Eyeballs Growing All Over Me...Again

Eyeballs Growing All Over Me ...Again by Tony Rauch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A man comes home to find a smelly bigfoot in his living room. A paperboy's curiosity gets the better of him and investigates an odd neighbor's house. A giant robot tears the roof off a couple's house. A man goes to a parallel dimension to hook up with an ex-girlfriend (nice Philadelphia Experiment reference!). A new kid starts school. All of these tales and more can be found inside Eyeballs Growing All Over Me ...Again!

Normally, I subscribe to Johnny's Law when it comes to short story collections. “Short stories are like lap dances—short and unlikely to engage you emotionally.” Eyeballs Growing All Over Me ...Again makes me think of changing Johnny's Law into Johnny's Guideline.

Tony Rauch presents a wide variety of tales in this slim volume. Aside from the ones I already mentioned, there's a sexy robot, a man who's head grows to gigantic size, a girl who gets sick and has her head replaced by a goat's, and all kinds of other oddities. You get a good dose of humor and a near overdose of strangeness. The writing style is very accessible and somehow makes the absurd assault that much more effective.

None of the tales wear out their welcome. In fact, the opposite is true. Rauch has a knack for ending his stories in such a way that you continue thinking about them after you're finished. Some stories end with a question, others just before something horrendous is about to happen. Yeah, Rauch's kind of a tease that way.


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