The Vampire Squid and Other Stories

Book excerpt: In her new collection of stories, author Lucia Bartlett presents three tales that explore unexpected and strange departures from normal life. The Vampire Squid continues a tale of the residents of Foster Lake. Fall, 2019 has families going about their business in the small northern Maine town when odd sightings are reported at the woman’s prison. Then in March 2020, days before Covid lock-down, The Lane School takes a field trip to a new underground military facility that leaves teachers & students with unsettling impressions. When the women’s prison raises the alarm; children are in danger, it’s up to Anne Stevens to find out the truth. Set in year 2030, “Papercuts” follows twenty-three-year-old Wesley, a warehouse supervisor who yearns to become a CERT; part of the executive team. He obeys their orders but is manipulated into disaster when a beautiful coworker seduces him. The ultimate cost may be his sanity—or his life. “The Community,” goes back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, at a time when epidemic suicide hits an upper middle class housing development and explores the possibility that expectations of perfect family life may not be healthy.