My name is Richard. I’m husband to a beautiful wife and the lucky father of a crafty eight-year-old boy, Thomas. I work from home, as a freelancer in the software field. My wife Lauren is a teacher at our local high school.

Since my wife works late hours, I take care of our son during the day and help him with his homework. I enjoy nothing more than spending time with him, but it can get tough when deadlines are approaching.

The day Thomas introduced me to Henry and Marie, I couldn’t have been happier. Thomas was a bit shy and reserved, but he seemed to have made his first close friends. The two of them told me they’d moved here with their parents about a month ago and lived in a house down the street. Henry was in Thomas’ class, Marie was a year younger. For the rest of the afternoon, the kids played outside in the backyard, while I kept a watchful eye on them from the office window.

I met Mrs. Green briefly in the early evening when she came to get her kids. It wasn’t long before Lauren, being her usual social self, invited the Greens over for dinner. They were a friendly, well-educated couple in their early forties. They’d waited to have kids to focus on their respective careers. John Green was a lecturer at a university, his wife Lisa was a department store manager at a pharmaceutical company. We got along well enough, and they shared our delight at the kids playing together.

From that day onward, Thomas would often stay at the Green’s house to play with Henry and Marie. John and Lisa assured me things would be all right. They had an elderly maid who picked up the kids after school and watched over them until they got home.

It wasn’t long before Thomas first told us about Doggie, the Green’s family dog. From his tales it sounded like the dog was enormous, so we assumed it was a St. Bernard or a similar breed. At the moment, Thomas said, they kept the dog in an indoor kennel because he was sick. Soon enough the conversation shifted to other topics, like school and games.

During the next few weeks, Thomas would often talk about Doggie. He seemed to adore him and told us about petting him and playing with him. My wife and I considered getting him a puppy for his birthday.

There was one thing that was weird though. In all the time I’d been over at the Green’s house, I’d never seen a dog. Sure, Thomas had told me the dog was staying inside, but it still seemed odd. Well, who knows, maybe the dog was old. What did I know about dogs, anyway?

One day, not too long ago, my son came up to me, a worried look on his face. He rambled on about Doggie and I learned that the old chap seemed to be really ill. He didn’t even get up to play with them anymore. Thomas pleaded with me to talk with the Greens about the dog and I assured him I would.

I hate to admit it, but I pushed it off. It wasn’t that I ignored it, but at the time deadlines were coming up and I was buried with work.

Looking back now, I wish I’d acted sooner.

Three days later my son came home crying. He rushed into my office and threw himself into my arms. It surprised me to see him since he was supposed to be playing at the Green’s home that afternoon. Confusion turned to worry when he told me that Doggie had gotten free and had bitten him. When I saw the bloody wound on his arm, I drove him to the hospital right away.

The doctor informed me that the wound was tiny and everything would be fine before he gave me a probing look.

“Now tell me, Mr. Marshall, where did your son get this injury?” he demanded of me.

“My son was attacked by a neighbor’s dog, what’s the problem here?”

What the doctor said next still makes me shiver.

“Well, Mr. Marshall, those bite marks on your son’s arm, they don’t resemble those of a dog, but a human adult.”

I stared at the man in utter confusion.

“What the hell are you,” I started but broke off. Doggie had bitten him, but then those bite marks… dear God.

We called the cops then and there. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but nothing I could’ve imagined would even come close to reality.

What they found at the Green’s House that afternoon was a sheer and utter nightmare.

Doggie wasn’t a dog, but a young man the Green’s must’ve kidnapped and held captive for whatever twisted reason.

The young man was missing his tongue and the vocal cords, so he wasn’t able to speak or make sounds at all. His hands were mutilated and utterly useless. The poor guy couldn’t even stand up anymore because of the damage done to his muscles and tendons. I’m thankful I never saw what they did to his face, but I heard it barely resembled that of a human being anymore. What makes this entire thing even weirder was the dog costume. They’d dressed the guy up like a dog and kept him in a basement cell.

When the cops came over to take my statement, it took some time to convince Thomas that he wasn’t in trouble. The police said they needed some help to find out a little more about Doggie and why he’d bitten him. Of course, we didn’t tell him what was really going on.

He told us that Marie and Henry had found Doggie by accident. The door to the basement was locked at all times; it was off-limits, their parents had said. One day though, the kids had discovered a secret way to enter the basement. It was later confirmed to be a construction error. When their parents weren’t home, Henry and Marie had explored their new house and made their way into the basement. The room Doggie was in had no light and they kept him in what the kids thought to be an indoor kennel.

