You know that office bromance: two of a kind, always taking their lunch together, always wearing the same sly grin. Only ever a hair away from a cold joke about how spreadsheets are a living hell; about taking a bullet if it means going home early on Friday. Sometimes in these fantasies, they're heroes being hauled out on a stretcher.
Sometimes they're the ones pulling the trigger.
Now, say these guys discover a loophole that makes some days less real than others—less permanent—and start to act out their violent fantasies without fear of reprisal. Why shouldn't they? Tomorrow, everything will go back to normal, with no one the wiser but them.
They'll always remember what it felt like to act on their basest impulses. They'll know how it could feel to do it again.
Maybe you don't know these guys. Maybe you don't want to.
Soft Targets is a reality-bending novella about malignant malaise; the surrender to violence; and the addictive appeal of tragedy as entertainment.
Contains graphic depictions of gun violence in the workplace; caution recommended.
About the Author:
Carson Winter is a minimalist weirdo, a conversational absurdist, and a vehemently bleak-minded artist making his home in the Pacific Northwest. His fiction has appeared in Vastarien, Apex, and Dread Stone Press' Split Scream series.
Praise for SOFT TARGETS:
"A hell of a story…and damned funny—one of the most difficult things to pull off in a horror story, let alone one with such grim and taboo subject matter. I already knew Carson Winter was one of the best newer writers of the Weird, but with Soft Targets my admiration and expectations of his work have skyrocketed. Read this book."
Jon Padgett (Author, The Secret of Ventriloquism)
"Carson Winter has crafted a stunning, darkly funny, and intensely disturbing look into the psyche of two young men barely getting by. At times, it feels like Fight Club for a new generation. Other times, it feels like the evening news…will make you laugh, cry, gasp, and scream HOLY SHIT."
Joshua Hull (Screenwriter, GLORIOUS)
"What's interesting about Soft Targets is the way it takes its premise—what would you do if you could do it without suffering any consequences?—and runs full tilt into it; but then begins to question it, complicate it, take it apart. At once visceral and deeply moral, this is a book about what it means to live in the face of a damage that paradoxically both did and did not happen."
Brian Evenson (Author, THE GLASSY, BURNING FLOOR OF HELL)
"Soft Targets is a story about the power of friendship—a sickly force unmoored from reality. Steeped in alienation and despair, Winter skillfully details this diseased folie à deux until it finally ruptures."
Andrew F. Sullivan (Author, THE MARIGOLD and THE HANDYMAN METHOD)
