Showing results for "sleep" in Anthologies & Short Stories

The relationship between sleep and storytelling is an ancient one. For centuries sleep has provided writers with a magical ingredient, a passage of time during which great changes miraculously occur, an Orpheus-like voyage through the subconscious daubed with the fantastic. But over the last 10 years, our scientific understanding of sleep has been revolutionised. No longer is sleep viewed as a time of simple rest and recuperation. Instead it is proving to be an intensely dynamic period of brain activity.

For fans of the oral history genre phenomenon World War Z, a worldwide plague of insomnia creates a devastating new apocalypse. Sleep Over is collection of waking nightmares, a scrapbook of the haunting and poignant stories from those trapped in a world where the pillars of society are crumbling, and madness is slowly descending on a planet without rest.

For four thousand years, the Guardships have ruled Canon Space - immortal ships with an immortal crew, dealing swiftly and harshly with any mercantile houses or alien races that threaten the status quo.But now the House Tregesser has an edge: a force from outside Canon Space offers them the resources to throw off Guardship rule.

A woman awakens in a grotesque, human-sized arcade game. A mysterious cigar box purchased at a farmer's market releases an ancient jinn who demands a replacement prisoner. An elderly woman possesses the terrifying power to inflict pain through handmade dolls. An exclusive restaurant's sinister secret menu includes murder-for-hire and harvested organs.

A young man awakes to find a hole to another dimension in his arm. A couple discovers a painting is more than the simple portrait it appears to be.  A woman whose cat ate something it definitely shouldn’t have. These are just a few of the unfortunate souls you'll meet Through the Mole Hole in the 28 terrifying, twisted, and thought-provoking tales. Do you dare take a peek at the worlds that lie on the other side of the mole hole?

An unlucky man falls upward into the sky. A disturbing dinner ritual begins with the family removing their left eyes and only grows worse from there… A woman encounters a mysterious entity that allows her to travel through time with gruesome consequences. A rapidly aging child with the ability to control minds forces her father into a nightmare of servitude. A man forms a deadly alliance with the intelligent parasite attached to his neck.

Lovecraftian themes abound in the tales of an intern at a madhouse and an illiterate madman. Slater, the madman whose unspeakable crimes led him to the madhouse, is continuously awakened in this story by surprisingly literate hallucinations of a glowing entity seeking revenge. Inspired by Slater’s uneducated background and the telepathic machine that he had made in his yesteryear, the intern delves deep into Joe Slater - who is receiving telepathic messages from a being of light.

Homo vigilis. Vigils. A new human species that does not need any sleep to live. Vigils never need to rest, they never feel tired and as opposed to the Sleepers - ordinary humans - they don’t tend to get sick. In addition, their sense of smell is perfect. They appear to be flawless, there´s nothing lacking…maybe except for the inability to dream. But who needs dreams for their everyday lives? A book about imagination being stronger than all knowledge, about dreams being more powerful than reality.

Delve into the unknown, as you too begin to question the nature of reality. This short story tale is an emotional roller coaster ride, with poignant, yet subtle inferences to notions of technocratic neo-feudal-like societies. Scottie is made to question everything he’s ever known, as he finds that his known reality literally fades into inexistence. Was he dreaming? Was he in a prison? What happens to Carolyn?