Nightmare Fuel / Bentley Little

• Pretty much any of Little's stories where he decides he's going to use satire and commentary as a theme instead of just straight up horror. He'll take a normal situation with small issues (big box stores, insurance policies, homeowner associations, charter schools, etc) and will start cranking the dial to make them more and more horrible, disgusting, perverted, and depraved, like something out of a nightmare, all the while having relative normal people find themselves in the middle of it (and often the victims of it). While it can come off as absurd and ridiculous, it can also comes off as immensely disturbing, as the question being asked is 'You accept this without blinking an eye, why don't you accept THIS? And if you don't accept it, how long would it take for you to speak up? And more importantly...what do you do if things are too late by the time you do and you no longer have the power to affect it?'
• The Resort. The book focuses on an exclusive 5-star hotel founded by a hedonist/sadist on a land already tainted by unimaginable evil. It's more horrible than it sounds. Needless to say creepy stuff happens there. But the resort, which apparently has a will of its own, uses some sort of mind control magic in order to smother the guests' will and make them stay even as they're witnessing one horror after the other: you can leave the hotel, but you won't want to. This is one resort you don't want to stay in.
• Dominion, has a bunch of creepy scenes. Starting from the first chapter, even, when babies in the basement chew their own umbilical cords off and attack and kill their father, and, later, when the main male character dreams about Penelope and sees her at the top of a staircase with her legs open, bleeding from her vagina down the stairs in a small stream, rather unconcerned. And the ending. The book is based on maenads bringing back the Greek gods and Dionysus, after all, so it's one long slow descent into horror.
• Various short stories also qualify:
  • First and foremost, we have "The Washingtonians" which starts off its nightmarish qualities with a discovered note revealing George Washington's cannibalism and his intent on devouring the children of the United States. It only gets worse when Mike's family is threatened by the Washingtonians into surrendering the note or facing a horrific death at their hands. (And they mean it as they gleefully inform Mike and his family about how Washingtonians had flayed John Hancock to death and devoured Thomas Jefferson alive.) Thankfully, this is one of few Little stories that ends with a semblance of a happy ending as Mike's family is saved by a historian and associates dressed as redcoats.
  • "Pop Star In the Ugly Bar" features a Madonna stand-in being horrifically assaulted and killed by the patrons of the eponymous bar. And sadly, they get away with it and plan to do the same to one of the detectives investigating the pop star's disappearance.

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