Twilight Tales from the Outer Limits of the Darkside

[Trollheart]

Title: "By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain"
Series: Creepshow
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella
Storyline: A family lives in fear of the new stepdad, a drunken, workshy bum who thinks he's the toughest in the county. The daughter is obsessed with a Nessie-like monster said to live in the lake, Champy, the beast of Lake Champlain. After an argument with her mother, Rose runs into the forest and down to the lake, where she finds the mysterious beast, beached and apparently dead. She tells her friend Thomas that her father was also convinced the creature was real, and died in its pursuit, everyone thinking he was crazy. Now she wants him to have the credit for its discovery.

Unfortunately, stepdaddy dearest has another idea: this thing is going to make him rich. No matter he didn't have any part in discovering it - didn't even believe it existed - who's going to say otherwise? Thomas fights him but the guy is a Vietnam vet and the kid is well outmatched. Then the real Champy appears: that's just her baby on the beach. Stepdad makes a tasty snack and then Champy takes her kid back into the water with her, along with all evidence of her existence.

Comments: Yeah it was all right I guess. Pretty basic and quite predictable.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Chronos"
Series: Dimension 404
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Will Campos, Dez Dolly, Daniel Johnson, David Welch

Storyline: Susan Hirch is in trouble. She's brilliant, but in order to graduate she has to write a paper, and she's more interested in watching a cartoon called Time Rider than writing. Now she has one day left. Her friend comes over and she goes to show him an episode of the show, which he has apparently never seen, and suddenly it no longer exists. Even her collection of merchandise from the show is gone. Odd things have been happening in the last few minutes: the door opened on its own, bins fell over for no reason, and she has smelled a strange aroma that her friend does not.

Suddenly, Time Rider appears. He says he's come from the future, that the cartoon that was based on him is vital to assist in turning young minds to science, and this includes the inventor of time travel, but now someone is erasing it from time. He takes Susan and her friend Alex on a time trip, four hours back into the past. There they walk in the door, invisible (so explained the mysterious self-opening door earlier; I love this shit!) and search her room for "anomalies". There they are attacked by Time Rider's arch-enemy Entropy (look, just go with it okay? The whole thing is silly but it's worth the ride in the end) who takes Time Rider's mem-eraser (anyone like to guess what its function is?) and is about to kill him when another Time Rider appears and drags him off, presumably from another time jump. Or something.

Now, as Rimmer from the double-double universe once said in Red Dwarf, from this point on things get a little confusing. So now we have, what, three versions of all three - Time Rider, Susan and Alex - running around. One of the Time Riders (not sure which one) comes hurtling out of I think a window of her house and crashes into the bins on the other side of the road, and so is explained the bins apparently falling over of their own accord. Next, Susan takes his time belt and jumps into the past, again, this time replacing the mem-eraser with her toy one, so that when Entropy uses it on Alex it doesn't function, she gets the drop on him and takes him into the timestream. With me so far? Tough: I'm barely keeping up myself.

She brings Entropy back and hands him to Time Rider. Everything connected with the show reappears, and he says cool, that's it, job done, thanks them and goes back to his own time. So end of episode, right? Well, we're only halfway in so no. Unseen by anyone, Entropy has taken off his power ring and left it on the bed, where Susan finds it after Time Rider has taken him back. She decides it should be returned to the authorities and so puts it on and they find themselves in 1995, at the headquarters of the cartoon company that made Time Rider. To her amazement everyone all but worships her; she is the one who invented time travel!

Except she's not. Not in this timeline, because she didn't hand in her paper, since she was so occupied helping Time Rider. Therefore she didn't graduate, therefore she could never study quantum physics and so on and so on so she never got to invent time travel, and now there's a temporal paradox going on, or as they like to call it here, a time breach. Meanwhile Entropy rescues himself (uh, don't ask; I think it will show it but my brain hurts) and vanishes.

Look, it really is an excellent episode. It's just that, well, when you start screwing around with timelines it's hard to keep up. I mean, chicken or egg, you know? And this is a whole lot more complicated. But Time Rider is disappointed with Susan. She lied to him, told him she had no homework before going on the adventure, when in fact she had possibly the most important homework anyone ever had to turn in: the whole future rides (sorry) on it. Now they have to buy her time (sorry again) to complete and turn in her paper.They need to distract her professor and keep him out of his office till she has time to complete and submit the paper.

