The horror...

Horror comes from the terrible things you see. Terror comes from what you don't see. Your own brain can scare you with it's visions of what could be around that corner far more than whatever is actually there. It's one of the things that separates Stephen King's horror from H.P. Lovecraft's terror. All fear is, at its base, a fear of the unknown. No matter how horrible and monstrous something looks, once you get a good description of its every detail, it's a little less scary.

This is one of my personal favorite parts that I've written. It's right about here that the story became really fun to write. Please enjoy...

Part XV – Twilight City

In the eerie twilight of the ruined, once sunlit city, he peers around a decayed column, spying a shadow that chills his body.  A shadow, of what must be said to have been a limb, though distorted by twilight.  But not any known limb of a man, nor even of the lizard-men that thrived in the sunlit city of long ago.  It appeared a singularly inhuman appendage, resembling vaguely the weathered limb of an ancient tree.  Looking closer, with hope that it was a trick of the unearthly twilight, it moved, and he glimpsed another, similar shadow to his side, but not just a shadow, but the withered treelike limb itself, quickly pulling behind the ruins of an ancient bathhouse.  Noises of movement to all sides brings fear to the young man’s heart, knowing the human-gods of the sunlit-dream-city would not be well received by the withered shadow-lurkers of the ruins, or by their distinctly more monstrous, terrifying gods of the twilight city.

Rock wakes with a jump.  “What the fuck was that?!” he yells. 

“We were wondering the same thing,” his keyboardist says.

“What happened?” Rock asks.

“You passed out, took a header, right in the middle of ‘Clone Heroes.’  Rock, pal, are you doin’ O.K.?  Are you on the horse?”

“I don’t know what happened, man,” Rock replies, “and I ain’t done drugs in days.”

“Can you go back out there?” his manager asks.

“Yeah, let’s go.  Yeah!” Rock shouts as he gets up.

The Eudoran in the balcony of the dark club speaks into his wristphone.  “It’s done.  The dream is implanted.  He can’t escape the nightmares now.  Where will I collect the rest of my fee?”

He turns to leave as the Element come back onto the stage to finish their sold-out show at Mew Channel Club.  Rock Tone has forgotten about the dream already.

 Thanks for stopping by.