The kids assumed he was down there because he was sick and their parents tried to help the dog get better. They’d told Thomas their parents often did this type of thing. Thomas told us, shuffling his feet, that it was supposed to be a secret. They’d get in trouble if their parents knew they went down there.

Thomas had been worried about the dog though, so he told me and Laura about him. It was stupid, he said, that he wasn’t allowed to talk about him.

When the police asked if the elderly maid knew anything, Thomas laughed. The old woman was gullible. They’d tell her they were playing upstairs and waited till she was busy with the housework.

After that, we sent him to his room, and the police told me what must’ve happened that day and how lucky my son had been.

Thomas, Henry, and Marie had snuck into the basement once more to play with Doggie. At the time the man was suffering from a high fever and multiple infected wounds. He was delirious. He didn’t react to the kids anymore, so they opened the kennel to see if he was all right. That’s when the man saw his chance and went on a rampage.

He first went for Thomas, who was the closest. Luckily though, he wasn’t able to use his jaws anymore, only giving Thomas a shallow bite. This allowed my son to get away.

Henry and Marie weren’t so lucky. The girl was beaten to death. The boy was maimed beyond recognition and is still in critical condition. In his frenzied state, the man had thrown himself against the locked basement door till it broke open. In the course, he’d severely bruised his already weak body. On the stairs, he ran into the poor maid who must’ve come down because she’d heard the kids’ screams. She survived with only light injuries but suffered severe head trauma. She’s still unconscious at this point.

The tortured man didn’t get far. He suffered from a heart attack and died right there in the Green’s backyard.

Mr. and Mrs. Green were arrested on the same day. I heard they were both charged with multiple offenses, including homicide. They are currently under investigation in at least two more missing person cases suspected to be homicides.

To this day, the identity of the man that Thomas referred to as Doggie as well as the Greens’ motif remain completely unknown.

I’m terrified. I’m trying to make sense of what happened last night, but I can’t seem to. Things happened, strange things, but my memory is hazy and scrambled up, but the implications…

All right, I’ve got to calm down and start at the beginning.

Last night my two best friends and I had our monthly night out. We are in our mid-thirties now, so we don’t party as hard as we used to. We’ve all got our obligations and jobs now, well at least two of us do. Once a month though, we have some fun and go wild. For old time’s sake, you could say.

Back in the day we went out almost every night and did pretty much everything you’ve got to do at least once at a party. Even now, as you can imagine, things can get a bit crazy when we get together.

We’ve been thrown out of clubs or bars, got into fistfights with bouncers, and my friend Steve once woke up in the drunk tank in the next city over. We still talk about that one.

What happened last night was an entirely different story.

We met up at Martin’s place. Most people would call him a free spirit. He’s an amateur musician and doesn’t have a steady job otherwise. He works here and there to make ends meet but spends most of his time playing music.

We meet up at his place because of his outstanding sound system and his record collection. There’s nothing better than listening to some good old rock music, exchanging stories, and having a few beers to get the night going.

Yesterday Steven brought us a little surprise.

“It’s nothing too dangerous, just like E,” he said as he handed me and Martin a small orange pill.

We sat together a bit longer and had another beer before we went out. The drug kicked in right when we’d entered the first club and let me tell you, whatever that shit was, it was crazy. We had an absolute blast.

Unfortunately, though, it was cut short when Martin got into some trouble with a group of other people. For once we opted against escalating the situation and left.

We were all damn high, and the alcohol didn’t help one bit. As we stumbled through the streets, we had no clue where the hell we were or even went.

I remember us stopping at a late-night store or gas station to get a few more beers, but that’s about it.

We tried to find a new club or bar to hang out at and eventually ran into a group of other people. They had a thick Eastern European accent and, like us, were out to party.

I don’t have the slightest clue what we talked about, but they told us about some crazy club nearby. We had to check it out. Of course, we went, the goddamn idiots we are.

From here on out, things got hazy. We followed our new friends down a few darker streets and back alleys. Normally all this would’ve been a red flag, but because of Steven’s damned drugs none of us realized what was going on.

I don’t know how much time had passed, but we finally entered some old, rundown building and went into some sort of basement club.

The place was bizarre and the best word to describe the atmosphere is Lynchian. Sweat, alcohol, and other, stranger things were heavy in the air. The entire club was gloomy and only illuminated by dim red light bulbs that dangled from the ceiling. The music that played was as strange as the rest of the club; a mixture of low psychedelic ambient and drone music.

