Cirrus@Austlit

'An agency that sends social workers into the homes of grieving families to impersonate dead loved ones…

'The kind old woman who saved a teenager’s life but now finds herself haunted by the weight of a cheated suicide…

'And the daughter of a candlestick maker as she tries to survive a painful existence after her father’s execution for making human chandeliers of drunken cowboys…

'These stories and more-ranging from supernatural to the frighteningly domestic, Splatterpunk to the weird and cosmic-stain the pages of Cut to Care: A Collection of Little Hurts by Aaron Dries. They serve as a timely reminder of the cost of caring too much. Or not caring enough. Of how we mask cruelties behind kindness. And of our willingness to rip ourselves apart in the hope of satisfying a world that doesn’t always care for you back. ' (Publication summary) 

'The story of a boy who dreamed of becoming a man... But dreamed up a monster instead

'You're on the run. Marked. Don't think about the kid you used to be when you're homeless and dumpster-diving in the rain. Just eat whatever you find to keep your engine full. Because the shadow with too many teeth wants you tired.

'You're easier to catch when you're tired.

'It has hunted you since the summer of 1994, back when we confessed who we were through mixtapes. When every movie at the video store had dirty heads. You were thirteen and thought you knew who you were. Only the shadow with too many teeth knew you better. It still does. And it won't stop. Not until you come home.

'Back to where it all began.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Trauma has teeth. Big ones. And it’s always hungry for seconds.

'Aiden and Danny down their beers in the open bar overlooking the road, legs brushing together, about as far as they let their public displays of affection go in that part of Australia. The warm breeze and pounding music—their last happy memory. Everything changes when the taxi pulls up and its drunken driver stumbles out, starting a street brawl that leaves Danny broken and bleeding on the ground. In an attempt to give his lover the space he needs to heal, Aiden accepts an employment opportunity in Thailand, and the two men set off overseas, their fates sealed air-tight within the confines of the airplane. But in the claustrophobic hush of their tiny Bangkok apartment, and while Aiden goes off to work, instead of mending, Danny’s old scars begin to sing.

'The lonely walks. The woman cooking bones in a vat of broth, whispering at him to eat the parts that hurt. The flies nobody but Danny can hear.

'A burning desire to trace his heritage of hurt back to ground zero, and there, find someone to blame.'

A busload of captives on an express ride to terror!

It’s the summer of 1995, and the passengers of the Sunday bus into town have realised that something is very, very wrong with their driver. They don’t know that she began her day planning to kill herself. But they know that she’s threatening to kill them. They began the ride as her passengers, but now they’re her captives. She’s already shown she won’t hesitate to use that gun in her hand, and no one wants to be the next to die. They have no idea where she’s taking them, who will be left alive when they get there, or what‘s in store for the survivors. With a madwoman at the wheel, the bus has gone far off its route, deep into insanity. And for most of the passengers, the next stop will be their last

Source: Publisher's Blurb