Reality Bites

Death. Domestic abuse. Ritual exploitation. The passing of a loved one. Child battery. Horrifying food addiction. Brutal bullying. Friendship gone bad. Drugs. Family collapse. Loss. Despair. These are the bricks in the walls of Hell. That would be real hell. Not the imaginary hell of the biblical scribe, the epic fantasist, the horrorphile, the metaphorist, the allegory peddler or the unreliable narrator. This is the real Hell. But no matter how bleak things become in that impenetrable abyss, no matter how bleak, no matter how pitch black, there is always the bottom rung of a rotten, threadbare rope ladder dangling from the precipice – and the message is: the rung is in reach. This is Reality Bites. Twelve fictional stories by twelve superb independent authors, each of whom is a card-carrying survivor of the abyss. And these are their tales.