People were sitting on the floor everywhere, huddled together in groups, some wearing grotesque outfits. Here and there people looked up, scanning us as we entered, but most seemed to be trapped in their own world.

I remember seeing a person in a fur suit, sitting in a corner shaking and shivering. Others stood around him giggling at whatever was happening to him.

I can’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. The further we went in, the weirder things got. I saw people sitting around a giant abomination of a bong. Others, nearby, seemed to have unrestrained sex right there on the floor.

Looking back, we should’ve left the place then and there. Sure, we’d done our share of weird shit and we sometimes took E, but we never went too far down the rabbit hole. This place there seemed to be the very bottom of it.

Before long we reached a bar, or at least someone handing out drinks. I don’t think we paid for them, but I got no clue.

The next thing I remember is that Steve and I were led down a long hallway. Martin was gone, but because of the state I was in I didn’t worry about a damn thing. Hell, I got mad at him for getting another drink without us.

The guy who led us down the hallway was talking, but I’ve got no idea if he was even talking to us.

The hallway went on forever and there were so many doors. I got dizzy staring at one after another, and for a moment I wondered if we’d entered a brothel. Finally, one of the doors was pushed open, and we were ushered inside.

A few minutes passed, and soon a group of other people joined us. It might have been the people we arrived with, but, again, I’m not sure.

An attractive woman entered soon after, started dancing and I thought it was just a strip club, but god was I wrong.

More and more drinks were served and I’m sure there wasn’t just alcohol in them.

Things had been hazy before, but now they’d become surreal and turned into a delirious fever dream.

Someone was holding a camera, filming us and the room while hollering and laughing like a madman.

Suddenly a figure wearing a gas mask was in the room, having come out of freaking nowhere. It was the funniest thing for me. I giggled and burst out laughing. Steven was the same.

Then another person was pushed into the room. This one was wearing something as well, but I’m not sure what it was. It might have been some sort of mask or just a bag with holes for eyes.

I don’t know how or why it started, but soon everyone pushed the second person into the center of the room.

Suddenly there was blood, and I saw the figure wearing the gasmask beating the other person to a bloody pulp. Thinking about it makes me nauseated. Everything about it was so damn wrong, fucked up, but back then I thought it was hilarious.

The images, the violence, the blood, it was all real, but my mind reacted to it like a freaking Looney Tunes cartoon.

The fight, if you can even call it that, didn’t last long.

At one point gasmask stood there, covered in blood, screaming like a maniac. The other person was on the floor and soon someone dragged him away, leaving a trail of blood behind.

I like to tell myself that it was all fake, an act and that it was the drugs that conjured up the ghastly images, but I can’t, I really can’t.

I don’t know when or how I left the place. When I came back to my senses, it was already light out and I stumbled down a random street in the outskirts of the city. I felt like absolute shit and on the hour-long trip back home I threw up more than once.

I can’t tell what part of the evening was even real. However, Steven too remembers the club, the room, and at least part of what happened there.

This is not all though, there’s one more thing that’s more disturbing than anything else. Neither of us could get into contact with Martin.

All my messages are unread and no one has heard a damned thing about him. I tried his landline repeatedly, but it keeps ringing endlessly.

I’m shaking whenever I think of last night, of what I saw. Had we stumbled into some fucked up snuff club and watched an actual murder?

And what has happened to Martin? Why can’t I shake off this awful feeling about him? There’s something in the back of my mind, something I saw or heard, but I can’t seem to grasp it.

It’s this lingering feeling that tells me it had been no other than my friend who’d been murdered right in front of us.

Many people look back at their time at university with fond memories. For me, it’s different. My time at university will always be overshadowed by an incident that happened in my third year.

I was an IT major and the first thing I can tell you is that all the clichés about IT students are true.

The cliché nerd with the button-down shirt spending all weekend playing with Linux kernels and compilers? Check. The socially awkward outcast who sweat and shook whenever people, even worse girls, talked to him? Yep, seen those too.

Now don’t get me wrong, most of my fellow students were nice. Hell, quite a few of them were much smarter than me. It’s just that they were all a tad bit too weird for me.

Stephen was one of them. He was a nice enough guy, but he always struck me as a bit strange. I have no way of knowing it, of course, but he might have been autistic. He didn’t seem to have any actual interests and spent most of his free time in front of his computer. Here he’d tinker with whatever strange, cryptic software he was into at the moment. I never saw him go to a bar or a party and he showed no interest in girls or guys for that matter. For all I know, he might have been asexual.

