Introduction by Cosey Fanni Tutti, legendary performance artist and founding member of Throbbing Gristle ​ Nightmares never seem to make sense when we try to describe them. Neil's genius is that he's written a book in a way that puts you back in that mindset by tapping into the primeval in all of us as a kind of catalyst for the telling of this story. This is a story told in the way that we live out life changing events - it's full of movement. It steps us back, sideways, takes us into seeming irrelevance - maybe as a means of escapism, and all by unpunctuated expertly crafted emotionally evocative (and) beautiful sequences of words. It's akin to poetry, or song lyrics at times. Words are used rather like musical notes, arranged in a sensitive, sometimes aggressive ways, constructing and deconstructing, effectively facilitating your own unique 'nightmare reading' of this story. The words are a means to an end, elements which collectively create a composition, the purpose of which is intrinsic to its completeness.  You should approach this book by abandoning any established preconceptions of the role of narrative or role...

...  The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us,—visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower —Percy Bysshe Shelley ​ it is dark all around listen I say can you hear that she is gone I hear Firefly move uncomfortably in his bed across the room no he says that’s the sound of knives I cannot say he doesn’t hear that it’s not what I hear  Firefly is sleeping that is falling in and out of sleep so many of the people we have known are dead we have not seen each other since I left I’ve ignored him while considering what to do about meeting them and before them a hundred other thems he is caught in a trembling he can’t ascend out of and he lies there cursing resting smelling of illness which is the smell of neglect calling someone every couple minutes to fix or adjust what is wrong in him or what he needs in him what consumes him is unnatural rebuke beg whimper like collecting into a tear that never fully falls as he settles again into a nauseated waiting a concentrated breathing and an occasional ironic chuckle after every stroke my dad threw ...

A Book of Nightmares About the Author Also from William Ralph Press