My Two Cents: TEST TOWN by Leigh Kenny

I'm not going to lie. The idea of nuclear test towns in the middle of the American west, where families of mannequins dressed in 1950s-era apparel, hanging out and doing 1950s-era middle-class suburban things, have always creeped me out. And that's even before the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes, which oh-so-perfectly captured the liminal, uncanny dread those sites seem to so perfectly incapsulate. So when I snagged a copy of Test Town, Leigh Kenny's short but horror-packed homage to these same deep-seated fears, I was looking forward to tucking into it. And Kenny doesn't disappoint.

In Test Town, a young woman named Savannah agrees to accompany her brother Jacob and some of his thrill-seeking friends on an adventure in the desert, with plans to explore a nuclear test town where the mannequin residents supposedly move on their own. Expecting nothing more than a silly internet urban legend, Savannah caves into peer pressure, even though she considers Jacob's gang of cohorts to be little more than bravado-driven idiots.

The story is short, but still manages to take some gore-filled and unexpected twists along the way, as Savannah and her fellow adventurers discover that there may be more to the abandoned test town than initially meets the eye. No spoilers from me, but suffice it to say, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

I checked out this story because it's Women in Horror month, and I've seen Kenny's name mentioned in multiple lists of authors worth a read. Test Town proves that's well deserved, so I'll be reading more from her in the very near future.

Test Town is available here.