Shawn is a scientist developing the formula for a drug that may cure blindness by stimulating another area of the brain that controls perception. When he surreptitiously tests the drug on himself, however, he accidentally accesses a neural pathway that appears to allow him to communicate with a complete stranger through telepathy instead. By the time Shawn discovers the drug’s true effects, it is too late to stop the mind-blowing damage his new friendship has set in motion.
WINNER of the Godless Horror 666 Readers Choice Award for 2023
Dark bleatings, my nervous tribe! I’m delighted to be talking about this novella today because it is such a fun read. Shawn is developing a drug with ambitions to cure blindness, but it’s not yet been approved for trials. He decides to trial it on himself, and suddenly starts hearing a female voice in his head. He initially assumes it’s either an auditory hallucination or a brain tumour…but is it? He comes to believe that he has a psychic connection with a real woman, and develops feelings for her.
For multiple reasons, even if this woman is real, this is a problem. She’s inaccessible in the real world to him, and there’s also the small matter of his wife.
I can honestly say I had no idea where this story was going. Being in Shawn’s head as he pondered his physical health, his sanity, and his growing infatuation with the cute voice in his head, was so fascinating, as was wondering where this was all headed. Outside of his internal conversations, I was also very interested in his family life and how much his wife might be picking up on.
It also got me thinking about the nature of our perspective truths. Shawn’s our protagonist so we get his version of things, and his opinion of his wife isn’t very kind, to say the least, and that’s before he even gets feelings for someone else. We could take his opinion as fact, only he isn’t the most trustworthy person. He’s a married man allowing himself to get swept up in a romance with literally the first woman besides his wife that talks to him (in this story at least), and he’s also illegally using himself as a test subject for an unproved drug that could be dangerous, with complete disregard for himself and also his children – consequences for him are also consequences for them. This is under the guise of the greater good. After all, the dude is trying to cure blindness. But…I don’t know you about you, but I have met a few folk that care very much about being viewed as good people, but don’t care at all about actually being good people. Ego driven over ethically driven, you could say.
Everything came together in such an awesome way at the end, and I loved the direction the story went in. I’m sure there’ll be people who have gripes about the drug and its effects, especially people who work in pharmacology, but I was quite happy to suspend my disbelief in this regard. I don’t even know what’s currently possible, never mind what could be possible with the right formulas.
Overall, this was a great horror story and I loved it. I’d recommend it to horror fans in general! If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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