t mine or obsess over gore or graphic violence. It’s the pacing and the patience that make the stories in Cursed Bunny all the more enjoyable.

For example, have you ever seen The Conjuring? It’s a horror film that’s rated R, not due to its use of blood, violence, or sexual acts. The Conjuring is rated R due to its sense of dread and relentless tension. That film is a palpable 1,000-pound hammer of tension that cinematically pays off in a way that few films do. Cursed Bunny is the literary equivalent of that sensation.

Scars is another short story that cranks due to its mystery. Readers enter a dark world where a young boy is dragged away into a dark cave. The boy grows up there, but he’s not alone. As he gets older he becomes a young man but doesn’t have the communication, social skills, or aspects of humanity to make him relatable. This animal boy goes on to do things. He’s hardwired with a good soul but is released into a world where people will take advantage of him and real monsters exist.

Each story in Cursed Bunny boils at its own temperature, with all of them getting hot enough to cook. As you have hopefully inferred, this is not a book for the easily offended or grossed out. This is brilliantly crafted and immediately sharable. The stories are so unique that they feel as if each one was written by a different author. Instead, they were created by Korean author Bora Chung and translated by Anton Hur. Chung is able to instill curiosity in very few words, with each story having its own unique personality. Most of the short stories I was able to read in one sitting because due to their length. Only one of the stories was long enough to require me to read it over a couple of nights. However, even in that case, readers will be able to immediately jump back into the skin of the main characters and follow along as the viewer does in an excellent scary movie.

Cursed Bunny is by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur and is available on Algonquin, an imprint of Workman Publishing.

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