SPOOKTOBER DAY 8 – DEATH ITSELF
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  LIVE FEED, WRONG PLACE / WRONG TIME, MYSTERIOUS VOICE
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TEN OF SWORDS, REVERSED

TITLE:  OBSERVE

Premise:  I got an idea, but it’s not something I’d actually like to write, and I’d really prefer these all be ideas I’d be willing to write.  I’ll just get it off my chest.  Guy is in some altered state when turned into a zombie and gets locked-in syndrome while his body is doing zombie things – turning his girlfriend, eating his neighbors.  Try to have it be a metaphor for the way many of us feel the loss of control over our bodies as we’re dying.  It’s just too much of a nightmare for the main character, not something I want to imagine enough to spell it all out.

Ambiguously gendered person is in an endless series of low-key nightmares, using weak guns against buff werewolves, running from implacable killers, trying to hide after showing up for class naked (WRONG PLACE/TIME), etc.  The dreams have that end of the night feeling, when your narratives are consumed by the need to draw things to a close – to wake you up – but this just leads to waking up in different dreams, that subsequently get worse, fall apart, etc.  Through this all there is a sense of this being observed in third person (LIVE FEED), a narrator (MYSTERIOUS VOICE) who identifies closely with the main character, whose consciousness can sometimes be felt by them.

The Villain:  Gradually a sense emerges that there is another force in the dreams – a villain behind the buff werewolves and misfortunes.  Can the dreamer remember enough from one dream into the next to piece together the identity of the mysterious malefactor, and to beat them?

Horror Element:  Yes.  The narrator lives on another level of reality, watching all these dreams in third person, and knows the dreamer is both hero and villain in every scenario.  But the dreams get more intimate with them, until they realize it’s their own dreams they’re looking at – they’re every character that’s been seen thus far in the story.

This leads to a pause in torment (TEN OF SWORDS, REVERSED) when they turn off the monitors.  Are they actually waking up now?  No, but as they realize monitor world is just another dream, they meet a very sad woman who they sense is actually another real person.  They ask sad woman, “I know it all now; I know this is a dream.  What can I do?”

She says, “Just be glad you have a chance to try again.”  Implication: the choice is this perdition or nonexistence – they’re in a state akin to (DEATH ITSELF).
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, or fuss over this at all.  I used gemini to get the composition and openai to make it more convincing.  Making the source art, no matter how crude, really does help make these more distinctive.  I hope to do more drawings for them soon.

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