I was initially intrigued by the total lack of fear people feel when dealing with total strangers on the Internet. In their blogs they reveal their most intimate secrets and speak of their darkest fears. In their interaction with other internet users they go to dating websites, ending up becoming best cyber-buddies with people they had never met not even heard of. Some even send intimate snaps of themselves and arrange to meet for drinks with people who might so easily be the worst kind of cyber stalkers. In short, the vast majority of cyber-strollers feel comfortable revealing everything about themselves, including their most secret phobias, to the worldwid(spider’s?) web.
Scary. Very scary.
Over the past few years there have been countless instances of young girls being tracked on the Net, then assaulted, sometimes even murdered. Lonely young men and women trying to find partners have been targeted too. But still there exists and feeling of security because ‘the foreplay’ exists via a computer screen and a keyboard. Few care to think where this may lead. Most use any caution whatsoever. There’s no awareness of the pedophile, the rapist, the madman, the murderer in the next street, connected via an eerie cyber world.
That’s what drew me to writing ‘Worst Nightmares’. What if there was the most cruelly efficient psychopath somewhere ‘out there’ trawling the Internet for victims? What if what gave this sociopath a buzz was, while masquerading as an amateur psychologist, ready to help cure those suffering from chronic terrifying nightmares, his real aim was to have nightmares revealed to him by those in the grip of horrific phobias so that he could track each of them down and visit their worst nightmares on them in some dark and private place; magnifying the key elements of the nightmares a hundred fold?
Of course, this theme is only one of many that make up the fabric of my novel, ‘Worst Nightmares.’ It is also a tale of a decent man that makes one error of judgment that proves to have a terrible domino effect. I pose the question; which of us has the courage to tell the absolute truth when everything is on the line; a relationship, a career, a marriage, the safety of those dearest to us. Because it’s only when we are tested that we find what our true moral metal is. Would you kill without hesitation if your child was threatened? If your family had no food, would you steal rather than watch your children go hungry? One lie is all it takes to cause us to slip off the high moral ground.
Shane Briant 2009
www.worstnightmares.net