History FateWorseThanDeath / Literature

** The worst fates out of these were those of the [[AndIMustScream Colonials]]. They were able to ward off 2 Qu invasions but not the [[ThirdTimesTheCharm third]]. The Qu were heavily offended by [[SoreLoser losing the first 2 times]] and wanted the Star People on the land to [[ReVenge pay as]] [[DisproportionateRetribution much as]] possible. The Colonials were turned into [[BodyHorror Flesh Bricks]] with no arms, no legs, no real mouths, and no torso. These creatures were used as [[SQuick waste]] [[ToiletHorror filters]]. The Qu made sure to keep the sapience of all of the victims [[KickTheDog just to make them suffer more]]. These bricks had [[ICannotSelfTerminate no possible]] [[AndIMustScream way out]] for [[LongevityTreatment millions of years]].

* In Neal Shusterman's series ''Literature/{{Unwind}}'', being Unwound is this. To elaborate, [[spoiler: A teenager gets cut into individual pieces. those pieces are grafted onto other people. Even their brain. This was all done against their will, and the parts of their brain retain consciousness while in another person's head. Some parts can remember the terror of their Unwinding. Some can't, and don't understand where they are, why they can't speak, and why their thoughts aren't their own. They're stuck like this until their receiver dies.]]

*** Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenórë, and his army are ghosts buried forever under a landslide just outside Valinor, unable to rest in peace or leave the world, though human souls are designed to leave and remaining forever eventually becomes unbearable torment. One wonders if he'll have learned his lesson about immortality by the time the world ends.

* ''Literature/{{Ward}}'': When Dinah is questioned about the impending doom that she's been trying to prevent from behind the scenes, her answer involves this:
-->'''Dinah''': As things stand now, there is an 81.6% chance of total extinction of humanity, across multiple worlds. Of the remainder, 15% of the outcomes are ''worse''. The remaining 4% aren't too pretty either.

** What's become of [[spoiler:Theon Greyjoy]] in ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons''. After being captured by one of the worst {{Sadist}}s in the setting and [[ColdBloodedTorture tortured]] for a year he's [[spoiler: an emaciated wreck, who's [[LossofIdentity forgotten his own name]] and is [[StockholmSyndrome obsessively devoted]] to his torturer]]. His sister is [[spoiler: [[FingerInTheMail sent]] a piece [[FlayingAlive of his skin]]]] and thinks that she prefered when she thought he was dead.

** Whoever creates a Horcrux and [[spoiler:dies without true repentance, which would restore his soul, will have the pieces of his soul mutilated and trapped in limbo for all eternity, unable to pass on]]. [[spoiler:Tom]] ends up suffering from this fate and true to this trope, ''it will never end''. He has sealed his fate in a way that would be too horrific to consider if it could happen to anyone nicer.

* In the ''Literature/NamelessWar'' series, the ultimate fate of the civilian population of [[spoiler:Junction Station]] is to be used as lab samples as the Nameless attempt to discover [[spoiler:an efficient way to eradicate humanity]].

* A theme of Book XIII of the ''Literature/{{Confessions}}'' is that true death is not bodily, but spiritual. Once separated from [[{{God}} the Font of Life]], men become marked by {{Pride}} and {{Lust}} as their souls enter an abyss they cannot escape from alone.

* Quaid, the antagonist of the Clive Barker short story "Film/{{Dread}}", in his efforts to understand dread and find a cure for his own, breaks the mind of someone whose trust he had earned, and then casually tosses the poor kid aside. This young man then returns to pay Quaid back, unintentionally personifying Quaid's [[MonsterClown deepest fear]]. He then proceeds to slowly carve the villain up with a fireaxe, aiming his strikes so that his victim doesn't die quickly.

** And even with all that, there is still the standard "life in prison" fate, which Gellert Grindelwald suffered after his defeat at the hands of his former best friend Albus Dumbledore. By the time Voldemort shows up to squeeze out info from him about the Elder Wand, Grindelwald had been imprisoned in Nurmengard for fifty years, an emaciated shell of his former self, wallowing in his regrets over his many crimes and wondering if he was ever right. To top it off, the only person who still cared about him, and arguably the only person he ever cared about in general, had died several months prior. When Voldemort threatens to kill Grindelwald, the elder dark lord ''laughs in his face'', proclaiming that he welcomes the freedom it would bring. [[spoiler:Voldemort makes good on the threat, but is ''thoroughly'' shaken by the exchange; so much so that in the coming chapters he starts to go on the defensive in safeguarding his Horcruxes.]]

