To Scream Within a Dream: Short Stories and Nightmares

In dreams, we are free to believe in MONSTERS and MIRACLES.

All forms of life contain the capacity to become good or evil. Castle in the Dark is a keen portrayal of this—in which a guiltless child dies and merges into the afterlife, becoming a spirit focused on inflicting pain. Then there are also those things that were never alive, or… should not be alive. Like a ringing phone that is not as innocent as it seems and pressing ‘answer’ might be the end of everything. And what will happen when a town of resurrected people are not content to wait to be exterminated, especially when their would-be exterminators are also their creators?

The line between the present and the past, between the living and the not-so-living, is often unclear. That’s how it is in life. That’s how it is in art. In the longest story of this collection—A History of Youth—parent and child seek to understand one another. One wants the freedom to choose. The other wants to prevent mistakes from repeating. But it’s too late. It always seems to be too late.

With a Foreword by USA Today Bestseller, Claire C. Riley (Author of the ‘Odium Series’), To Scream Within a Dream—call it nightmares or call it memories resurfaced—is a plea to satisfy the strange questions rattling about in the subconscious. It is an odd, twisted illusion of life.

There is a darkness in reality, even more so than within nightmares. And sometimes, all we can do is scream.