Whisper House Press

At times hilarious, sexy, or spooky, RoShamBo Publishing’s Stories from the Motel Sick is unrelentingly weird and always bizarre. “Bizarro” is probably the right word for the occasion, if you ask editor Michael Allen Rose, who hosts the Ultimate Bizarro Showdown at BizarroCon every year. And Rose’s editing prowess is on display in this lengthy, chunkable, but bingeable anthology of over twenty pieces of fiction in a group worldbuilding effort that finds the audience in a different motel room for each chapter in the book.

The Motel Sick itself is a bag of holding, room of requirement, or shop of needful things, often with the genie-logic of comeuppance and front-manned by a slouching, knowing desk clerk often found by patrons reading such fine periodicals as Boners? and described at times as “inattentive,” “unimpressed,” “derelict,” and—of course—simply “weird.” With an Arby’s across the street for all your dining needs, the motel itself has an ∞ of rooms, whether you’ve just committed a robbery, are stepping out on a spouse, or getting together with your pals for a yearly themed adventure party (I’m looking at you, “Room 11,700: The Authentic Experience” protagonists). John Chambers’ “Room 66” pushes the ridiculous road-based absurdism to its most logical and hilarious extremes. The “Motel Guest Waiver & Agreement” fixes the terms for us and those characters unlucky enough to be checking into the Motel Sick, and this reader readily agrees and submits to THE ENTITY for entertainment purposes as well as non-binding life lessons.

Who’s going to love this book? I suspect the answer here is, “the majority of people who read it.” More specifically, I’d bet at least one arm you’ll dig this antho if you get your jollies from Welcome to Night Vale, Max Booth III’s Lost Signals anthology, or the Oni Press’s revived EC Comics’ Epitaphs from the Abyss volumes (one of which I reviewed here). Michael Allen Rose has curated and arranged this anthology with a maestro’s touch, and its contributors are, clearly, fully bought into the concept. The theme here works and, like its number of rooms, makes me wish for more. I’m left with one question: When can we expect More Stories from the Motel Sick?