The Nail Bar

Dana Whitlock needs a job, and Lacquer & Lace has a card in the window asking for kind hands.

The salon sits at the dead end of the Westbrook Parade, between a vape shop and a video rental that closed decades ago. It has 312 shades on the wall, a warm smell of vanilla, and an owner called Mrs. Loretta Vance, who calls every client "my lovely" and never once asks for payment.

Dana soon notices that a handful of favoured regulars get a different polish, served at the back station behind a cream curtain. It isn't in the catalogue. It doesn't chip. It survived a pressure washer, a pub brawl and a smashed bottle. And when Dana tries to take it off, it doesn't come off. It moves.

Then a bride-to-be books her whole wedding party in for a free treatment, and Mrs. Vance announces a Glow Night for the entire mall. Dana has a mechanic with a corkboard, a bottle of acetone and a stain spreading under her own fingernails. She has until Saturday at two o'clock, and one rule to work with: cure for ninety seconds, not eighty-nine.

The Nail Salon is a deliberately cheesy, affectionately campy horror-comedy in the tradition of Garth Marenghi. It's played completely straight, and it gets more absurd with every chapter.

Don't stand in the doorway. It lets the day in.