The Cage is a novella sold by Deadite Press with the addition of three short stories: Marriage Causes Cancer in Rats, Lest Ye Become, and Waiting for the Darkness.
The Cage begins with bloodshed and a gunman. An electrical department store just wrapping up for the day when, in walks the last customer. Unfortunately this guy’s not laden with a fat wallet he is however possessing multiple firearms, knives, a fucking warped mind and intent to do what? Well that’s what we’re here to find out.
First off, he kills two of the staff and then proceeds to lock the others up in The Cage, the high value goods cage that is. He then turns all the TV’s and Hi-fi equipment on, tuned to receive AM strangely enough and fetches the staff, one by one into the show room. We see the story through the eyes of those in the cage as the numbers decrease, panic, foreboding desperation and the inability to comprehend the true nature of this deluded psycho.
The Cage luckily enough is a fairly short story and I say luckily because it bored the fucking pants off me and then slapped me round the face with em just to be sure I knew I’d wasted two hours of my life and my wallet was a tiny bit lighter. I think the only way this could have been improved was to give the perpetrator a viewpoint but no, it was all the guys in the cage and they just weren’t very interesting. That and the pay-off not producing anything of real consequence left the whole thing feeling decidedly flat. I expected more from such a renowned author but that said I’ve still got more books from Brian Keene that I intend to get too soon, just a little bit disappointed with this one.
Words: Paul Nelson
