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Published by 13Thirty Books, October 2015
Description:
Never Fear – Phobias is an anthology comprised of 19 tales of psychological horror. My short story, ‘Iatrophobia’ follows San Diego County homicide detective, Jeff Bukowski. After his military career is cut short due to a botched surgery to fix a training injury, Jeff takes up a healthy lifestyle in order to avoid going back to the doctor. When the stress of working a serial-killer case puts too much strain on Jeff’s heart, he finds himself face-to-face with his greatest fears.
Excerpt:
The sunset was beautiful. It always was, but the weather was a bit colder than Jeff was used to. Had he remembered to grab a jacket on his way out of the house, he may have actually had to wear it. The news even called for rain the next day, and though San Diego wasn’t doing so badly, California needed every drop of rain it could get, otherwise people were going to be really pissed about the increases in price to get avocado on their foot-longs.
There were downsides to living in San Diego, however. Sometimes traffic would back up for no reason other than that’s how California traffic works. Sometimes the Padres would lose. The snow at Big Bear usually sucked, which meant twelve hours stuck in a car listening to whatever one-hit wonder band caught his daughter’s attention at the moment for the annual family ski trip. Then they would finally make it to Park City and she would spend half the weekend in the lodge ogling all the penniless snowboard instructors who looked like they were one bong hit away from contracting dyspraxia.
Then, of course, there were the cross county drives when he’d get called out on a Sunday afternoon. The wife and he finally made plans to get out of the house and go hiking the hills outside Temecula, but then some observant Border Patrol agents had found a body a mile east of San Ysidro.
Aidan Russell 