Heh, showing off an older piece of mine. It was inspired by H.R. Giger's "Begoetterung XI". I'd post a link to the painting, but it's not suitable for minors. Google it if you want. Giger was the guy who designed the alien from the movie called, ehm, Alien, btw. Brilliantly perverse. So, tell me what you think...

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Bad Machine
by Max Salnikov , 2004.

What is horror? Is it the realization of your potential for madness? Is it seeing someone you deeply care about turn into a freak, an enemy? In our days of cheap TV, comic book entertainment, horror is no longer a monster lurking in the shadows, ready to tear our throats apart. To this, you are prepared. It’s so CASUAL, it’s something you’ve seen on the screen. The concept of a monster, no matter how horrid, implies the necessity for a hero, the inevitability of “HAPPY END” written in block capitals when the credits roll.

This is my story.

And it doesn’t have a happy end.

Maybe writing this down is a consolation of sorts, I don’t know. Not that you’d believe me. Not when you all pay money for a finit dose of scares every time you go to see a horror flick. Not when alternative history author David Icke believes that a race of intergalactic lizard people, who have a base in the Grand Canyon, plotted to kill Princess Diana. You’re all children of a nuclear age.

Two days ago, I had a nightmare. I dreamt of a purple sky, a giant building towering above me, it’s dark metallic walls radiating depression. I never knew you can feel so FORSAKEN in a dream. A black opening at the foot of the edifice, calling my name.

In nightmares, every choice you make is wrong.

I woke up the moment I stepped inside the construction, screaming. I don’t remember the very last part of my dream, just the terror. The rest of it came to me in vivid detail, the purple sky, the scent of burnt grass. The emotion of fear. It revebrated throughout the rest of the day. Even when I was about to go to college, waiting for the bus, I still had the feeling of something being absolutely WRONG, the forgotten part of the dream haunting my senses.

The rest of that day went relatively normal, apart from the surreal intangible fantasy offending my logic, something I can not truly describe. Just a feeling. I got back home, I had a nice ham and cheese sandwich for dinner, spent some time over the net, read a novel. Went to sleep.

A mistake, perhaps. An inevitability.

That cold night, the dream came again. Only this time I was inside the building, confined in absolute nothingness limited only by the walls, the walls that seemed so LIVE. Not emptiness. Emptiness is when there’s no furniture. Nothingness. An improbability possible only within the wild depths of human imagination. Or so I thought. And in this nothingness, I was not alone.

She was so horrid, so strickingly beautiful. No words could possibly describe her appearance. The hypertrophied jaw, teeth to gnaw through flesh and bone, the milk white skin of an angel, the perfect breasts, the almost-innocent glow in her eyes. She told me she was a prisoner. Told me she knew I’d come.

This was no nightmare. A vivid dream, yes. A promise of sex, perhaps.

The princess, entrapped so many years ago, has just met the prince.

I lied. Obviously. Writing this down’s no consolation. It’s a warning, of sorts. Maybe the part of me that’s still human really does care whether your race lives or dies, whether each and every one of you continues your pointless popcorn-consuming existence. But then, as I already mentioned, you won’t ever believe me anyway.

Today, I bought an axe.

I think you are really talented. I like the lack of exaggeration, the sober style of the descriptions. Makes it more real.

hey, thanks for reading. i'm not too much into horror, actually, but Giger's art just made me uneasy enough to write this, heh. meh... experimenting with style and all. i'm probably better off posting flash fiction, though - short stories are (ironically) too long for an average off-the-net reader's attention span. heh.

You should team up with a painter that illustrates some aspects of your stories. You know, the text on one side, the painting on the other.

You are very, very, good. This and "Unchained" are both superbly written - you, as Zagibu said, don't exaggerate, yet you still manage to paint an amazing mental picture. Sequal, perhaps?

thanks, Nightwind. i've participated in a few collabs, but they all died, mainly due to the lack of dedication on my part.

here's some ANCIENT stuff from an abandoned project me and an extremely talented artist called Justin Stephenson started - it was about this girl who becomes undead, or something along the lines:



here's the cover he did for the first issue:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/6698662/

EDIT:

meh. was a good idea IMHO - too bad the actual plot was going nowhere. i mean, we just had an undead girl, a Victorian London set in an alternate reality, and a samurai-sword-wielding vampire for a plot.

Wow, the cover looks very promising. You should definatelyrevive your collaborations with that artist.