How do I know all this about him? Well, at the start of my third year, I shared an apartment with him and two other people.

One was an English major named Christopher. The other was a good friend of mine, Peter, who majored in science.

Originally Peter and I had planned to rent a place for just the two of us. The rent in our city was too high though, so we had no other option than to room with other people.

At the time I was working on a project with Stephen. As I said, he seemed an okay enough guy, so I hit him up with mine and Peter’s idea. After some early hesitation, he soon picked me up on my offer.

Things started well enough. During our first week, we all hang out together, shared a few drinks, and watched a couple of movies together.

I could already tell, though, that Peter wasn’t too fond of Stephen.

There was an unspoken truth between the two of them. Peter tolerated the weird IT student, and Stephen, in turn, ignored him.

Before long, though, the two of them started to antagonize each other in more or less subtle ways. It was mostly ridiculous pranks. A hidden alarm clock that would ring in the middle of the night, a prank call here and there, those types of things. It was all so childish, but it gave me a couple of good laughs. I only hoped things didn’t escalate any further.

It was two months since we’d moved in when I saw Stephen with a box filled with all sorts of weird items.

“Hey, Stephen, what’s all that?” I asked as I approached him.

“Oh, eh, it’s nothing,” he answered with a nervous look on his face and hurried back to his room.

I hadn’t seen most of the box’s contents, but I could’ve sworn I saw a freaking voodoo puppet. I couldn’t believe it and chuckled to myself. The pure image of him sitting in his room, poking it with needles hoping it would work was hilarious.

He must’ve read about it on Reddit, or hell, even 4chan. I knew he was a weird guy, but this was a little too weird, even for him. Or a little too dumb, I wasn’t sure.

A few days after I’d seen it though, things got a lot stranger.

“Hey man, you got any Paracetamol or something?” Peter asked me out of the blue.

“Don’t think so, what’s up?”

“Ah well, fuck it then, got those freaking headaches for a while now, but it’s probably just a cold.”

Things didn’t get better for him though. Soon enough he not only complained about headaches but a general dizziness and back pains.

“Maybe you should go to the doctor,” I started, but he cut me off right away.

“Nah it’s gonna be fine. Might be the stress of those damned exams coming up.”

“Yeah, but this has been going on for a while now, hasn’t it?”

He gave me a frustrated look before he sighed. “All right, if things aren’t any better once exams are over I’m going to get it checked out.”

I had completely forgotten about Stephen’s voodoo puppet. One day, though, when I got home I saw him tinkering with it in the hallway. He was pushing nails into its back and head before shaking it violently. As soon as he noticed me he hid it behind his back and struck up an awkward conversation with me.

“Did you know that they released this new Linux update?”

“What?”

“I’m installing it now, it got some cool extra features, you want to see it?”

“Nah, I’m good, got to finish my math homework, anyway.”

“Oh, okay.”

With that, he hurried back to his room.

For a moment I stood there staring at the closed door to his room. That had been the freaking voodoo puppet, hadn’t it? Then I shook my head and laughed. This was ridiculous, there was no freaking way this was anything but a coincidence.

Still, I couldn’t help but be glad that I’d never gotten on his bad side.

I eventually told Peter about the voodoo puppet. He burst out laughing and told me that Stephen was a freaking idiot, but I could tell he was a little freaked out. In the end, he sighed and said he was too busy to deal with any of his antics at the moment.

A few days later, things got a bit out of hand and might very well have gone physical if Christopher hadn’t been around.

Peter had wanted to make himself some coffee, only to find Stephen sitting in the kitchen. He was toying with the damn voodoo puppet, happily poking it with needles. When Peter confronted him about it, Stephen muttered to himself, staring at his feet.

As Peter proceeded to yell at him, Christopher entered the kitchen to see what all the ruckus was about. Right at this moment Stephen hurried away, clutching onto his silly little puppet.

Similar incidents took place over the next weeks. Peter didn’t get much better and Stephen continued to annoy him. He’d stumble into him in the hallway or find his way into the kitchen when Peter was preparing meals. And he was always holding the voodoo puppet in his hands.

It was ridiculous, and I was sure he was just fucking with Peter. He must’ve found out about his headaches, so he’d gotten himself this stupid puppet. Another childish little prank, but this time Peter had fallen for it.

At the time all of this happened, I’d taken a bit of a break from my studies. My last semester had been hell. Between studying for exams, project work, and my part-time job, I’d barely enough time to sleep. So this semester I’d focused on nothing more than a few presentations and a handful of extracurricular activities.

