Alice and Friends — Catt Dahman

What happens when an author uses blurred reality, extreme horror, and expert manipulation not only on the characters to tell a disturbing story but on the reader as well to ensure total acceptance of a dysfunctional idea? Alice and Friends is the result. On a lonely, dark, Texas road, women disappear after being stranded in their cars and then saved by two friendly strangers. Alice is one who has been saved, but then shackled, and left in a basement to discover that she is not the first, nor will she be the last one imprisoned . In addition, at a nearby carnival, a prophetic ghost ride is the draw and where women, feeling the thrill of being falsely scared, are grabbed and taken to the same basement to face real, sadistic horror. The foreboding rooms upstairs, an abandoned well, and a smokehouse provide fearful places where Alice and her new “basement friends” are tortured, both physically and emotionally. Forced into unquestionable obedience by a dysfunctional family of brothers, the chosen women are re-invented using the male's warped ideology of a woman's place. Using cruel techniques, the men break down the human psyche to achieve total compliance of their captives. Using her shrewdness to fight back, Alice tries to hold onto her sanity and escape; however, her friends, one by one, leave the basement, and most never return. Alice discovers something far worse is awaiting her. With a nod to horror master Richard Laymon, the author leads the reader, along with Alice, to the edge of sanity, then plunges over with an ending that isn't just a tour de force, but will cause the reader to question his own complacency for days…. …and to sleep with the lights on for weeks.