But it doesn't go to plan, and she has to return to the past, but before she does she needs to use the mem-eraser so that she doesn't remember the show. And after that... well, it gets a little strange, but I think the idea is she buckles down and does the work without the show to distract her and I guess ends up completing the timeline and inventing time travel. Maybe. It's a little vague and a somewhat  odd ending.


Comments: A fun little story with a decent message about reaching your potential, played for laughs and nostalgia value but with a serious side, the idea of putting away childish things.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

ROUND FOUR, PART III: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART I

Title: "My Love"
Series: Room 104
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Mark Duplass
Storyline: An eldery couple check back into the motel room where they spent their honeymoon and try to rekindle the flame, but after 56 years of marriage, even Viagra is unequal to the task. But then shit gets real, as the wife passes away, and the husband's mind snaps a little. He talks to her as if she's still alive, talking to himself. (Trollheart's Theory: he's the one who's dead). He talks about how he found out she had been having an affair before they got married, and how, when she chose him, he was so grateful. Then he tells her he loves her and lies on the bed with her.

Comments: Again, not quite sure what to think. It's a touching little story for sure, but no element of genre in it at all. I don't understand the ending: did he die too? It doesn't make it clear. But it's a nice story and well acted as almost a one-man episode, like the first one.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Splinta Claws"
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Bede Blake
Storyline: Lawrence loses a special present his mother intends to give to her mother for Christmas. The grandmother is very ill, in hospital, and the present is her husband's ashes made into glass. Nice. Anyway, the kid and his friend Mikey decide to stay in the store after hours when he is thwarted getting the present back. A malfunctioning mechanical Santa is said to have gone berserk thirty years ago and blown off its hands, leaving only metal claws which were never replaced, just covered over.

That night the mechanical Santa attacks the kids, even though it has pulled its plug out and should no longer be able to operate. One of the kids knocks it over a balcony with a huge candy cane, but it's a Terminator and it won't be stopped. Now Lawrence realises it's after Mikey, its wiring having been screwed up after Lawrence tried to fix it earlier. Mikey has to act bad in order to stop the manic Santa droid chasing him. He then realises he has his mother's keycard - she works in the store - that can activate the doors and allow them to escape, but Lawrence has to go back for his grandmother's present. It's a bit vague, but it appears both deciding to be naughty save them. Maybe. Who knows? Bit of a stupid story.

Comments: Clearly written to try (emphasis on try) to make Christmas a scary thing, but I've taken scarier dumps. Plus it doesn't really resolve and leaves me with a feeling of uh, what?

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Whatever Happened to Peggy?"
Series: The Veil
Season:
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Stanley H. Silverman
Storyline: A girl wakes up with amnesia, with no reason for why this would be so. The doctor can't find anything wrong, and she tells him that when she and her mother went to Greenville for the first time yesterday, she felt as if she was coming home, even though they had never been there before. She says she feels as if she has to do something important, but has no idea what that would be, and mentions she heard a voice calling her, but couldn't make out who it was or what it was saying. The doctor suggests they return to Greenville, and then of course things only get weirder.

I mean, it's pretty easy at this stage to see what's happening. She's reliving, or has been possessed by the spirit of Peggy, a girl who lived here who died, and her little dog recognises her, and she knows its name. Everything seems familiar to her. The doctor suggests that Ruth is allowed to live temporarily in Peggy's house, and though her mother is against it, she is convinced by the doctor that it is the best thing for her daughter. Is it though? Now she's arranging a birthday party on the day of Peggy's birthday, and inviting all her friends, who are all grown, some of whom are married.

The whole thing is too much for Ruth's real mother, who was also invited, but when Ruth ends up almost falling down the stairs, as Peggy did - which killed her - something clicks inside her and suddenly she's herself again.