*** Morgoth may have marred every aspect of Arda and the physical world that it belongs to, but he has no power at all in the rest of Ea which lies beyond the doors of Night. He has been left imprisoned and mutilated there till the end of time, the only concrete thing drowning in the nothingness that he embraced.
** As for the fallen Maiar who have been seduced to his service in exchange of power, they have nowhere to go if they lo*se their physical avatars that keep them anchored to the physical plane. They are more or less reduced to powerless shadows of malice, both incapable to reincarnate themselves and unworthy to return to Eru through death like all mortals will. This is best demonstrated in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' with both Sauron and Saruman who make a last futile attempt to cling on to something. Sauron spends his last moments looming over the Free People but the hand that he manifests as, gets blown away and dissolves into nothing.

* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', Oreg was made into [[PoweredByAForsakenChild castle Hurog]]. With the side effect of being [[MadeASlave permanently enslaved]] to whoever the rightful owner of the castle is at the time. And he's immortal unless killed by his owner. AWizardDidIt, so there's no getting out of obeying any order. Oreg suffers pain even if he tries, and doesn't suceed to follow a command he was given. His fate can be tolerable when his owner is, but as ThereAreNoTherapists, he suffers the accumulated trauma of being mistreated by at least a dozen sadistic owners. Oh, and he is a pretty young man, which some [[DepravedHomosexual unsavoury men]] no doubt found ''very'' convenient. He is inherited by GentleGiant Ward at the beginning of the novel, so there's no on-screen violence against him ... if you don't count his flashbacks. Ward can ''see'' them.

* Used as a threat in ''Literature/TheCroning''. The protagonist, Don Miller, at first refuses to be scared of [[AncientConspiracy the Children of the Old Leech]] and [[spoiler:their LongGame plans of taking over the world and turning it into a cold, dead husk of itself]], reasoning because it's so far in the future he and everyone he knows will be long dead at that point. Bronson Ford, however, corrects him: if he manages to sufficiently anger the Children, they are perfectly capable of keeping him and those he cares about about alive as long as they want, if only [[ForcedToWatch to force them to witness the bleak future they have in store for mankind and the Earth]].

* The demon Barbatorem in ''Literature/{{Pact}}'' specializes in inflicting this on its enemies. An expert surgeon, it can keep even the most crippled person alive, on the brink of death, but it's true ability is spiritual mutilation by splitting victims into [[LiteralSplitPersonality separate people representing different aspects of themselves]] who are then compelled to destroy one another, leaving the survivor a broken piece of a whole person.

** In the sequel series ''The Mallorean'', Urvon, the last living disciple of Torak, [[spoiled:is pulled into Hell - ''while still alive'' - by the demon Nahaz]].

** And even with all that, there is still the standard "life in prison" fate, which Gellert Grindelwald suffered after his defeat at the hands of his former best friend Albus Dumbledore. By the time Voldemort shows up to squeeze out info from him about the Elder Wand, Grindelwald had been imprisoned in Nurmengard for fifty years, an emaciated shell of his former self, wallowing in his regrets over his many crimes and wondering if he was ever right. To top it off, the only person who still cared about him, and arguably the only person he ever cared about in general, had died several months prior. When Grindelwald tells Voldemort that he "welcomes death", it's because he didn't have much to live for anyway.
** Unicorn blood is said by Firenze to curse those that drink of it with a "a half life, a cursed life, from that moment the blood touches your lips."

* ''Literature/MagisterusBadTrip'' has falling, the euphemism for dying in the virtual reality game where most of the action takes place. A player who falls is forcibly logged out for 24 hours and cannot interfere with financial transactions in the game. This means that they can very easily lose all their money and fall into debt. If a top player falls, their enemies will gang up on them and keep forcing them to fall, meaning that they effectively can no longer play and so remain in debt.

* Patrick Bateman from ''Literature/AmericanPsycho'' commits some of the most sadistic and gruesome tortures ever conceived by the imagination. Bateman intentionally keeps his victims alive longer, just so that they can experience more agony.

** ''The Colour Out Of Space'', in which the {{Mercy Kill}}ing takes place off-camera. The narrative explicitly states that leaving the victim alive under the circumstances would've been a damning offense.

