For more than twenty years, Paul Jessup has been dreaming of people and places that shouldn't exist. From an infection that allows lost children to see beyond the pale in “The Silence That Binds” or the way the universe bends and gives birth when stars explode in “Open Your Eyes” or the tragic consequences of imbuing the inanimate with an all-too-human need to be loved in “Glass House,” his writing explodes with a surreal energy. In his latest collection, “The Skinless Man Counts to Five and Other Tales of the Macabre,” there are ghosts and butterflies, serial killers and dying stars, mermaids and monsters. You will find death cults, sewer elves, the apocalypse of youthful fervor, card games that require blood sacrifices, and self-immolation as an expression of devotion. Paul Jessup's fiction eviscerates, shatters, and slurps the marrow from the bones of the world.