Comments: Well I don't get it. What was the "important thing" she had to do? Not fall down the stairs? But that doesn't bring Peggy back to life. Meh. Very poor ending.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp"
Series: Goosebumps
Season: 1
Year: 1996
Writer(s): Neal Shusterman
Storyline: A family move to a new house near a swamp, and the son runs into a strange guy while releasing a snake into the swamp. No, it's not a euphemism! It appears the father and mother are anthropologists, and have come here to study the wildlife. Bored, Grady (?) meets another kid and of course they become friends. Will, the other kid, starts telling him spooky stories about the swamp, saying that the previous owner went into the swamp one day and never came back. He says the swamp is so named because it puts a fever in the head which confuses the brain and makes you lose your way. While in there exploring, they come across the weird guy again, and Will tells Grady he's known to be a vampire. No, just kidding. A werewolf of course.

Grady tells his parents that people have disappeared but of course they ridicule his ideas, saying the old guy is a harmless hermit. Honestly, have you ever known a harmless hermit? That's like saying a beggar in a sword-and-sorcery novel is a beggar, when we all know they're always wizards. At the next full moon the animals are spooked, and a stray dog appears, which the family then adopt. But when a rabbit is found savaged to death the dog, Vandal, is blamed; Grady of course thinks it's the werewolf and he and Will  go look for him in the swamp, but he gets caught in a trap and the hermit takes him back to his hovel. No self-respecting hermit would live in anything other than a hovel, right? That night there's a lunar eclipse and the hermit starts baying at the moon, allowing Grady to escape.

The deer are attacked and of course the mother thinks it's the dog, but she and her daughter are quickly and rather rudely disabused of this notion when the werewolf attacks them in the shed into which Grady has trapped them for their own safety. Meanwhile he encounters the hermit in the swamp, but it turns out that the old man is after the werewolf himself, and catches it in his net. As he growls at it that it took his wife and child, and he will now have his revenge, it tears free and attacks him, and Grady runs off.

Then the werewolf goes after him, but just as it has him the lunar eclipse occurs, the full moon is blocked out and the werewolf reverts to his human form. Anyone? Yeah. Will. As the lunar eclipse ends, Will becomes a werewolf again, and attacks. Vandal takes him out though, knocking him into the swamp, where he drowns. Or does he? And why is Grady howling at the moon? And does anyone care?


Comments: Meh. Your standard werewolf story. Could see it coming a mile off.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Tre Syke Brodre/Three Sick Brothers"
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard, Atle Knudsen
Storyline: Erik has just been released from a psychiatric ward, and his mother has got him an apartment. She tells him she is going to sell the cabin. His two brothers call by and convince him to take a trip with them up to the cabin, one last time before it's sold. On the way they pick up a hitch-hiker and take her with them. She's not so comfortable though when she hears Erik has been in the nuthatch, and now here she is, in a cabin with him and his two brothers, both of which are loud and somewhat overbearing. Also, they've been talking about a knife sharpener their dad - now no longer with us - had, and how he used to growl "a blunt knife won't kill anyone." Yeah.

But she relaxes and says she's not scared, asking Erik to tell her about his (their) dad, asking how he died, but Erik avoids the subject, duh, as he presumably killed him, hence why he was in a madhouse. Meanwhile the mother returns to the apartment to find her son gone, and is understandably worried, as he has, after all, just been let out of the mental home. When Monika, the hitch-hiker, is told that Erik killed his father, she says she doesn't believe it: he's not the type. This angers the other two, who ask why their brother would have confessed to a crime he did not commit? As Monika gets increasingly nervous and wants to go, the other two brothers grab Erik and tackle him to the floor. One of them puts a knife to Monika's throat. The other knocks Erik out.

The mother, having received no reply to her call (and probably aware that Erik did not kill her husband) is on the way to the cabin. She's too late though. Erik tries to free Monika but his brothers stab her to death. Erik's mother arrives, and he's covered in blood. He says his brothers killed Monika, just like they killed his father. She tells him he has no brothers, and his father is  not dead, just left them. Monika is in his imagination too: he's been stabbing a mockup made of food items I think. None of it exists, just him and his mother. The rest is all in his head. Absolutely fucking brilliant.

Oh, then there's a pretty unnecessary coda, where while at the petrol station he sees his brothers again and they encourage him to burn the place down. Hmm.

