A young musician stops at a gas station in the middle of the night and ends up trapped in the bathroom. Inside, he’s stuck between whatever is stalking him on the other side of the door and the very real, very unsettling creatures skittering down the walls with him. TW: Animal abuse, Spiders, centipedes, snakes, Blood and gore, Body horror, Violence I’m generally not a fan of Nat Cassidy’s writing, and this short story didn’t change that. Out of the books I’ve read by him, this one is the most tolerable, mostly because the core idea is genuinely intriguing. But the execution goes off the rails fast. The story keeps escalating — and escalating — until it becomes so over-the-top that it loses any sense of believability. The animal horror, though, is the one thing that actually worked. What didn’t work at all was the sudden Jewish angle. It doesn’t add anything meaningful, isn’t explored, and doesn’t function as commentary. It just sits there, disconnected from the rest of the story. At least the pacing is solid. It’s a fast read and easy to squeeze in if you’re trying to hit a reading goal.