All Comments on 'Living the Nightmare'

The poor guy never knew what hit him. Dark, mysterious and brooding in a really eerie way. Maybe your best yet.

Very sad and more a reflection on the people around him than his wife and some evil corporation.

This was absolutely the right category, and a very interesting story. These are all different, and if you are just looking for cuck or BTB, that's not what these are. Well written and very different. I gave it a five.

u write a confusing story make damn sure theres no typos. just made a confusing story even more confusing

I followed it just fine and didn't notice any typos. Don't know what that fool was talking about. Very strange story, but very good.

As it would seem appropriate, it has a droning, rambling feel to it. It gets the otherworldly feel to a useful extent. This is actually a very different BTB! Ah, it didn't click at first but there it is, she is set up to get burned harder than him, all by a third party and herself.

This story doesn't use a twisted narrator...we get what he gets up until the end where we get an epilog, one so subtle it could just be called a POV change. I gave it five...much better than a story where the narrator has no reason to lie other than there would be no plot without it. Nice that you did a "just a dream" fakeout that wasn't really just all a dream. It had me cringing then smiling. And other compliments. I think I laughed at least once, but I'm not sure...my memory just seems so fuzzy.

This isn't bad, I get the feeling it still needs practice though. But I probably would have said the same to Picasso.

I've read 6 stories so far and all boring as hell. Why do we have to wait for great writers to post stories when Randi deigns to allow us to read from them. But all the stories so far from authors I've read every story from have fell flat. You all thank her for arranging these days, but like I said and I've seen others also say, WHY is randi dictating when we read them, why can't she just encourage them to post more regularly?

That’s the sound of my head hitting the wall repeatedly as I tried to read this. Good god this is a tedious read! But I had to finish it simply because of morbid curiosity as to where you were going with it.

The entire premise relies on the notion that one person can “volunteer” another person for dangerous experimental testing. Once we get past that, it’s a matter of resolving the mystery as to why the narrator is such a boring, ponderous, repetitive, brain-addled, repetitive, delusional, repetitive, mess.

Of all the authors who found a golden ticket in their chocolate bar, this one raised my eyebrow further than the others. I just don’t get it.

More like reading the nightmare, I've had more fun during a root canal.

no.

Until the finish thos is what i understood. Maybe my iq is in weekend vacation, but its extremeley hard to follow steve. You write usualy beautiful stories. This one is a meh.

I do not usually respond to persons such as yourself, and certainly not anonymous ones, but you keep repeating this refrain, and no, I do not believe that anyone besides you makes the comment.

Sir, or madame, you ascribe mysterious powers to me that I simply do not possess. I do not regulate story production, posting or the muse of writers. Anyone is free to post a story any time they write one. I even help, editing the stories of those who ask. I encourage all writers to write, as often as they will, for I am, first, a reader of stories. I want to read good stories by great writers as much, or more, than the next girl.

The thing is, there are writers whom I know, with whom I am friends, to whom I can go about three times a year and ask for a story. Your choices are: you can have no stories from those writers, which is the case for many of them, or I can ask them for a story a few times a year. If you want no stories, tough titty, because I want stories. If you want stories, then you have to put up with me asking when I choose. To be clear, I encourage everyone to write every day, posting stories here so I can read them. If they don't, I'll ask for one. Whom have you asked for a story? It would probably be more likely that they would respond if you had an actual user name. Or, are you concealing your agenda behind your anonymity?

Sorry, Stev.

I said it when I saw the draft. The surreal feel of this is feels like some of Franz Kafka ' s best stuff. It may not be a feel good story, but it is remarkable work.

I really enjoyed the style here. The anxiety built and built until the end until I just HAD to know what was going on. This was a different kind of story and written very well. Thank you!

Loved the ending, well written, and quite relevant with the drugged former Brit spy story in the news these days.

It is obvious to all that this writer is Batshit crazy, but this was one unique and excellent story! Hats off to the sick bastard that dreams up shit like this! I thought it was very well done. Steve2244 has upped his game. Excellent!

