Back Roads and Frontal Lobes by Brady Allen

The book’s namesake story, “Back Roads and Frontal Lobes,” finds Temple Hannigan not quite sure where he’s going, but knowing he can’t get there fast enough. As he drives the highway one night trying to outrun the memory of a cheating wife and a man brutally beaten to death, Temple finds himself taking the exit for Death City. The disturbing things that await him there are eclipsed only by the massive wallop of an ending Allen serves up.

“Not Over Easy” is a truly odd duck of a story, which I mean in a good way, one involving the last days of a dying man… or is he? Though afflicted with a seemingly never-ending nosebleed and eager to tell everyone whose path he crosses that he’s dying, the reader is never quite sure whether the story’s lead is actually dying, or whether the affliction from which he suffers is more of the mental variety. Flashbacks to disturbing events from the man’s youth only underscore the uncertainty.

“Crap-Covered Diamonds” finds Harley injecting a healthy measure of Western flavor into Brady’s dark and surreal short story stew. A small band of travelers lead by a preacher and his family stumble across an isolated town “that should never have been born.”

Gunther found it strange that most of the buildings didn’t have signs, just plain fronts. He didn’t see a bank, or a jail, or a trading post; no mercantile, no grocer, no church. He wondered how new this town was, wondered what it was called. It looked old, but it looked . . . incomplete. That was the only way he could describe it: incomplete. Worn down as though lived in, but only half put together. It was like a place that was, and had always been, stuck.

Throw into the mix a weathered old cowboy named Grits with a checkered past, phantom train whistles, and a traveling medicine show lead by an oddly mesmerizing man calling himself Doctor H. E. Dubblell and things start to go sideways fast.

“Devil and Dairy Cow” finds an enchanting, free-spirited young girl named Jersey—nicknamed the Jersey Devil because of her legendary marker fights with classmates—spinning an almost magical spell over her elementary school peers, much to the consternation of one particular teacher. Things come to an interesting head one day while the children play in the rain at recess, a day after which no one present will ever be quite the same again.

The post- apocalyptic “Praying” is set in a world reeling from the near-extinction of humanity. Though no one’s entirely sure, it’s taken as truth that the virus that ravaged the population somehow sprang from the insects. Unfortunately, the safest places for survivors to live are remote, rural areas, also the places where the insects particularly thrive. In what is clearly trademark Allen style, a twist ending on this one not only gives the title a clever dual meaning, it will have you going back for a reread to see what clues you may have missed.

Though just a sampling, those stories give you a pretty good feel for the incredible variety to be found in Back Roads and Frontal Lobes. Allen’s stories run the gamut: straight-up horror, hillbilly noir, fantasy, and the surreal are all represented, as well as a few which defy easy classification. However, there are common threads which run through the collection. Whether subtle or overt, there is a pervasive sense of isolation among the characters in Back Roads & Frontal Lobes. Even those surrounded by other people are still somehow apart, and many of them are driven or haunted by feelings of loneliness and despair.

Allen’s approach to the crafting of his tales also manages to create a distinct sense of place for each; even those that given their subject matter should feel like they “fit” in the same universe, don’t. The result is a genuinely unique adventure awaiting the reader with the beginning of each new story.

Back Roads and Frontal Lobes is available in e-book and paperback from Cemetery Dance Publications.