* Franchise/StarWarsLegends:

** [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] and [[DeconstructedTrope deconstructed]] in ''Literature/{{Barrayar}}'' when Cordelia and Drou find that Princess Kareen (who used to be married to a sexual sadist) has seemingly sold out to the Pretender:

** In ''Literature/CaptainVorpatrilsAlliance'', Tej intends to jump off of a twentieth-story balcony to avoid a fate worse than death (namely, being captured by her family's enemies). Ivan comes up with an alternative plan ([[spoiler:that she marry him, thus becoming a Barrayaran Vor and thereby gaining [=ImpSec=]'s protection]]) and is a little irritated that she apparently has to ''think'' about whether his plan is actually better than jumping off a balcony.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000''

** At the end of the Literature/ShiraCalpurnia novel ''Legacy'', one of the main characters goes mad with grief after finding his family butchered and has his badly-damaged ship attempt a warp transit. The warp engines fail, as does the Geller Field, and daemons get hold of everyone on board.

* ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'': Room 101, where prisoners are tortured with their greatest fear and psychologically broken.

* In the same vein, Patrick Bateman from ''Literature/AmericanPsycho'' commits some of the most sadistic and gruesome tortures ever conceived by the imagination. Bateman intentionally keeps his victims alive longer, just so they can experience more agony.
* In ''Literature/AncillaryJustice'' this is how most people view the Ancillaries, typically calling them corpse soldiers -- not that anyone debates their efficiency or loyalty. When a planet is conquered, anyone who tries to fight and isn't killed or who makes trouble until the planet is officially annexed is rounded up and either executed or surgically altered, [[MindRape including alterations to sever their connections to the past identity]], and put into cryogenic storage until an AI needs to replace an old body.

* In Creator/LarryNiven's short story "Bordered in Black", two astronauts explore a planet orbiting around Sirius B (incorrectly represented as a blue-white giant in the story). It has limited life -- one of the main life-forms being a seaweedy substance with a ripe cheesy smell choking the oceans, and appears to be edible. The electric blue sky seems to be constantly filled with lightning strikes at various levels. From space, before landing, the astronauts noticed that one of the continents seemed to have a thin black border all around it, and they finally land on that continent to see what it was. They approach the black border from some distance inland, and see skeletons lying in the parched landscape, some covered with leathery skin. As they get closer to the water, they see what the black border is. [[spoiler: The black border was people: black-skinned people, 7 and 8 feet tall: they crowded the shoreline, endlessly struggling to reach the water in order to reach the seaweed -- there were too many people for all to be able to reach it at the same time. It appeared that natural selection had favoured tallness to enable the people more easily to reach the water, climbing over other people if necessary. The explorers had already walked past the results of people who lost this struggle to access the seaweed. They had bred out of control, presumably because they had nothing to do but try to feed and to breed. They had no technology, no science, no clothes, no tools -- nothing at all. They observed that the people formed layers, based on distance from the water: the strongest people were in the front, weaker ones behind them, and then there was a layer of dying people. The discovery sent one of the astronauts out of his mind, and he never recovered from the horrific discovery. The other explorer speculates that they were the descendants of the caretaker's family, placed on the uninhabited planet to harvest the plankton, and abandoned when their civilization collapsed -- they just kept breeding, and eventually filled up the entire coast of the continent they were stuck on.]]

* In ''Literature/{{Coda}}'', people who are declared Exaunts are permanently deafened by the Corp. In a society based around music, this is one of the worst things that could happen to you. [[spoiler:It ends up happening to Anthem's girlfriend Haven]].

* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'':

* In ''[[Literature/KaneSeries Darkness Weaves]]'' BackStory king Netisten Maril finds out that his wife Efrel has been cheating on him and plotting to kill him. He sentences her to be dragged by an enraged bull through the streets of his capital. This is meant as CruelAndUnusualDeath but being EldritchAbomination, Efrel survives -- but is heavily mutilated, a living wreck with ruined body, with only one eye to remind of her former beauty.

* In the ''Literature/{{Nameless War}}'' series the ultimate fate of the civilian population of [[spoiler:Junction Station]] is to be used as lab samples as the Nameless attempt to discover [[spoiler:an efficient way to eradicate humanity.]]

