te. A seance summons a party guest who just won't leave. A popular mayor is also his small towns' most prolific arsonist. These are the everyday problems in the offbeat world of The Original Meerkat & Other Shortweird Stories, the 3rd volume in Marcel St. Pierre's supernaturally silly 'Shortweird Stories' series. It's a world of mayhem, monsters and marsupials, a place where park benches talk, buskers are plagued by ghosts, and raccoon tails steal souls. The stories mine the mundane and absurd alike, pitting the sane versus the eccentric with unexpected turns into the weird, the stupid or the supernatural. Expect bizarre encounters, sucker-punch twists, and a touch of bittersweet, dark comedy. These are surreal stories for people with short attention spans.