The Bad Box, Paperback/III Mellick, Carlton

For almost 20 years, Carlton Mellick III has been writing some of the strangest and most compelling novels the bizarro fiction genre has to offer. Described as one of the top 40 science-fiction writers under the age of 40 by The Guardian and "one of the most original novelists working today" by extreme horror legend Edward Lee, Mellick returns with a short novella about the horrors of childhood. Little Benny isn't very good at taking tests. It's not that he's a stupid kid or doesn't pay attention in class. It's just that he's absolutely terrified of failure. It doesn't matter how hard he studies. He gets so nervous that he freezes up and his mind goes blank, rarely even answering a single question before the time is up. This is especially difficult now that he's in Mrs. Gustafson's fifth grade class, where the punishment for failure is to draw a curse from the bad box--a magical device that permanently mutates children into horrific monsters. The Bad Box is an absurd horror story for fans of Mellick's creepy cute novellas such as Mouse Trap and Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes.