October is now essentially over. As such, I’ll be temporarily retiring the Halloween related horror-story gimmick. No more horror stories after this, until the next one I conjure up.
This particular story, though there are a number of different themes, deals largely with nightmares. A few of my own childhood nightmares have been woven in. Nightmares are experiences of fears both real and fantastical; fears that our conscious self can’t put into words, that might seem ludicrous to outside observers. In a certain sense, they’re really the origin of the horror genre. They provide a bizarre sort of catharsis, after the fact, after the escape. They’re terrifying, and the really bad ones will linger for days, weeks, or for the rest of your life, but in the end we all wake up. Most of us at least.
There are times when I feel a little guilty for what I put my characters through. This is one of those times.