Painful to read, but the ending made it worthwhile. Reminded me of the movie Awakenings. Reminds me of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Daring piece of writing. Hard to imagine immersing yourself into the nightmarish state of mind it took to execute this piece. Phew! Hell on earth! I might have my own nightmares thinking about the poor guy. Very original. Thanks*****

Not my taste in subject matter but the writing was superior. Liked how it evoked feelings in addition to describing things and events. Very bleak. Rod Serling could have worked with this.

It is unreadable! Makes no sense and is a TOTAL waste of time!

once again modern chemistry interferes with its outcome, TK U MLJ LV NV

I don't understand the comments calling it unreadable. Difficult, yes. Awkward, yes. But we were supposed to be in the mind of someone on some sort of psychotropic drugs. With that understanding, it made sense.

Randi hardly needs me to defend her, but how do you get from inviting writers that most of us a grateful to read stories from, to "allowing us to read them?"

None of these writers, or any writers, are constrained from posting just because Randi isn't having an event.

It's like reading an old episode of Hammer House of Horror, Tales of the Unexpected or an unfilmed Twighlight Zone. I thought he was multple personalities until the end reveal. Unfortunately, the timing could have been better, with the recent Russian nerve gas assassination attack in Salisbury the other day this might come a little close to the bone for some.

Thanks for the story

It was pretty obvious that he was in a drugged stupor or in a coma with his brain flashing images in his head. Still. as worthless two pages as I've ever seen here. Now I'm in a stupor.

no rating

a fat cock smoked, a cornhole buggered, betrayed!

That was rubbish. Why did you bother writing that? It was like someone threw a box of words at a sheet of paper and hoped some of them stuck.

Booooooring read!

but it never came.

I can see where you were trying to go. The dark imagery is effective to a limited extent. The twist did not really work. Of course with it being purely from the victims perspective there would only be limited knowledge of motive but the scope left too many holes. Maybe a sequel could clear it up? Really though. I love many of your other stories. This one seems not worth pursuing.

Wow! While it’s very hard for me to criticize a writer with your credentials, I simply must ask “WTF?” One glance at your story list, with all those red H’s says you have to know what you are doing, so this story almost makes me doubt my sanity. And how do you stretch this to meet the “Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing and more” description for the Loving Wives category?

I won’t score this one, since I’m sure my confusion lies with my shortcomings and not with yours.

I usually like your stories. You do have an annoying tendency to have your men let cheating women back into their lives, but this was really far, far out there. Some kind of chemical nerve agent that both the husband and the wife are getting fed? Why? Is she upset with her husband for some reason? Is she so dumb she trust these unnamed men? Sorry, but this was too weird and had too many holes in it.

If there had been a third page, I would have started switching my own socks around. This one really missed the mark. Better luck next time.

Last night, I chose to watch Annihilation on Netflix. Today, I chose to read this.

I have no one to blame but myself.

Thanks for the story.

Cog

Well, that brought back some old memories.

Nothing worse than trying a new drug on Saturday and having it affect your mind on Tuesday. All of a sudden you look around and wonder. What the he'll am I doing here😓⁉️ Where have I been? What day is it?...

Didn't like the experience. Don't like this story. Gave you 3*s. It was truly evocative of a tampered mind😲.

Thank you stev2244.....I think,lol.

AMerryman

P.S. That's five stories finished.

I'm either to dumb to understand or this is just garbage

Mystery and confusion are like a strong spice, a little goes a long way. Too much repels, and it is easy to apply too much. After two or three paragraphs this story goes from curious and mysterious to confusing and puzzling. After a few more paragraphs it becomes tedious, and then just becomes obnoxious. Especially once its obvious the writer is purposefully but artlessly trying to pull the reader into the dark confused mind of the main character. The problem is that we are digging through all the spices looking for the substance of the dish, but we find nothing. There is no meat, so now all the carefully applied spice become pointless.

