YMMV / Human Resources (2018)

• Nightmare Fuel: "The Secret Game" takes this phrase literally. Also:
  • In "Human Resources", the level of pure, unfiltered hate that Dero feels for Nameless; taken to the level that Dero has literally destroyed the whole world just to torture him. The level of depth to which Dero's all-reaching sociopathy has reached is uncomfortable both in how vast it is, and how realistically it's portrayed. Dero's horribly scarred body and the uncompromising misery that Nameless experiences are truly harrowing.
  • All of the creatures in "Vestibulum Horridus", but especially the she-thing whose bottom half resembles a ballroom dress full of holes, all which are independent mouths. Trypophobia, anyone?
  • The descriptions of infected stitches, poorly pulled-off surgeries and people suffering from them lend "Children of Light and Darkness" an air of realism that lingers long after the book's been closed. The idea of being trapped with said disfigured children forever is equally unnerving.
  • The idea of decaying to the point of immortality, as portrayed in "Immunity".
  • While Lord of the Flies and other works explore the idea of a Teenage Wasteland well, the descriptions of pregnant teenagers dying in childbirth and killing each other in vigilante fury in "School Day" are fairly upsetting in their realism; by contrast to, say, Children of the Corn and other wish-fulfillment fantasies of a world without parents.
  • Anyone who loves the holiday season will probably feel more than a little depressed by the sheer nihilism of "The Secret Game".
  • Anyone who fears insects or arachnids had better avoid "The Order of Creeping Things".
  • "Les Amoureux" is both heartbreaking tragedy about losing your love for somebody and an Eye Scream nightmare fit to kill the faint-hearted in one sentence. That one of the lover's deaths can be considered analogous to a loved one dying of some terminal illness is even more devastating.
  • "The Backwater Roads" is a pretty vicious Satire on nostalgia, the loss of childhood innocence and how abuse can destroy a person's life.
• Paranoia Fuel: In "The Order of Creeping Things", the main character becomes convinced that the insect kingdom is out to get him. In "The Secret Game", the main character becomes convinced that reality itself is out to get her. "Sweet Tooth" features a woman openly assaulted by every man in the world for the purposes of cannibalism, which is, believe it or not, less frightening than the other two stories in that the threat is objectively real.

---