Three temples dedicated to lonely, wandering spirits change three troubled lives. In Ask and You Shall Receive, Zuiliuli’s tales of supernatural suspense take eerie turns, reflecting the dark side of human nature.
Taiwan’s folk beliefs include temples dedicated to the spirits of children or wronged, forgotten souls, and privately-owned temples where professional shamans perform exorcisms and other rituals. The short story and two novellas in Ask and You Shall Receive center on these places of folk worship, describing how supernatural forces manipulate or turn twisted desires back on an individual.
In the title story “Ask and You Shall Receive”, an unemployed man sets up a social media account for the small, unremarkable temple on his family’s land. He then uses the account to spread fake reports of financial windfalls, drawing to the temple those who believe it responds to requests. He rakes in the cash with an incense money collection box, but then strange phenomena start to occur…
In “Change of Fate”, a young man discovers that the colleague sitting next to him at his new job was his high school classmate. Now, even though he was once the better student, his colleague is enjoying far greater success at work, whereas he is not only regularly scolded by his supervisor, but suffers from frequent health problems. Upon learning of a private temple that performs fate-changing spells, he decides to pay the exorbitant fee in exchange for his colleague’s good luck. What he gets is not at all what he expected, however…
In “Best Friends Forever”, a woman tortured by a recurring dream attends her grandmother’s countryside funeral and discovers that the scar-faced little girl in her nightmares is a stone statue in the forest. As a child, she and the little girl made a pact. Now the little girl and the grandmother’s ghost will ensure she keeps her promise…
Zuiliuli builds an atmosphere of horror from everyday situations, her ironic endings full of dark humor. What leaves the reader shivering is not always the protagonist’s fate, however, but the extremes to which the human heart will go for what it desires.