i kept track of the statements that actually scared me. yes others unsettled me, but only 3 manage to shake more than give me sick curiosity. They were Lost Johns’ Cave, Binary, & Reflection.
I’m thinking about the connective strings that really scared me about them.
All of them had some form of entrapment. Cave was obviously a manifestation of the Buried, A big part of Binary was how trapped Ushanka was and how Tessa was unable to escape him, and Reflection had the unnamed teen literally trapped and chased in a mirror carnival.
All of them had a form of unreality. A big part of what I remember about Cave was how the victim found her way out but was missing time and was given a conflicting account of how she was found, how she left for her trip, etc and how when she did escape it didn’t make sense. Binary was manifestation of the Spiral apparently. Reflection was literally in a mirror dimension.
Reflection and Binary had the perverse watching. Tessa could not escape seeing Ushanka destroy himself and the unnamed teen was left watching twisted almost pantomimed scene of parched scarcity and inhumanity. And both have been tied to the Extinction (however that part of Binary, robots over humand, doesn’t scare me)
This is all i have for reflection (heh) of what theme has scared me, but im still ruminating