Like a joke with a long labored circuitous setup, by the time we get the punch line we have lost interest. Which is too bad. It started out pretty well. But perhaps you bit off more than you had the time and inspiration to chew.

So apparently the guy is being drugged? And his wife somehow submitted him as a test subject for a mind altering drug? And she did it to get rid of him or incapacitate him while she divorces him? But unknown to her she is also being drugged, and used for sex? But I guess she knows about and is enjoying the sex? Does it matter?

You leave us either asking the logical questions that your own story raises, or you force us to embrace this as some kind of pointless black cartoon. Well, if you enjoyed writing it, then I guess, congratulations. If you meant for it to be enjoyed by the reader, I suspect you have a very small success rate. I hope for your sake it is just me who finds this disappointing.

Now, some of you may ask yourselves "The hell a Family Guy episode title has to do with this story?"

Absolutely nothing. Seems fitting, doesn't it?

For the longest time, I genuinely believe the guy was stuck in some sort of purgatory, à la "Sixth Sense" or something. To learn that he was basically drug by his wife for divorce purpose... well yeah, very underwhelming. Especially since I don't really see the point of it all - Alex is only an accountant, so why exactly just divorcing him straight-up, and live off of the alimony not an option for Tina? Why drugging him without his consent, taking him out of commission, a better alternative? How the fuck any of this is legal in the slightest, and, if it isn't, as it is clearly the case, how can she manage to get a divorce without him being mentally able to properly protect his assets? And why is Tina so fully trust those two mad scientists that she would blindly take their 'antidote' without fully knowing what it is? And...

Sigh, you know what? To many W5 going on in this story, especially with that ending. It simply doesn't hold water, logically speaking. It would have been way more interesting if the author went full Heavy Metal, and just left us a completely FUBAR story. Ah well... maybe next time.

would love to see this story continue. perhaps slowly his drug addled brain slowly regains function as the experimental drugs fail, then perhaps a nice escape and a suitable series of repercussions for his evil faithless spouse and her chosen accomplices?

WTF!

"The Matrix " started off in this vein , slowly trundling down runway, accelerating and launching into flight mode when Neo finds out he is " The One ". Mr.Smiths start popping out from every dark corner and half-closed closet and the audience is all in . Something in that movie's plot vector would have been the popular choice.

Well stev2244 marches to his own set of cacophonous djembe drums in terms of conclusions. I try to enjoy the trip and consider the ultimate stopping point a mere piffle in terms of the collective experience. Did I actually like this story ? I'm not sure ... this was like deja vu , in terms of dispassionate, befuddlement of main character. I feel that way every time my morning coffee is omitted for whatever reason from morning routine.

Bottom line : I tentatively thank stev2244 for sharing .

Neither compelling nor "catching". Not my cup of tea, as the trite saying goes.D3B

Two stars

This one needs a chapter two.

That was weird!

You make Kafka proud. The ubiquitous power governing our lives. No escape possible but thru death, but then death never gives release.

5 stars

Not at all. A loving wife (using the sarcastic version of the label) offered her husband up for chemical weapons testing in order to get a divorce. Right category, wrong media. Stev2244 just offered us his best work for legends day. This piece is beyond Literotica, and should be published in a literary magazine or journal. We are lucky to have seen it.

The first person description is incredibly powerful. The plot compares to work you might see by an author the caliber of a Joyce Carol Oates (read her story Black Water and you’ll understand my comparison) a Hemingway (compare it to Hills like Elephants or Old Man and the Sea), or the aforementioned Kafka. This piece transcends the BTB, RAAC and stroke stories, and is a fine example of the modern short story.

Stev, ignore the blasts from the naysayers. Publish this someplace where your readers thirst for power inside your words As expressed by your characters thoughts. The way your craft has grown since your first story (when you apologized for mistakes that would grow from writing in your second language) is remarkable. This was masterful.

