Title: The Furry Trap
Author: Josh Simmons
Context: The Furry Trap is a graphic novel by graphic novelist Josh Simmons. He presents a genre-bending and harrowing collection of modern horror short stories that curl any corpse’s toes into a state of rigor mortis.
Synopsis: The Furry Trap is a collection of eleven short stories with pages in different lengths from one to thirty pages besides many extras that can flesh out the experience of any reader. The author Josh Simmons, is a master in creating terrifying beasties that inflict and inspire nightmarish horrors mostly taken to an extreme level the reader cannot forget.
The short stories seamlessly turn towards the proliferation of sex and violence prevailing in society, dissecting religion while managing to be funny at the same time. The novel opens with a black humorous tale, In a Land of Magic which starts with a fairy/elf requesting his girlfriend to venture into the dark side of the forbidden woods. The story ends with the elf defeating the dark wizard of the realm and attempting to have a sexual encounter sex with the tracheotomy operation he has executed on him.
Though the author’s work is uncomfortable, disturbing or confrontational, many times the stories work on various levels: including blackly humorous, straight, satirical riffs on the genre, uncompromising horror or he assaults political correctness, most viciously which rules a lot of favored culture.
In a very skilful way his work conveys a claustrophobia and dreadful feeling. All his stories share an uncompromising and unmistakably commitment while exploring the crossroads of amusement and detestation.
On their own, each of the single stories in the novel stands as mini-masterpieces of skin-crawling terror. However the stories put together can collectively complement each other from page to page in a way that they only heighten the fear and anxiety of the reader. Glib cynicism and cheap thrills eschew his work.
Other works by the author:
2007 – House
2008 – Jessica Farm
2019 – Mark of the Bat
2019 – Black River
2019 – Le Manoir