Review: Creepy freshman effort into the horror world
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 13, 2013
Softly and Tenderly is the freshman entry into fiction writing for Lisa Binion.  This tale is a horrific short story, so how does it stand up as a first entry?Softly and Tenderly explores what children usually have fears of.  They fear bugs, strange people, things that are overall just different, but most of all - and I think this is true of most people - they fear death.  Lori wakes up one morning to deal with the loss of her mother overnight.  But how can that be?  She promised her they were going to do things today?  She wouldn't leave her here without those things unresolved, would she?Lori goes to the Lights Out Chapel for the visitation and mass for her departed mother, but things don't go very well.  She sees blood coming from Jesus hanging on the cross, she sees bugs coming from the casket to to drink the blood.  Her father is acting strange, and above all, her mother sits right up in her casket and asks for her to join her.All of this sets up a pretty creepy tale if maybe a bit unoriginal.  It still works however, because these types of stories speak to people in different ways.  Probably the creepiest part of the story was when the preacher was going on with the sermon, and interjecting were the scenes of the bugs coming from the coffin, and the blood dripping down and running below the feet.  It was all written so that you had a clear visual in your head of everything, and just how creepy it could be.After the funeral, of course a good ghost story never ends when you leave, she is still bothered by the ghost of her mother.  I'll leave it up to you to read the book to find out if she goes with her, when everyone finds her motionless laying on her bedroom floor the following morning.The Bottom Line:  A well written short from a first time fiction writer.  It had some pacing issues, mainly when what I'm guessing were voices she was hearing interjected and interrupted things.  That didn't take away from the overall atmosphere of the story however, it was still well presented and at times horrific.