So my semester break was actually this, a break. For the first time in a while, I’d enough time to hang out with friends and enjoy summer.

One night I was out much longer than usual and when I made my way back it was already long past midnight. Knowing that everyone else was still preparing for exams, I entered the apartment as quietly as possible.

As I tiptoed to my room, I noticed that Peter’s door was cracked. The light was out, but I could see a figure rummaging in the dark.

“Peter, you all right?” I called out to him in a quiet voice but got no answer.

I was worried instantly, considering how long he’d been sick. I turned on the light in the hallway and pushed open the door to his room. What I saw made me stumble back a few steps before a surprised cry escaped my mouth.

There was someone else in the room and at first, I suspected it was a burglar. A moment later, though, I recognized the figure. It was Stephen. He was completely naked, was wearing some weird fetish mask, and clearly had an erection. Behind him I saw Peter, lying on the bed, his lower half naked as well.

For a few moments, I couldn’t move as my brain tried to decipher the weird scene in front of me. Christopher soon appeared, cursing about the noise before he saw what was going on.

No one made a sound. Then Stephen freaked out, started yelling and screaming at us incoherently before he rushed back to his room.

It was at this point that we realized that Peter was out cold.

We called the cops immediately. After Stephen didn’t open the door to his room, the officers kicked it in, handcuff him and took him away.

When Peter woke up, he felt dizzy as usual, had a splitting headache, and the same back pains that had plagued him for more than a week. He was taken to the hospital immediately.

What they found out was that Peter had been drugged. Not only tonight, but ever since Stephen had gotten the damned voodoo puppet. The cops swept the entire apartment. They found several narcotics in Stephen’s room as well as in Peter’s food. At the hospital, it was determined that those were the reason for the constant headaches and dizziness.

The reason for the back pains is still unknown. They assumed it had been caused by whatever Stephen did to him during the night when he was out cold.

Fortunately, there seemed to have been no penetration or anything else of that nature.

I don’t know why Stephen did it. Maybe it was some twisted attraction towards Peter or he was, frankly said, nuts.

Peter stayed at the hospital for a few more days and eventually he pressed charges. Stephen got in a lot of trouble and was convicted on several charges, including sexual assault and possession of drugs.

Only after I’d given my statement, I understood why Stephen must’ve gotten the damned voodoo puppet.

It was nothing but a charade to confuse the rest of us and distract us from what was really going on.

Sure, none of us believed it was real for even a second, but we still wondered about it, just like he wanted us to.

And in turn, no one suspected what was going on, or what the real cause of Peter’s affliction was.

As you all know, I’m a fiction writer. These days most of my stories belong to the horror genre, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Today, as well, I’m not here to talk about serial killers, shapeshifters, or infernal church organs. No, today, I want to talk a bit about writing, writing fiction to be precise.

Writing was always important to me. I grew up with the tales of the Brothers Grimm and stories from Greek mythology. For as long as I can think, fictional stories had a place in my heart. It was only natural for me to write stories of my own.

When I first got on the internet, it was a whole new world for me. Everything was new and exciting. Before long I scurried the World Wide Web for fictional stories and places to share my own.

I found many of those places, some bigger, other smaller. It made me happy to see that so many people still enjoy the written word in these times of perpetual distraction and cheap entertainment.

During the years I’ve read hundreds of fictional stories on the internet. I worked my way through countless tales of science-fiction and fantasy before I fell in love with the horror genre.

There’s one thing I noticed though. Many writers make one grave mistake:

They don’t pay enough attention.

Not to their writing, per se, but to the world around them. As a writer, you have to look closer. You have to see, to watch and, of course, to learn.

The reason is simple. A writer has to tell the truth. If you don’t look at the world around you, you won’t be able to tell the truth about it. In turn, your readers won’t be able to see what you want to show them.

While I read quite a few brilliant stories, many by writers far more talented than me, the majority lacked the above qualities. Things don’t feel real and I wasn’t able to create a vivid picture in my mind. All I could see was a meshed up blur of half-truths.

Great writing is different, much different, but it also takes much more effort.

You see, if I want to write about nature, for example, I take a walk before I sit down to write. I look at the grass, let my hands slide through it to feel each blade. I study the strange patterns of the tree bark and watch how each leaf is shaken slightly differently by the wind. Once I get back, I put all those images into my story.

That’s what it takes to paint a vivid picture in your reader’s mind.

The same holds true for all sorts of activities. If one of your characters is a musician, but you never held an instrument, you won’t be able to paint a clear picture of playing music.

