Review: The skeptic and the darkness
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 13, 2013
I'm sure you've heard of it, the island of the dolls. Whether through word-of-mouth, maybe that episode of The River, or maybe you've been to it. Anyway you may have, you'd heard of where this story starts off. The place where a mother and her daughter go for a tour and the mother, having a full-out hatred for creativity, can't stand her little daughter having an imaginary friend, wanting a doll, despite the warning given by the tour giver.Yet, after the tour, strange things start happening. For the trivial, the little daughter has a new imaginary friend. But what starts off the strangeness is a quick mention of two other entities, then a plate of spaghetti partially eaten with no one at the plate. Then it gets worse.Eventually (and rather quickly), the mother, who admits to herself that she's an atheist (and is written more to be like a caricature of overt logic and a hater of all creativity), finds out what's going on spiritually speaking. And knows what must be done.This story felt like it could have benefited from maybe a couple extra scenes of speculative fiction rather than just having a couple creepy moments and less of atheist tropes and a little more personality to the mom. As it is, it was a decent short story.