Black Static

Tim Major's novella Carus & Mitch was released by Omnium Gatherum Media in 2015 and is shown on Amazon as currently unavailable, though maybe you can pick up a copy on eBay or via a second-hand book dealer.

Icarus and younger sister Mitch live in an old house, barricaded away from the rest of the world, which an unnamed catastrophe has overtaken, with hints of a zombie outbreak in the people who come at night to scratch at their windows and doors. They keep the curtains drawn and most of the house is off limits, only going outside to trade their eggs for canned goods with the never seen Jom. All this is on the orders of their deceased mother, but the younger Mitch is increasingly rebellious, questioning the purpose of everything they do and becoming slack in attending to her chores. A clash of personalities seems inevitable, only for Major to throw everything up in the air with revelations that force us to question all we have been told.

Carus & Mitch is a clever story, one that keeps the reader off balance. The story is told from the perspective of Carus, who is becoming increasingly disturbed by Mitch's resistance to her rule and the way she is constantly demanding explanations. And as far as that goes, our sympathies are entirely with the younger sister. Like Mitch we wonder exactly what has gone wrong with the world and why such draconian rules are in force. After all if Jom can walk outside to complete the trade, why can't Carus and Mitch leave the house and grounds? The shadowy nature of what has happened to the world adds to this general air of inexplicability, while the fate of their missing mother is another hint that not everything is being revealed. Major gives us a resolution that appears to resolve these problems with the narrative, though you'll have to get your hands on a copy of the text to know what that resolution is. It had a certain elegance to it, and yet I wasn't really satisfied. In the final analysis Carus & Mitch was a little too ambiguous for its own good, with the reader left not much further forward at the end, facing just as many questions as when he started, albeit different questions. An intriguing journey, but the destination didn't feel like it was worth the effort.