When it comes to research, people go to Wikipedia, YouTube, or talk to someone knowledgeable in the field. This is not enough to put things down as they are. There will always be something missing.

I once wrote a story about a painter, but somehow, it all felt wrong and stilted. Even after reading various pages on Wikipedia and watching videos on YouTube, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I didn’t know enough.

The problem was that I didn’t know what it was like to be a painter.

Eventually, I headed out to a crafts store nearby. I got myself some paints, a variety of different brushes, and set out to paint my neighborhood. The result was an embarrassingly bad painting. After I finished it, though, I understood how complex painting truly was. I had learned that the strokes of the brush had to be delicate and how important the amount of paint was you used.

After this experience, writing the story became much easier. The story felt real, alive, and most important of all, true. It was an overwhelming feeling, and the story was one of the best I’d ever written. I even remember the editor of the publication asking me if I was, by chance, a painter myself.

This took place a few years ago and ever since then I held true to one certain principle.

I’d only write about things I’d done before, knew about, or was willing to try out for the story. It didn’t mean that I had to become a singer or work as a chef to write about those things. It only meant that I had to try those things out on my own and try to get them done to the best of my ability.

There was one obvious downside, though. It restricted my choice of topics and it limited my output considerably. I didn’t mind though. The quality of my work improved, and I soon learned that quality always wins over quantity.

As good as things sounded, there was one time when things took a turn for the worse.

At the time, I’d been dating a girl for a year. We were quite a good match and things worked out well. I was always pressed on money though. So I accepted a few questionable commissions. One of those was an erotica story about a rather weird sexual fetish. I was a little deterred at the prospect of writing smut, but they were willing to pay me quite a bit of money.

I won’t elaborate on what I was writing about, but it took quite a bit to convince my girlfriend to try it out. The biggest problem was, I didn’t have any experience writing this type of story. I didn’t want to miss out on the payment, so I ended up pressing her to repeat the entire thing a few more times over the week. She complied, but I could tell that she hated every second.

At the end of the week, I sent out one of my finest pieces yet, but also my girlfriend. She couldn’t deal with me anymore. She’d been annoyed at my habit of trying out weird things to write about them. The last straw was to get her involved in it. She told me she felt disgusted with herself and didn’t want to deal with my eccentricities anymore.

I guess it was for the best. She was never the type to understand what true art was about.

After the break-up, I was heartbroken, as you can expect, but also excited. It meant I could try out a few different things.

Writing about sex had a certain edge to it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never write smut or erotica for a living, but I had to admit, it was exciting.

For all the downsides the internet has, it’s still man’s greatest invention. There are so many weird, little niches, and finding a girl who’d be willing to help me out wasn’t too hard. She liked that I was a writer and was into quite a few strange things.

This chapter of my life didn’t last long though. I wrote a few brilliant stories, but the weirder the sex got, the more of a strange aftertaste it left.

Before long, I closed this strange chapter of my life for good.

What I didn’t give up on, though, were my principles. From this point onward I did other, questionable things.

At one point I accepted a story commission about a drug dealer. I knew that one of my friends sold weed and other fashion drugs to college students in town. After some back and forth and me paying him a bit of money, he allowed me to follow him along.

Things took a turn for the worse though when he got into an argument with a group of troublemakers. The entire thing escalated, and he got beaten up right in front of me. Not a great night, I can tell you. Still, there was something about the violence, about the blood. I’d read so many stories online and while they beat up my friend, I understood what those writers weren’t getting right. They’d never seen true violence, never seen actual blood flowing.

At another time I helped a friend who owned a night club in a rougher area of town. I spent the better part of the night working with the bouncers. We handled a few drunk guests and even got into a fight with a group of people who weren’t willing to leave yet. The following day I wrote a story about my experiences. Again, the editor commended me for my writing. What he wondered about was that I described the breaking of a bone as a wet snap and not a crack. Well, what can I tell you, that’s exactly what it sounded like.

After those two events, I finally wrote my first horror stories. I guess there was some part of me, something hidden inside the back of my brain that had enjoyed the violence I’d seen.

It wasn’t long before a friend of mine got curious about my shift towards the horror genre. I told him I wanted to try out a few things, and that it was nothing but morbid curiosity.

As I said before, many of the horror stories I read online lack the attention to detail. They don’t go the necessary extra mile, to tell the truth.

I on the other hand are more than willing. After all, it’s the core principle of my art.

There are so many things I’m eager to write about and I’m sure, if I get my hands a little dirty, they will come out just right.