Talking to Strangers

Title: Talking to Strangers
Author: Fehed Said
Publisher: Sweatdrop Studios
My take: The stories varied in how much I liked them, but all had a sense of the surreal around them, and combined with the varying art styles, really conveyed their atmosphere well
Spoiler-free synopsis: A series of short stories about people dealing with things outside their own realms of experience and understanding. The stories are short so its hard to say too much without spoiling it :)

I’m going to take this story by story, since they’re very dissimilar. I’m going through the arc of each one, so warning again THERE ARE MASSIVE SPOILERS HERE!!!!!

Box
This story flashes between a pair of people trapped in boxes, buried alive with only a small hole for air and people in a hospital whose daughter has been discovered nearly dead on the side of the highway.

The art conveys a sense of claustrophobia, focusing often on just the face, the hand, the shoulder instead of the whole person… though it eases up some as the two buried people make friends, briefly.

But that’s just until the water starts flowing into one character’s box. Suddenly, many of the shots are of the featureless sides of the box. And in short order, the one character is alone, his friend having been drowned in her own coffin.

It was when the water started flowing that I finally understood the relationship between the boxes and the people in the hospital. It wasn’t, as I’d initially thought (and was no doubt meant to think) that the hospital scenes took place after the box scenes, but they’re actually concurrent. The water rushing into the box was the family pulling the plug on her comatose body and her dying.

I admit, though, I don’t get the point of this story. It ends with a wide shot of hundreds of coffins, each with someone inside screaming to get out. It’s creepy as anything, but is the author saying that its wrong to let a comatose person die? That they’re all connected somehow (as both the two talking and the final shot where they’re all physically connected suggests somehow). I just.. I don’t know what I was supposed to take away from it.

Static
An agorophobic man lives in his own little world, having food delivered, covering the windows and living out his life watching his “friends” on the TV. But the antenna on the building breaks, and the TV shows he watches for company are replaced with static. Static for days… until a bit of the paper peels away from the window and he sees things happening on the other side of his window. He carefully clears part of the window and his new “friends” are the people who visit a bench across the street.

His “favorite” show is a young man and woman who come from different jobs at the same time each day to eat lunch. He sees their budding relationship and cheers it on as he did the people on the TV – but then a woman from the young man’s job follows him one day and appears to ask him out, even kissing him. Unfortunately, the other woman sees this and runs off.

This devastates out main character who watches for days and days, until… finally they both show up again. But the woman is angry. She won’t listen to the man. Frantic, the main character debates and debates and finally leaves his apartment to go tell the young woman what actually happened.

At first they’re weirded out, but when the guy passes out they bring him back to his place. When he comes to, they thank him for what he did and are about to leave… but he asks them to stay.

I don’t know enough about agoraphobia to tell if this is an accurate portrayal or not, but the tale is a fairly sweet one with creepy undertones. What I took away from it, rightly or not, is that relationships with other people can put us outside what we want, what’s easiest and most comfortable, but in the end, they’re worth it. :)

Malignant

This one was the most surreal and really, the most heavy-handed. A boy is chained to a rock, which he drags along behind him trying to get to a bridge, where he has heard he can find a “cure.” But when he gets there, he finds there is no cure, and in the end the rock kills him.

It’s… its heavy. A heavy story, thick with eerie imagery, but the story is also heavy. The other stories could just be read as stories if you want, but this one practically smacks you with its symbolism, about people carrying all their problems alone as though they are a burden to be overcome, and who look for a simple way to sever themselves from that burden, rather than acknowledging that problems happen in life and you have to deal with them or try to change them.

My least favorite story in the anthology, TBH.

Hero

Another straightforward tale. A boy lives with his abusive father, who beats him within an inch of his life. A stranger takes the child to the hospital for care, and the kid takes a fascination with him, wanting to thank him for saving his life. But he quickly finds out there’s more to the man than meets the eye. The boy sees him walk up to a man who just got shot on the street and as the man dies, he shows him something clearly horrible, his face actually changing into something else. The boy sees, but he doesn’t seem terribly afraid. Apprehensive maybe, and nervous but this is the man who saved him.

A short time later, the man is in his unfurnished apartment, dozing, when a sound wakes him. He comes out to find the boy dying, having apparently been pushed over the railing of the staircase by his father. He goes down to the child and, as he dies, shows him a gentle, shining face. The boy, despite it all, dies in peace looking into a kind face.

The man then goes to the father and whatever he showed the man who died in the street, he shows this man too. And it leaves the father extremely shaken.

Flowers

The best story in the entire book, by far, I thought. Art by Faye Yong gives the tale of a girl and her flower friends the whimsical look it needed.

I’m loathe to talk too much about this, because this story is beautiful and fun in the way that books like Yotsuba are fun – in the joy of a child experiencing life and hope and growth. It’s a sweet tale about how much one person caring for others can change and improve their lives. If you get a chance to get this book, read this story. Read it if you read no others. It looks at how all things – joy and sadness, life and even death – are made better, easier, by sharing with people.

The Old Man
This one was… weird. The old man from the title – the oldest man alive at 150 - is holding a press conference to tell the world what country he actually hails from. The implication, I think, is that each country wants to be able to claim him, and he’s travelled all over so he doesn’t have a clear home.

But what the old man has to say isn’t where he comes from, but rather that he belongs to all countries, with all their amazing and varied cultures and ideals. The intent is good – that what should be important isn’t where you are from, but what you can learn from others, and the differences in cultures are things to be celebrated and experienced, but like Malignant but to a lesser extent, it’s a bit too heavy handed for my taste

Overall, the stories are interesting to read, with some of them sticking for wonderful reasons (like Flowers) and some just sticking (like Box.) they all explore the titular theme of how reaching out to others – or not doing so – can affect a person’s life and how important connecting with a stranger can be. Looking just a the themes, I think Box, Flower and Static reached them best for me.