To Read or Not to read, that is the question

a writer friend just sent me the back cover for a book they are writing and now I can't figure out if I want to devour it or try to convince myself I never saw this

shared with permission so long as I don't reveal their name or release date

STILL HERE
A Psychological Horror Novel

You wake on a table.
You don’t remember how you got here.
The lights are too bright.
Your arms are strapped down.
A woman in a lab coat smiles and says,
“This will hurt you more than it hurts me.”

She’s wrong.
It never hurts her.

Dr. Gwen isn’t a monster.
She’s a scientist. A curator. An artist.
She doesn’t break people, she refines them.
And you? You’re her latest subject.
Her canvas. Her experiment in controlled erosion.

She’ll peel you open with needles, light, and silence.
She’ll catalogue your screams like data.
She’ll take your body, your voice, your name,
and replace them with compliance.
With adaptation.
With baseline.

But inside, something survives.
Not hope. Not courage.
Just a voice, dry, cracked, laughing:
“At least you didn’t piss yourself.”

That laugh is yours.
The last thing she can’t sterilize.
And it’s getting louder.

This isn’t a story about escape.
It’s about what endures when everything else is stripped away.
About the mind learning to think in fragments.
About pain becoming language.
About names carved in braille on cold steel
and hands that move without permission.

You’ll read this and think, That could never happen to me.
Then one day you’ll sit in a doctor’s office,
adjust your sleeve, hear the hum of a monitor,
the scratch of a pen,
and smile when asked how you’re feeling.

And for a heartbeat, just a heartbeat,
you’ll wonder if they’re writing it down.

This isn’t fiction.
It’s a stress test.
And you’re already in the chair.

---

Content Advisory: Contains graphic depictions of medical torture, non-consensual procedures, psychological manipulation, and extreme physical and mental distress.
A raw excavation of violation and resilience.
Not for the faint of heart, or for those who trust too easily.