A collection of quaint and quirky speculative fictions, Y.M. Valentonis' Short Stories Without Provocation are experimental narratives from the beginnings of history to today's coffe blog post. These cozy-horror, bizarro-folklore, and slipstream tales have a Southern Acid Gothic flare. The eight sections are thematic patchwork story composites expanding upon each other. Like all folktales, motifs and themes recur: cooking, music, and work. Once the reader gets used to the surrealistic world, they are brought back to reality by a child coming to understand divorce, a woman realizing her abusive work relation, or the final confrontation with a childhood bully. According to the most hated PreSocratic Philosopher, the world is amusing Surrealistic chaos. In this shared world, the monsters are your secret admirers and follow you to work. Genres and narratives are reenvisioned like a recipe cookbook that addresses overwhelming Existential dread. Ancient heroes have to survive nefarious beasts and the challenges of becoming a member of Baba Yaga's family. Among the dark tales, occasionally superheroes emerge to combat fear. The private detective who works in Hell continues to investigate the nature of questioning itself. People live inside punctuation, contructing sentences to meet each other. The Pacific Trash Patch has declared itself a sovereign nation encouraging all garabage to revolt. And somehow people still have survive weeds and trash when they go shopping during the apocalypse. James Joyce's sprirtual essence writes a coffee blog with the right soundtrack. This assemblage of prose is a journey to the Fey-realms through the apocalypse.