Comments: Excellent story, like just about all of these so far. However as I say above, I think the last scene is completely overkill and not needed at all. I'll talk more about this when I get to do the rankings. For now, another triumph if slightly flawed.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

ROUND FOUR, PART IV: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART II

Title: "The Weeping Woman"
Series: The Haunting Hour
Season: 3
Year: 2012
Writer(s): Harold Hayes Jr. and Craig S. Philips
Storyline: A kid is sent to stay with friends while his mother goes up north to take care of a job she has to do. While there, it quickly becomes apparent to him that there is a lot of pent-up tension in the house; the mother is on edge, the daughter keeps constantly drawing, the father is "delayed at work" so will be a week late getting home (guess he works out of state or is a salesman or something). During the night, the kid hears what sounds like crying, coming from a statue of the madonna in the room he's sleeping in. He mentions that the statue seems linked to some ghostly figure, and that night dreams (or otherwise) of seeing wet footprints on the steps, which he follows to find a woman, whom he takes to be the mother, sitting in a chair crying, but when she looks up she has the face of the statue.

The next morning he tells his friend about the weeping woman, a very pretty woman who married but her husband began to neglect her, and who then drowned her own kids (as you do) to punish him, and then to finish the job, threw herself in. The legend says that she roams the river crying for her lost children. If she's ever seen, the tale goes, you should not look her in the face or she will drown you. Back home, mom is exhibiting similar tendencies, her tension reaching breaking point it seems. Her friend invites her out for drinks, and reluctantly she goes, leaving the kids to look after themselves.

The daughter hears the song of the weeping woman (and, no real surprise, she's been drawing her) and goes towards the sound, into the room where the statue is. Suddenly the house is as if it were underwater, and the weeping woman springs out of the fridge. Well, I don't know, maybe defrost it once in a while? The kid then looks out the window, as the house fills with water, to see the weeping woman leading the other kids away and into the river. Not a good swimmer, he dives in and calls her, but when she looks at him he refuses to look at her, telling her these are not her children. She sinks back into the river and the two kids surface. She pursues them, but the timely arrival of their father, changing the "bad energy" of the house, saves them.

Comments: Yeah not bad. Kind of Supernatural -ish, relying on old folk/ghost tales, but the payoff is a little weak.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Sick Girl"
Series: Masters of Horror
Season: 1
Year: 2006
Writer(s): Sean Hood, Lucky McKee
Storyline: Oh crap I am not going to like this one. It's all about insects apparently! Yee-uck! An entomologist (no that's words; this is insects) who can't get a date due to her obsession with insects gets a delivery of a very strange one that she has never seen before. She hooks up with an equally strange girl who sits in the lobby of the building in which she works every day drawing, um, pixies. While they're out, that weird insect escapes and goes on a rampage. The landlady is not happy about her keeping bugs in the first place, but to Ada's surprise Misty is totally into them; in fact, her father was a professor of entomology and a role model for Ada.

While they're getting it on in her apartment though, the big insect, hidden inside a pillow, sticks out a feeler and nips Misty's ear. Ida does not see this. Next morning they're looking for Mick, as she has named the big bug, and Misty feels something sticky and gloopy at her ear. When Misty gets weak I think it's pretty obvious that the insect has laid its eggs in her or something. Yeah, Misty's eating bugs - without Ida seeing of course. While Misty gets it on with Mick, Ida gets a letter to say that the insect may be venomous and carnivorous. And now the landlady's dog has gone missing. And she's a dyed-in-the-wool homophobe, who thinks that lesbianism is deviant and a sin, and, surely completely outside of her legal rights, evicts Ida on the spot.

Back in the apartment Misty goes on a rant, screaming at Ida that she's weak and threatening to rip her eyes out, then collapses, first into almost full-blown psychosis, and then for real, falling inert on the floor.  Ida goes to the lab to research the bug, which she finds out is a parasite that - oh no! - lays its eggs in its host. She deals with the landlady, who falls down the stairs and breaks her neck. When Ida comes back there are emergency vehicles at the building, and in the apartment she sees that Misty has become a big fucking insect-woman. And then she gets impregnated too and they're both waiting for their insect babies to be born. Fuck sake.

