* The reality of addiction is darker than any fiction. *

"Drinking and drugging provide the height of human experience.

It's the promise of heaven on earth,

but the hell that follows is a constant hunger, a cold emptiness."

 Before I read even one story in this 'reality horror' anthology - Mark Matthews had me crying so hard that I could barely see. He presents an addiction anthology with compassion, casting no aspersions on anyone. I wan't to meet Mark Matthews, and give him the tightest hug ever.

"Imagine yourself drowning and being told not to swim to the surface for air. Obsessions should be so mild."

I'll have the full review posted soon - I was going over my notes for this review, and I'm bawling again. 

shortlink: https://goo.gl/HGRbsX

6/7 - I hope I didn't pay money for this. Let me check...nope, phew. This is so short it's hardly worth criticising its editing, but there aren't that many other reviews for it, so it's not like I'm simply rehashing what a million other people have said. There were no serious editing issues, but there certainly were some minor ones. Page one he calls the car following him the "oncoming car", if it was oncoming it would be heading in his direction from the other side of the road.

The main character, Trevor, is supposedly superglued to his chair and a virtual reality head and handset. My problem with this is that he becomes completely stuck, enough to stop him from getting up from the chair within minutes. Superglue definitely works that fast skin-to-skin, but not material-to-material. He would still have been able to get up out of the chair, if not take the virtual reality gear off, to get away from Alice and her electrocuting wires.

The plot has some possibility, but you would have to be an absolutely spectacular writer to make this six page 'book' seem complete with so few pages. Unfortunately, it seems Poage is not that writer.