** Literature/{{Desperation}}: "You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand. Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel? Sometimes he makes us live."

** The final fate of [[spoiler:David, the SixthRangerTraitor]]. Instead of killing him, the Animorphs trap him permanently in rat morph and abandon him on a [[SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere barren island]]. Keep in mind that rats [[FridgeHorror only have a lifespan of two to three years]].

* {{Room 101}} in ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', where prisoners are tortured with their greatest fear and psychologically broken.

* Turns up a couple of times in ''Literature/TheBelgariad'':

* ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'': Being separated from your [[OurSoulsAreDifferent daemon]], or having your mind and soul eaten by a Spectre. Later, Lord Asrael and Mrs. Coulter are [[spoiler:doomed to fall forever with the Metatron without ever dying.]]

* In ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', Maedhros is hung from a cliff by his right hand for years. Being an elf it would never end, until a force of arms broke one of the links that was keeping him trapped, such a link would only be of the chain or his own body that prevented him from. Morgoth also inflicts this on Húrin, by cursing his children and forcing him to watch as the curse destroys their lives.
** Ar-Pharazôn, the last king of Númenórë, and his army are ghosts buried forever under a landslide just outside Valinor, unable to rest in peace or leave the world, though human souls are designed to leave and remaining forever eventually becomes unbearable torment. One wonders if he'll have learned his lesson about immortality by the time the world ends.
** Morgoth may have marred every aspect of Arda and the physical world that it belongs to, but he has no power at all in the rest of Ea which lies beyond the doors of Night. He has been left imprisoned and mutilated there till the end of time, the only concrete thing drowning in the nothingness that he embraced.
** As for the fallen Maiar who have been seduced to his service in exchange of power, they have nowhere to go if they lose their physical avatars that keep them anchored to the physical plane. They are more or less reduced to powerless shadows of malice, both incapable to reincarnate themselves and unworthy to return to Eru through death like all mortals will. This is best demonstrated with both Sauron and Saruman who make a last futile attempt to cling on to something. Sauron spends his last moments looming over the Free People but the hand that he manifests as, gets blown away and dissolves into nothing.

** Whoever creates a Horcrux and [[spoiler: dies without true repentance which would restore his soul, will have the pieces of his soul, mutilated and trapped in limbo for all eternity, unable to pass on. Tom ends up suffering from this fate and true to this trope, ''it will never end''. He has sealed his fate in a way that would be too horrific to consider if it could happen to anyone nicer.]]
** This is the moral of the tale of the Deathly Hallows, and that of the Master of Death. If one cannot accept the futility of escaping death or accept the passing of a loved one, death will be a grueling bastard. However, if one accepts death as an inevitability, and that there are far worse fates than dying, death will greet you as an old friend. The Master of Death, the one who gains possession of all three of the Deathly Hallows, does not become immortal, but instead accepts that death is inevitable, and does not fear it [[spoiler:-- like Harry.]]

* The fate of several alien races and several prominent human and posthuman characters throughout the ''Literature/XeeleeSequence''.

* In ''[[Literature/{{Kane}} Darkness Weaves]]'' BackStory king Netisten Maril finds out that his wife Efrel has been cheating on him and plotting to kill him. He sentences her to be dragged by an enraged bull through the streets of his capital. This is meant as CruelAndUnusualDeath but being EldritchAbomination, Efrel survives -- but is heavily mutilated, a living wreck with ruined body, with only one eye to remind of her former beauty.

* In ''Literature/AllTomorrows'', the [[AlienInvasion Qu]] deliver [[TransformationHorror these in spades]] to the [[GenocideTropes entire race of]] [[HumanSubspecies Star People]]. The Qu were rebuilding the universe into [[RealityWarper their image]] and saw the Star People as threats to their vision due to their creativity and ability to construct. The Qu decided to modify the DNA of every Star Person they saw in order to turn them into [[BalefulPolymorph less intelligent mutants]]. Many of these were [[BodyHorror highly disfigured]], some unable to even [[AndIMustScream speak or move]].

* Being an oar-slave (or a harem member) in ''Literature/TheSeaHawk''.

* ''Literature/TheHoldersSeries'' involves this for every single one of the Objects in almost every variety of torture imaginable. Everything from AndIMustScream to MindRape, and [[UpToEleven worse.]] Made particularly bad because most of the time [[LuckBasedMission there's no way to avoid failure]].