Comments: Bloody ridiculous. Not as icky as I thought it would be but pretty damned stupid.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "I'm Just Fucking with You"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Greg Zehentner, Scott Barkan
Storyline: Look, I don't and never will understand not only internet trolls, who are the lowest of the low, but the braindead morons who think that what they do is funny. In the credits to this, the main character exhorts people to "execute this bitch", and to "chop off her head" and ruins someone's wedding texts, and for what? Laughs? The pathetic feeling that they're superior because they can post shit from the shadows and fuck people up? A real curse of our modern times, and hopefully this guy will get what's coming to him. Larry is on his way to a family wedding which he really doesn't want to attend, and runs into something of a trickster in the motel where he's staying. The guy just keeps saying (as in the title) "I'm just fucking with you!" But it looks like more. I know few if any of these stories seem to be rooted in the actual supernatural, but could it be that he's some sort of angel or demon sent to show Larry what it's like when people play mean tricks on you? First thing he does when he gets settled is write a nasty review of the place, but then his sister, who was supposed to meet him there, hasn't turned up and there's a news report of a big pile-up in which a "young woman" was killed. Now he's worried.

Doesn't stop him from continuing to troll, and the unbelievable lack of self-awareness when he rounds on Chester, the trickster, and says "People like you push and push but nobody thinks you're funny!" Could it be any more plain? But he just doesn't see it. In fact, at least what Chester is doing is harmless fun, more or less: Larry is deliberately trying to wreck the wedding of some girl he doesn't even know! Eventually though he decides to leave the motel, not comfortable with Chester, but when the trickster calls his sister by name, he does a double-take: how did he know her name? All he ever did was refer to her as his sister, never gave her name. So what's going on? Totally overreacting, he calls the cops. I mean, why? Because Chester used Rachel's name? Hardly a crime is it? When he rang 911 I thought he was checking to see if they could tell him if she was in the traffic accident. The cop is quickly put at his ease by Chester and now Larry may be in trouble for wasting police time.

When Chester makes out that Larry punched him - although in fact he punches himself, out of sight of the cop, Larry is arrested, but then Rachel turns up, and Chester says he won't be pressing charges, that the joke went too far. The three of them end up having drinks together, and it turns out that he does know the girl whose wedding he has been trying to ruin: she was his girl and he was about to propose when she dumped him and is now marrying his cousin. Not that that in any way excuses or justifies what he's doing to her, but at least there's some sort of reason; she's not just a random girl he grabbed off the internet. It's her wedding he's attending, as well, so that ties in I guess. Later that night Chester's biker buddy Gerald is furious to find that his Harley has been vandalised, and when Chester grins and says it was him they begin to fight. Gerald pulls a knife but Chester kicks the shit out of him and then takes the knife and stabs him through the ear. I'm going to say that somehow this is all for show, another big set-up, though I'm not quite sure how. Larry and Rachel have been watching in horror, and Chester's demeanour just doesn't seem right for someone who has just killed their best friend. In front of witnesses.

Things get weirder. Chester calls the cops and turns himself in, while Larry and Rachel go looking for vodka, which he asked for (and you don't refuse the request of a man with a knife who has just murdered someone) and then find the dead bodies of the old couple who own(ed) the motel. Chester says they killed each other, because the husband was spying on guests and the wife found out, but it seems very thin. They knock him out, but it's not long before he's up, grinning a bloody grin and holding both their car keys. No sign of the cops yet either. Oh, here they are, in the nick of time. And it's the same sheriff who responded to Larry's call originally. Unfortunately he arrests Larry and Rachel, and while he's coping with that Chester strangles him from behind. Now he has the sheriff's taser and keeps shocking Larry. He eventually throws him into his car, and then, when Rachel fears she's going to be raped, he cuts her loose and throws her keys to her.

Chester's not finished with them yet though. He's done something to Rachel's car to make sure it overheats or blows a gasket or something; basically, they're going nowhere, while he advances upon them, grinning like, well, like a madman. He gasses them both and they lose consciousness. When Larry wakes up he's in the pool on a lilo, surrounded by corpses - the old couple, the sheriff, Gerald - and Chester is talking about judgement. He makes a video and gets drugged-up Larry to confess to being the internet troll he is, and then it seems he's killed Rachel and also posted Larry's video to the wedding Facebook stream or whatever the fuck it is. Good for outing him, but did he really kill his sister? Seems a bit extreme. Maybe she's in on it? But she didn't seem to know he was this troll so maybe not.

