Scanlines

by Todd Keisling

If you’ve made it this far, I hope you continue. Scanlines is not an easy read. I assume that much was clear from Matthew Revert’s rather gruesome cover art, which practically serves as its own content warning. This book is not going to make you feel good about yourself, or about the world. It is as dark as they come. It is going to unsettle you. To quote Robert Budd Dwyer, shortly before committing suicide on public television: “Please, please leave the room if this will . . . if this will affect you.”

Outside, the storm is raging, and the pale face of a man dead forty years stares through my apartment window, his eyes rolled up and bulging, his skin bloated and streaked with black trails of coagulated blood. He presses his face against the window when he sees me watching, leaving black smudges on the glass. I live on the fourth floor of my building.

The meds ain’t working. Nothing’s working. I think about ending it all but I’m afraid it won’t stop even if I do.

Benjamin Hardy is less a ghost than he is the force of depression. He’s the grim face you see projected on everyone else, that same face you see in the mirror every day, the one that tells you there’s no point, you aren’t worth it, you don’t deserve it, and why not end it already? He’s the liar in your head, and you’re the suit he wears.