This book is a tour of the dark places, a literary journey into the shadows at the heart of the human experience. Despite what you might think, these stories take place in a world very much like our own. Here you will find darkness and light, love and hate, pain and ecstasy. People just like you and I live inside these stories: the hurt, the damaged, the mad, the bad, the hopeful and the hopeless... Here, pain is often something to be endured on the way to some form of revelation. Death is not always the end. You will be faced by monsters, and you will discover that sometimes the worst monsters are those with a human face. So be careful. Remain focused. Keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times. In these stories, transformation will happen. You will encounter the extremes of human nature. And, yes, some bruising may occur.