Renee said:
Ah! Then you need to try "dark romance." They're horror/romance crosses. Sometimes love can be a VERY scary thing! Sometimes the people don't make it out alive, or WISH they hadn't! Here's part of a short story that my co-author did for a dark romance anthology called The Abyss:
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Mind Games
by C.T. Adams
Genocide is such an ugly word. They prefer, “cleanse”. Without a thought, they exterminate us like nests of rats, down to the last squalling infant.
They call us vermin. We call ourselves revolutionaries. I'd accepted this mission because I thought I had nothing to lose, that they'd already destroyed everything that mattered to me.
My mistake…
It is black.
Not merely dark, for in the dark there are shades of gray. Not the absence of light from closed eyes, with the spots and images you can see on the inside of your eyelids. I am trapped in unrelieved velvet emptiness. There is no input.
I am not asleep. When you sleep, a part of you, deep in your subconscious, is aware. You recognize the press of the pillow against your face. You can feel the gentle brush of breeze from the bedroom window, hear the muted background noises, sense the slight movement of the blankets as your chest shifts with each breath.
There is nothing.
I had been briefed that this might happen if I were captured. But the briefing held none of the true horror, the absolute isolation.
I remember the training they'd given me. I have the skill to hide the information -- to guard it in the depths of my mind against even the best psychics. If necessary, I can and will “hit the switch”, deliberately shutting down my autonomic nervous system, stilling my heart, ending my life.
I will suicide rather than give the information I've discovered to our enemies. But I can't, not yet. Not until I am sure there is no way of transferring that information to "our" side.
If I can stay sane.
Time is relative. People think that it is static, running its course. But time, to humans, is based more on stimulus than anything else. Daylight, night, the passage of hours on mechanical clocks. Time passed in my hell -- but was it days, hours, minutes? Impossible to tell with no reference.
Sleep, too, is problematic. Dreams had images. Reality did not. I cling to that. Make that my reality. But the nightmares are based on real memories. And the dreams have sensations, the feel of the restraints holding me to the table as figures in surgical gowns moved in and out of my field of vision. My skin crawling from the sound of the saw cutting through my skull. I wake when the memory reached the final cut, when the laser severed the connection between mind and physical sensation.
The dream images and memories seem so very much more real than the barren landscape of my mind.
I am going mad. Still, I can't, won't end it. Not yet. My allies will try to rescue me; not out of personal loyalty. But the knowledge I possess could determine the outcome of this war. So I wait. Wait inside my own skull to be rescued, or interrogated.
I hear a voice.
It is muted, tentative. A musical alto. She calls my name. Her voice resonates through the emptiness.
"Ian?"
I don't know the voice, but I grasp onto it like a lifeline, praying that it is real, not merely another torment of my imagination.
A gasp of pain, and I remember, belatedly, that within my mind I am the powerful one. I can harm, even kill, a psychic communicating with me. I force myself to pull back, despite my desperation to have her continue the connection.
"Thank you." Her relief was palpable, "I'm sorry it took so long. I'm so glad you didn't---" she let her voice trail off.
"We had to recapture you." There was a pause, "We lost your brother. I'm sorry."
A wave of pain passes through me. My brother. Barely sixteen. Proud, reckless. Now dead. If this was the truth. If she isn't lying.
Is she on our side? Or is this a ploy? Are they trying to convince me, by making me wait, that I've been recovered and that "our" people were trying to find a way to bring me back?
Silence stretched between us.
"It took us a while. Their technology is so different." She was trying to soothe the suspicions she could sense so clearly.
"Of course."
"And they had to bring me in,” she said, her voice a little hurried and anxious. “I'm not local, but I'm the only true telepath we had available."
"Your name?" I’m being guarded, so very careful of her. It would annoy me if our roles were reversed.
"Judith. Did you get the information?" Another sharp stap of wariness passed through me.
"How do I know you're with us?" I kept my voice flat and cold.
"But...."
"Give me some proof." I struggle to make sure I sound stronger than I feel. But each time I waver, I force myself to remember that they did this to me. They are capable of this evil and so much more. I can not--will not--give them the tool to make their power complete.
"What kind of proof? What do you want from me?"
"Information that can only have come from our side. You can decide what."
She leaves. As much as I distrust her, the vacuum her absence leaves is nearly unbearable. Time, again, loses all meaning as I float bodiless in the dark. It occurs to me that the real enemy is not them; it’s madness.
Without sensory input, I’m losing my anchor to reality.
Judith returns. I choose to believe she is real, that she truly comes from the outside. I refuse to give credence to the haunting fear that beats through my mind like a drum -- the terror that she is a creature of my own imagination.
No. I have to believe. I have to hold on to the hope that this will end. Someday I will actually feel the sun on my skin. I will rejoin my body.
She passes information. Some of it is classified, but there is nothing, nothing, that the other side couldn't have acquired. No proof. So I guard my secret. Hide it so far and deep that she will never find it. She’s angry and, if thoughts can storm, she storms out of my mind. The silence echoes in her wake.
She'll be back. I’m positive. But a part of me is terrified she’s gone for good. I am so desperately alone. I could just… No! My soul rebels at the thought. If they get the information, it will be over. My people, everyone and everything I care about, will be wiped out. Better to die than risk giving final victory to people capable of the atrocities I'd witnessed. But . . . what if?
I want desperately wants to believe that Judith is good. She is my hope for salvation and sanity. Still, the kernel of stubbornness that has brought me through, that makes me a survivor, refuses to just give her what she asks without verification.
She comes and goes. Sometimes it seems bare minutes between visits. Sometimes it feels like days. Each time we become closer, a bond forging between us. I not only hear her words now, I can sense some of the feelings behind the words.
Where does need leave off and love begin? Can you love without sight, smell, touch? I don’t know. It isn’t that simple for me. I can’t say whether it is love or obsession, but I need this woman more than I’ve ever needed anything else in my life. And that terrifies me. Because much as I want to, I don’t trust her.
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How's that for a romance?
Cathy
