All of the original hand-written descriptions can be found on page 1 and 2 of the black sketchbook.
After completely reading and going over all of my chosen texts, I gave each a brief description so should I return to any of them for inspiration, I could get the gist without having to read them all over again:
Poe. E. A., 1842, The Pit and the Pendulum: The dazing monologue of a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition and his experience of torture at the hands of faceless tormentors.
He finds himself sealed in a dungeon completely devoid of light, in the centre of which is a large pit filled with starving rats. His hands are bound by long pieces (or strips) of what seems to be a kind of elastic, and he lays underneath a frightening half-crescent scimitar - a pendulum whose only job is to pierce the chests of its victims.
Lovecraft, H. P., 1926, The Outsider:
The story of a human who has, never in his life, ventured outside the gargantuan forest that surrounds their dwelling. He has spent his entire life in a castle, which possesses many towers and deep crypts. There is no natural light as the thick forest and stone walls conceal the daylight from him. The human is mute, and there are no mirrors in the castle.
But one day, human curiosity gets the better of him and he decides the scale the black tower, at the surface of which the human believes is daylight and a greater outside world. He arduously ventures to the surface level, only to discover a mirror further along the way and realise that he is better off as an outsider.
Bradbury, R., 1952, A Sound of Thunder:
This story chronicles the disastrous adventure of 'Man VS Greatest Predator' as an ignorant man called Eckles attends a time-travel theme park which allows patrons to hunt and kill any pre-historic beast for $10,000.
It is Eckles' wish to kill a T-Rex, but demonstrates his ignorance by not listening to the professional hunters' house rules and words of caution. What follows is a cataclysmic change in history.
Ellison, H., 1967, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream:
The Cold War exacerbated into World War Three. The human race needed the technology to advance enough to negotiate the new warfare and outdate the technology of their enemies. However, the omnipotent, omniscient and devastating AM was created in the process. AM became sentient and committed genocide on the entire human race, except for five 'survivors': Gorrister, Ellen, Nimdok, Benny and Ted.
The machine made them immortal, and now they spend the rest of their existence being constantly tortured in an artificial Hell.
AM's sadistic punishments include:
- Making the survivors vulnerable to extreme temperatures of heat and cold
- Hallucinations
- Vomiting
- Illness
- Starvation
- Having to deal with natural disasters such as hail, magma, tornadoes and locusts