(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review short stories from horror anthologies, collections, and zines.)
“Laugh with Jolly Jack” by Stephanie Ellis is a tale of machines and madness inside a dilapidated penny arcade inherited by a henpecked husband. The machines may be cursed, so play at your own risk.
Released April 1, “Laugh with Jolly Jack” is the fifth tale released in the Darklings quick-read series. You can check out my interview with Ellis about the series HERE. Also, you can watch a brief YouTube video of the Jolly Jack penny arcade machine that inspired her story HERE.
Ellis usually writes literary-style fiction in the subgenres of folk and gothic horror, and while “Laugh with Jolly Jack” showcases those gothic chops, her darkly humorous side is on full display as well. I chuckled a few times as Ellis has some fun with the husband-wife dynamic in the story.
“Laugh with Jolly Jack” is about married couple Graham and Alice as they visit a rundown penny arcade filled with old machines in a British seaside town. They’re inspecting it for the first time since Graham inherited the arcade from his barely known Uncle Reginald. While Alice is excited about the potential windfall, Graham is miserable. Graham’s misery, though, is the reader’s joy as his unspoken feelings about Alice are often amusing. Graham is the kind of husband who engages with Jehovah’s Witnesses for twenty minutes to avoid talking to his wife.
Where Alice sees a gold mine of antiques in the arcade, Graham sees a half-empty glass of expensive repairs. The arcade houses old-timey machines like the mechanical ones that spit out fortunes on cards when you push a penny in their slots. Despite his grim outlook, Graham is mesmerized by the eyes of one of the puppets inside the machines. He inserts a coin, and the machines drops a card with a strange fortune.
On a visit to a nearby cafe for tea, Graham and Alice find their waitress knows his late Uncle Reginald, and she hints that the creepy machines in the arcade caused his dementia. When the waitress sees Graham’s fortune card, she says his Uncle Reginald had one with the exact same wording the day before he died. The waitress also reveals that his uncle had a wife named Ruth who died mysteriously.
As the couple discovers the details of Ruth’s bizarre death, the tone of “Laugh with Jolly Jack” darkens. Graham starts hearing voices in his mind and receives another fortune card with a cryptic message. More tragic history tied to penny arcades at the pier is revealed until we arrive at the final chapter where we finally encounter Jolly Jack, a badly dressed sailor puppet with an evil grin. Will history repeat itself? Graham pushes a penny into the slot and learns the answer.
The beauty of “Laugh with Jolly Jack” is simply reading Ellis’s descriptive writing (“the grimy mustard-coloured walls … seeped into a moss-green linoleum”). Her ability to inform the present with past tragedy without halting the momentum of the story is next level. The precise descriptions of the various arcade machines ground the tale in authenticity. Plus, the gloomy gothic atmosphere inside the arcade melds so perfectly with Graham’s own mood that I wondered if the machines specifically targeted the mentally unstable or were the cause of it … even though neither is possible. Or is it? Despite a few chuckles induced by Graham, by the end, I wasn’t laughing with Jolly Jack.
LIONEL RAY GREEN 
Thank you so much for reading and sharing, Lionel! That story had been lurking in my folders for a while and I’d never done anything with it but Darklings seemed to be the ideal platform to bring it – and the arcade – to life!
It was an awesome story, Steph! What an interesting setting for a creepy tale. Your descriptions of the old-timey machines are so well done, and I loved the humor in Graham’s dark thoughts. Keep up the awesome work!