Caleb Ross’ stories do not behoove summaries. Let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s also just say that they contain blood drinking, deformity, death, and disfigurement, to varying degrees. These stories swirl like nightmares: a populace of anti-protagonists so wounded that there is generally no hope for their redemption. The reader acts as sponge, absorbing their pain. Making sense of it. As the reader, you are the first man on the scene; as such, you are to perform the tasks the characters themselves are no longer capable of performing: observe, record, and interpret. Seek your own closure. …

Caleb Ross is sometimes mistaken for a person from a television show called The Tribe. And though he accepts the adulation of his occasionally confused fans with a grin, his true identity is one that is far more interesting and, if there is justice in the world, one they shall soon know: that of a talented young writer from the Kansas City area, specializing in a prose style that walks a surreal line between the subtle and the explicit. While evoking moments of calligraphic insight in his shorter work, he …