Simply put, Close Program is about some screwed-up people.
That statement may be taken as an insensitive comment toward the characters portrayed in Jason Gurley's new collection of short stories, and that's a risk I'm willing to take. You see, Close Program runs the gamut of disturbing topics, from child abuse to racial riots, and paints a portrait of society that few people are willing to look at. Close Program also runs the gamut of disturbing individuals, from the mentally disturbed to the terminally ill, and forces us to look at the people most of us try hard to pretend don't exist. People so real you'd swear they weren't mere works of fiction.
Take "Two Rogers" as an example. It's the story of how Roger Lasky, a seemingly perfect human being, develops an unusual fascination with Sean Bottoms' mongoloid brother, Roger. While Sean is in the Army, Roger Lasky bonds with Sean's brother, acts as his caretaker and yes, even his friend. Sean observes this strange relationship develop throughout the years until one day he returns home from the Army to discover that Roger Lasky doesn't look so good. The inevitable happens, and the cancer that had invaded Lasky's body finally wins the fight. But the truly moving event occurs afterward, and it shows the reader that perhaps the less intelligent people we so often look down upon really aren't that stupid after all.
"The Place," however, stopped me cold with a child's naive account of his girlfriend's mysterious abuse. Gurley doesn't take the easy road of sensationalizing a sensitive issue. Narrated in an unflinching account, what really drives this story is the way two people can grow so close to one another yet somehow seem as distant as strangers in regards to the secrets they disclose to each other.
Then there's "Deeply Shallow," truly a masterpiece of modern fear. Not a horror story in the conventional sense, it tells the story of Scott Garrison, a hopeless addict in every sense of the word; a man addicted to sex, relationships, and self-destruction. The story begins with Scott waking up in the bed of girl whose name he can't remember. From there it only becomes stranger as he moves throughout the world like a zombie, dreading what he perceives to be the inevitable. It's almost as if he's viewing everyone else from inside a fishbowl, caught up in his own dimension where intangible fears are lurking around every corner. Finally, he's forced to face his fears in an ending that is vague yet strangely fulfilling - probably because we're so fascinated with the riveting portrayal of a man on the edge that we don't care what his actual destiny is; the steps he takes to meet fate are compelling on their own.