The Empress Evaluation Report

The kind of "horror" I understand isn't a story built around blurry flesh and blood, mangled limbs, a heavy stench of gore, and a twisted, perverse outcome. It's that kind of sorrow, the kind that comes when fate leaves you nowhere to go.

For example, we could depict fear like this.

You lie beneath the night sky in some cool, open place, arms and legs spread out in a starfish shape. Your hair rests lightly beneath your head. Since it feels like such a nuisance, you casually pull it out by the handful, and, quite naturally, you don't feel any pain. Your gaze drifts far away and high above, and you can see with perfect clarity the things darting and chirping through the night. Slowly, sweetly, a song fills your ears: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are." How strange. What's singing? You search everywhere, but can't find it. Then a sudden thought strikes you. You look down at yourself and see a huge hole cut into your chest. An ugly, mottled thing leaps out through the hole and lands on your chest, cooing and laughing at you. Then you realize how familiar it looks. Oh, that's right. It's...