Randi, thank you for posting this in your latest Legends Day. You do not deserve the criticism you got from crazyville. With your skills and the faith you’ve shown by the quality of Legends Day stories (especially this one), you’ve becaome a legend yourself. Perhaps Literotica should have a Legends section, moderated by you, and published periodically as short story collections.

was the point? Dark, brooding is fine, though. There's to be a penultimate motive to crafting this story, and I can't figure one out, not yet. What is the base? The divorce? Wronged husband? Unfaithful wife? A corporate using humans as guinea pigs? On what this story rotates? What's with the immobile suit staring at him all the time? There needn't be any such to get to the point of experimenting with him. I was looking for at least an anticlimax, none seen; may be that was done purposely. Could've ended better and sounded better if the whole thing was narrated using the wife's voice. Or this needed to be bigger to dwell on the personalities of both of the idiot (the husband yes) and the 'loyal' wife.

I don't usually comment on stories I've worked on, but I'll make an exception here. I don't know that anyone else on LW has attempted what stev2244 is trying to do with this story. I knew when I was working on "Living the Nightmare" that it would score low. It doesn't match any of the types of stories that many LW readers come here for, and it requires more effort to get into than many stories on the site. Fair enough. But I would at least like stev2244 to get credit for daring to try something very different and difficult, making a damn fine go of it, and having the courage to put it out here.

GA.

That was an amazing and well-written story. Worth every one of the 5*s and more besides.

Luckily I didn't. Great ending. Damn hard to get there, at least for me.

I got the first part of the story, at least I think I did, but the ending just left me confused and, frankly, irritated.

We see a seemingly paranoid man moving through his monotonous, dreary existence. We wonder if the author is attempting to show us how life appears for someone with a mental disorder; what it's like to go crazy. We've no idea what's real or imagined.

The ending tells us he's neither paranoid nor crazy, but there are so many holes we have to ignore. What's real and what's a symptom of his psychosis? How can having your spouse lying in a hospital unconscious help with a divorce? Wouldn't the judge have some problems with that? Or maybe he's in a secret hospital and no one knows where he is except the wife? Is the company he works for part of the conspiracy? After all, they moved him into a seemingly deserted annex, away from all other people, so maybe they manufacture said "chemical weapon"? Or was the whole "annex" thing imagined, a symptom of his psychosis? The list of unanswered questions goes on...

So, maybe I tend to overthink these things, but, for me anyway, not much of the ending made sense, beginning with how this will aid his wife in divorcing him - which is the reason behind the whole story - so, yeah, that's my issue. Perhaps I should just take the story at face value, leaving me with a "she-drugged-him-all-the-way-to-crazytown-just-so-she-can-win-big-in-the-divorce-but-ironically-she's-going-to-be-drugged-even-worse-and-left-brain-dead" kind of story? <heavy sigh>

Okay. I can do that. This is just me trying to make sense of something meant to be surreal. Well, mostly surreal. Or... I just... never mind, let's move on.

BTW: Thanks for posting. I honestly do appreciate all the effort that went into this, and all the other stories, by all the authors who post here. You're a good writer, Stev2244.

Basically I think that we all diagnosed the apparent paranoia in his first rantings but the gruesome ending caught me by surprise.

Staying in and catching up on stories during the heat wave.

So why the low score? I suppose some people might have felt it would have been better placed in Erotic Horror, but as I don't read that category, I have no idea of the criteria expected there. I think the character of the wife and the husband's thoughts easily allows its placement here.

I didn't expect that ending, of course. I'll bet the author expected us to believe we were wandering around in the husband's afterlife, not his nightmares. If this is all he has to look forward to, he would be better off dead.

Thank you, stev2244. You stretch my brain to places it didn't expect to go.

Great start. Great end. The road to get there was a tad rough. Wandered too.

but, im not a rabid btb fan but felt this story could do with a "loving wives" ending.

Not really clear what was happening. His wife obviously wants a divorce. But she's been drugging him with someone elses help. Not sure who the someone else is. Not sure why she didn't just divorce him. Not sure why he doesn't go to the police and then to the hospital to have a tox screen done. Not sure why he doesn't show the tape to the police. There are so many "not sure" moments in this mess that it just ruins the story. Your worst story to date.