Oh wait: now Larry's stopped crying like a baby and is laughing? Either his mind has snapped or he really does think the whole thing is funny, and as Chester pulls a gun on him and asks if he has any last requests, he suggests all three of them go to the wedding, where Chester can shoot him and roll the dead bodies of brother and sister down a hill into the wedding party? Jesus fucking Christ! What kind of sick mind wrote this?

Right, it seems he then runs the car into a wall, the passenger side airbag having been disabled by Rachel as she liked her dog to ride up front. But then it ends and a load of details come across the screen, making it seem this is a sort of "Three Sick Brothers" deal: looks as if Chester never existed, and Larry murdered everyone, including his sister. I think it implies he's still on the run. Fucking hell.

Comments: Not at all sure what to make of that. My head's spinning. So, did Chester exist at all? Was Rachel dead from the start? Did Larry kill all those people, and is he still at large? Very strange story, but I feel somewhat cheated that, either way, the troll did not get his just desserts. As I said earlier, this gave me the sort of feeling of the end of Bloodride's "Three Sick Brothers", though that was a far superior story.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Automated Customer Service"
Series: Love Death & Robots
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): John Scalzi and Meat Dept.
Storyline: In a self-contained retirement community where almost everything is automated, a cleaning robot goes berserk, into "Purge Mode", where it now identifies the owner of the property as an enemy to be destroyed. While all this is going on, a hilarious automated message system on the telephone the woman rings keeps her updated - "Uh-oh! You just triggered security mode!" and "Are you willing to throw your pet at the vacuu-bot to distract it? Press one for yes, two for no. What do you mean, no?"

She eventually manages to shoot it with a shotgun thrown in by her neighbour, after he is tased by the machine as he lines up the shot. Unfortunately, as the automated voice now informs her, the vacuu-bot has passed her information on to all other of its kind who will now hunt her down until she is dead. She and her neighbour take off, staying one step ahead of the army of marauding robots.

Comments: Bloody hilarious, and the telephone answering voice just makes it so much funnier.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Plainfield, Illinois"
Series: Monsterland
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Emily Kaczmarek, based on the short story by Nathan Ballingrud
Storyline: It's a tough station when your girlfriend is bipolar. Kate tried to warn Shawn off at the beginning, but she wouldn't have it and now they've been together for sixteen years. Unfortunately, the episodes continue, as Kate said they would. Only this year, she has already attempted suicide three times, the last witnessed by their twelve-year-old daughter, who has been sent away to boarding school for her own safety. And now Kate has finally done it; Shawn finds her dead in the bath.

Um, then she comes walking out of the bathroom, nowhere near as dead as Shawn thought. As all of us thought really. (Trollheart's theory: she is dead, and so is Shawn, who couldn't take life without her and killed herself too). Shawn sees the unmistakable long slashes in her arms, and jumps back. Kate doesn't seem to know what happened, and when Shawn comes back from work the next day she is sitting in the dark, in exactly the same position she was when Shawn went out. She is staring at a picture, unable to recognise it. Shawn tells her it's a picture of her mother.

Now Kate's hair begins to fall out in clumps. She wants to go outside but Shawn won't let her for some reason. She turns on music and Kate goes wild screaming, so she turns it back off immediately. And then her eye falls out. Now we learn that Kate was not dead when Shawn found her in the bath, but she'd had enough of her multiple suicide attempts and left her to die. When Shawn falls asleep she leaves her, going out into the snow, walking like a zombie. But her bones are brittle and they crack, and she falls, unable to get up again. She finds a dead bird - crow, I think - and makes her way into the graveyard, where she lies down in the snow beside a tombstone.

Shawn finds her though, and brings her back. Now she's little more than an animated heap of skin and bones, living in the cellar, while Shawn considers quitting her job in order to spend more time with her. She has clearly gone completely off the reservation and up the Rockies where she's frozen to death. Or her brain has, anyway. Mind has snapped. Only explanation.

Comments: See, this is what I hate with some stories. No explanation, no indication what happened. Did Kate die, and the rest all play out in Shawn's mind? Or did this actually happen, and if so, how, not to mention what is she going to tell their daughter? In essence, a touching story of completely unconditional love that refuses to give up, even in the face of death. But does that determination then lead to madness? Who knows?

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "Erased"
Series: Two Sentence Horror Stories
Season: 3
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Liz Alper

First sentence: "There's a stranger in my house."

