Line #20 NightmareFuel/SkeletonCrew


1	* "Survivor Type": A surgeon gets stranded on an island with only some powdered heroin, a couple of knives and the clothes on his back. In order to stay alive, he kills and eats a few seagulls he managed to catch, but he breaks his foot eventually. So he needs to amputate, and realizes afterwards [[{{Autocannibalism}} that there's another way to keep himself alive.]] By the end of the story, he's cut off (''and eaten'') his legs, along with his earlobes. The story ends with this last diary entry, with the implication being that he's desperate and hungry enough to ''eat his own hands'', which, as a surgeon, he has been taking excellent care of for the entire story.
2	** ''"lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers." Brrr....''
3	* ''The Raft'': two college guys and their girlfriends go for a spur-of-the-moment swim at a remote lake. When they get to the raft in the middle of the lake, they see what looks like a dark patch of oil in the water. Needless to say, it isn't oil, but rather a strange creature, something akin to a giant slime mold, that dissolves and absorbs people. The tone makes it horribly creepy to begin with, but the idea of waiting alone, trapped, and without hope of escape from an alien death... . The way he describes the deaths is absolutely horrific.
4	** ''"hair her hair HER HAIR IS IN THE OH GOD IN THE WATER HER HAIR"''
5	** There's also the horrific way it kills Deke, dragging his entire body down ''[[{{Squick}} through a tiny crack between two planks in the deck of the raft!'']]
6	* ''The Monkey'': another short story, which utilizes and heightens every trope you've ever seen connected to those creepy [[CymbalClangingMonkey monkeys-with-cymbal toys]].
7	** ''Jang-jang-jang-jang'', who's dead this time?
8	** Not to mention the fact that Hal tries to get rid of it by throwing it down a dry well ''and it comes back'', not just to Hal, but to his kids.
9	** Also the strong implication that it can mess with peoples' minds to encourage them to keep it near them and wind up its key. (The fact that Hal never even considers the option of ''destroying'' the monkey - taking it to bits, or at least removing its arms so it can't clang its cymbals anymore - suggests the FridgeHorror possibility that it's influencing him ''all the time'', not just when it tempts him to wind it.)
10	** It's also hinted to be sadistic about killing people, purposely targeting people close to the protagonist after he stops it from clapping its cymbals once.
11	* There's a short story ''Word Processor of the Gods''. While the story itself isn't that scary, instead working the angle of drama, look at modern social networking. The pressing of a single key can effectively change reality. Imagine the power, or even the knowledge, if it were to be used by someone now.
12	* And then there's "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut." The eponymous dimension is literally accessed by wormholes. Now imagine if you couldn't find a wormhole out, or the car crashed. Given the creatures of Literature/TheTalisman, Literature/TheMist, Literature/FromABuick8, Franchise/TheDarkTower series, The Jaunt and nearly every other inter-dimensional tale by Stephen King, we can only assume that such an event would not end well. Mrs. Todd drives maniacally enough to continually find new wormholes, each new route displays a new forest layout, and Mrs. Todd is obviously so warped from her experience that she might purposefully trap herself (and any passengers) in it. If you stumbled upon one of these routes naturally, you wouldn't sleep for decades. If you were guided by the only actual ''expert'', you run a high risk of not being alive if you get out.
13	* A number of stories: "The Reaper's Image", especially the ending with the narrator waiting for his buyer to reappear. "Uncle Otto's Truck" had the eponymous vehicle ''slowly'' creeping up on Otto until it was ''right outside his fucking window''. His death was also pretty fucked. And "Morning Deliveries" had the most fucked up milkman I have ever seen. To expand on Uncle Otto's Truck: The narrator Quentin's uncle Otto one day becomes incredibly paranoid of a truck he and a partner had used for logging... and that he'd likely used as a murder weapon to kill said partner. He inexplicably builds a one-room house across from it in spite of being very wealthy, and slowly loses his mind as he perceives the truck getting closer and closer, as he attempts to convince the narrator it's getting closer. The narrator can see it... sometimes... and when he finds Uncle Otto dead, saturated in oil, a sparkplug shoved down his throat ([[NothingIsScarier no explanation for how it happened is ever given]]) he sees the truck right at the damn window.
14	* The [[EldritchAbomination various monstrosities]] of "The Mist".
15	* "Cain Rose Up", loosely based on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman Charles Whitman massacre]]. An extremely short tale, but a horrifying one nonetheless - especially since school shootings have become a greater part of the national consciousness.
16	* Spike Milligan of "Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)" manages to accomplish by how he leaves horrific things like venomous spiders and deadly gases in the dairy products he delivers ForTheEvulz.
17	* In "The Jaunt", a form of instantaneous two-portal teleportation is invented. It takes a fraction of a second to arrive at where you're going, but if you go through one portal to the other while conscious, it takes millions of years from your perspective--and you're alone the whole time. Anyone who goes through the Jaunt conscious either goes insane or dies when they finally emerge.
18	** If you drug a person unconscious before they go through the Jaunt, they'll come out the other end perfectly fine, physically and mentally. But Ricky, a curious young boy, holds his breath when the attendants give the gas so he can see The Jaunt for himself. The end result is that he turns into a white-haired, [[AgeWithoutYouth preternaturally-aged creature]] that claws out his own eyes while screaming about how it's longer than they think in there.
19	** The narrator also recalls several stories about the Jaunt that are too disturbing to tell his children. One involves a woman who was shoved, fully conscious, into eternal limbo by her husband, stuck between two Jaunt portals after he shut them both down. The man's attorney attempted to argue that he was not guilty of murder, as his wife was technically still alive, but the [[AndIMustScream horrifying implications]] of that argument led the jury to throw the book at him, leading to the man's conviction and execution.
20	** One of the first people to test the Jaunt, a death row convict, only managed to say ''"It's eternity in there,"'' before dying of a massive heart attack.
21	* Whatever the hell the title character in ''[[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Nona]]'' is. Either the [[UnreliableNarrator narrator]] had a psychotic break or it was DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu gone horribly wrong, [[TakeAThirdOption or both]].
22	* "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet":
23	** The tale itself, we never hear in details. What we know is it's about a father suffering a breakdown, who eventually murders his girlfriend and their kids on Christmas Eve. The editor compares it to a grimmer version of "The Lottery".
24	** Jane reveals that her husband Reg Thorpe has paranoid schizophrenia. That wouldn't be a problem if he didn't yell at any random person, believing they wanted to hurt his muse, a Fornit. Jane's life gets steadily worse over the story when Reg meets the editor narrating the tale; she has no idea that his story was canceled due to the magazine closing their fiction department, Reg gets the idea to cut off all the power, which of course makes chores harder to do. Her own parents say to get out of this situation because this is not healthy for her.
25	** The editor gets blackout drunk, becoming TheAlcoholic over the course of the story. He lets himself go, especially after his wife leaves him. The editor also says that he started to believe that electricity was affecting his brain. In the end, he takes the only copies of the story with him, driving while drunk, and ends up in the river. A HeroicBystander truck driver had to apply CPR, and he got committed when said driver and a few other bystanders found twelve bottles.

Context NightmareFuel / SkeletonCrew