Very different for this category.

And needlessly complicatedly told (I believe, attempt, to obfuscate (not successfully) the ending).

Sorry, but — 3-stars

Wow that was a tough read

Could you have made this story any more complicated? I read War And Peace once and that story line was less complex than this story.

I don’t actually care for the story, but the execution is simply brilliant. All the confused commenters not understanding the irony of their confusion, their participation in the plot, is masterful.

Total rubbish,anonymous 07/11/19 should stick to reading comics.

I’m not sure if I loved it or hated it..... but I did read all of it. 4*.faqa3t

Of your other outstanding stories, this one doesn’t qualify. Interesting premise but too hard to follow.

although got it in the end which made it a weird horrible story

jj

Not sure that I understood everything in this story, but I enjoyed all I could.

Stupid story, sorry

NO!

Usually Stev's stories come into better focus on a second read, but this is still a little confusing. Still needs the second chapter.

Well done story. Creepy as hell though.

Dont wsste ur time with this one!!!

Don't waste time on this story. Total crap

....not enough to understand what is going on. Need a part 2 with more info. Or maybe rewritten so its understandable.

Bizarre, Kafkaesque

minus 10 stars. useless dribble.

I'm just on the cusp of getting the point, but couldn't quite reach it. 3*

Dear anonymous, we see this all the time," useless dribble", irritating as Hell. It's useless DRIVEL. There, that itch is scratched.

about a man with such a boring every day life that gets confusing

This was subtitled ‘I have no idea what’s going on’ well buddy you’re not the only one.

Weird stupid story.

Scores 1/5

Dark, eerie, but the bitch got karma

Awful , poorly ended

Too much, too strange. Ot entertaining, to me, at all.

Not just boring, but disturbingly strange. Not my cups…

Needs a finish

read it all and dont know what to make of it, not enuf of an ending for me to completely get what was going on, why , where etc. some how he got fucked by his wife for an unknown reason, she gets "help" from somewhere nefarious, owes someone a favor but is going to rue the day. Im going w/ 2 stars and thats kind of me.

A slow descent into madness at the hands of a deceitful wife and evil scientists. All very weird but strangely compelling.

LA

Is a a point to this crap.

~

I enjoyed this story in a perverse sort of way. That the husband was confused and forgetful came across really well, and yet I wondered why at the same time he was strangely relaxed and accepting his pointless existence, even questioning himself if he really even cared if his wife was cheating or not. I anticipated that he was dead but he didn't realize it (as in another story I've read), but the fact that his wife was talking directly to him at times indicated that this was not the case.

~

The end revealed that he was now in some sort of coma and had indeed been drugged by his wife, and she seemed to be slightly remorseful for what she had done, even though she obviously enjoyed the illicit sex she was getting.

~

But why was she told to keep taking the antidote? Surely she wouldn't need to take it if she had been the one administering the drugs to her husband? Ha ha, the final sentences answered that question when it became obvious that she was, in fact, taking the same drug (in a bigger dose) in the guise of an antidote, and although her husband was now slowly getting his mind back again she was going to be the guinea pig for a larger, on-going experiment that had no hope of her ever getting her mind back at all. Karma my friend!

Hmmm. It read like a twilight zone episode. Interesting to say the least.

Wasted my time on this one. Ever hear of getting to the point? as in your other stories,this being the worst example, your writings strike me as a person whom talks because he likes to hear himself talk. You write the same way. Its really to bad as I think you are a capable writer,just not complete.

Pathetic

too weird and not much point to it

?????????

Mind games

Now you see me

Only the shadow knows

Now you don't

That is just too strange. What is the point?

? ? ? I am not smart enough to follow this story. I won't rate a story that I don't understand.

My first 1 ⭐ rating. An okay story, IF he would recover. Sadly, that's apparently not happening.

Another 1/5, there must be another good story somewhere here.

I think I missed the punchline. That was exhausting to read.

That was some dumb shit