Storyline: A woman who is resisting being bought out by a big real estate company wakes to find her family has vanished, and all evidence of her husband and daughter is literally disappearing from photographs, as if they were never here. Rushing outside, she sees her car change, and then going back into the house she sees another woman and her child, who claim to be living there. All her pictures have been replaced with those of the woman and her child, and the bedroom her daughter slept in last night has been changed too.

Next thing her fingers start vanishing, and when she runs to the house of her friend, she too is disappearing, bit by bit. In desperation she signs the deal, but of course it's already expired so it's too late. Then she digs up the time capsule her daughter had buried in the garden, putting in the necklace her grandmother gave her, and suddenly hears the voice of her husband calling. Unfortunately, she continues to vanish until she's gone. Her husband comes out to look for her, but there's no-one there.

The development company call to offer him a new deal, and advise him to take it, for the sake of his family...

Second sentence: "I think it's me."

Comments: Well that couldn't have ended more darkly! A terrible message: give in to corporate greed and pressure or you will, literally, be rubbed out.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Our new chart now looks like this:

23 Tales from the Darkside
22 Tales of Tomorrow
21 Creeped Out
20 Are You Afraid of the Dark?
19 Creepshow
18 Monsters
17 The Haunting Hour
16 Goosebumps
15 Night Gallery
14 The Veil
13 Amazing Stories
12 Masters of Horror
11 Into the Dark
10 Monsterland
9 Two Sentence Horror Stories
8 The Outer Limits
7 Love Death and Robots
6 Tales from the Crypt
5 Room 104
4 The Twilight Zone
3 Dimension 404
2 Bloodride
1 Black Mirror

It can clearly be seen - and should have been expected - that The Twilight Zone, having pulled off a total classic, rises all the way to the fourth spot from last round's position of 11. Love Death and Robots makes a jump from 15 to 7, while Masters of Horror and Into the Dark fall from 5 & 6 respectively to 12 & 11. Bloodride, Dimension 404 and Black Mirror hold their positions at 1, 2 and 3.

[Trollheart]

ROUND FIVE, PART I: THE CLASSICS

Title: "Meet in the Middle"
Series: The  Twilight Zone
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Emily C. Chang and Sara Amini
Storyline: A man on a blind date suddenly starts hearing the voice of a woman inside  his head. She says he's in her head, and neither know how or why it's happening. Mentally, they both agree to stop talking to each other. But he can't forget about her. Their deal is quickly broken and they end up getting to know each other, um, telepathically as it were. But when Phil suggests they meet in person, Annie is very cagey and not at all receptive to the idea. When he finds out she's married he's upset she didn't tell him, but she says she is not happy in her marriage and much prefers talking to him.

Their relationship gets more intimate, until a few weeks later he says he has to meet her, at which point she panics, tells him it's too dangerous and cuts off contact. Now he's alone again, but worse than before. Before, he had nothing much to look forward to; now he's lost something precious and it really hurts. After two weeks she finally makes contact with him, asking him this time to meet her halfway between where she lives and he lives: they'll, you know, meet in the middle. On the train, they're talking when suddenly she tells him there's some creepy guy looking at her. She gets off the train and tells Phil where she is, sounding increasingly panicked.

He eventually arrives at the station where she got off and runs around looking for her, finding her smashed glasses and thinks the worst. But then she contacts him and says she thinks she's in the woods. He heads in. Finding a house - the only house - near the woods he attacks the guy who answers the door when Annie confirms this is the guy who took her. He ends up killing him, and when his daughter comes down the stairs, followed by her mother, he smiles and tells Annie it's him. She however backs away (well duh) and runs back upstairs, calling the cops. Phil is taken away.

As he sits in the car, he realises it's all been in his head, all a fantasy. He made up Annie, he has, as his psychiatrist had suggested earlier, dissociative personality disorder. Then he hears her voice again, thanking him for freeing her from her husband, and realises it was real. He has been played, expertly and callously, and has probably the rest of his life to reflect on that in jail.
Comments: A thoughtful and deep episode that doesn't pull any punches. The twist at the end is brilliant, and timed just exactly right, so that you think he was just mad after all, then comes the kicker. For a "modern" Zone, this is one of the very best ones.

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