And Billy watches, paralyzed with fear, until it's too late to do anything but scream. Until the night Billy witnesses a murder in the street below his window: a young woman, knifed again and again and left to die, her blood gleaming under streetlight's glare. It seems that things can't get any worse. His girlfriend has no more patience for his self-pity. His roommate can't cover the overdue rent. Frustrated and downtrodden, disgusted with his own failure, Billy spends his days living in Bowery squalor, his ambition skittering away like the cockroaches running up his tenement walls. Billy came to New York with dreams of stardom, and found only a nightmare of obscurity. Yesterday he was just another tragically talented loser the city had chewed up and spat back down on the streets. But can she survive in a new world where everything she sees and touches blooms with the most opulent nightmares?Īnd, if she does survive, what will Dr.His name is Billy Rowe. Slaw breaks the yoke of her humdrum existence and slakes her dream-thirst. The days that follow lead to terror, seduction, self-loathing, and enlightenment as Dr.

Now a stressed, middle-aged ER doctor at Dunnstown General, Slaw receives a strange proposition from a junkie would-be-patient. In the darkness of her bedroom, she would whisper a single prayer to the invisible gods of her childhood: “Please don’t let me dream.” But as she grew older, day-to-day life overwhelmed her imagination-smothering her dreams under the pillow of the mundane. When she was young, Slaw often woke screaming. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination and The Stay-Awake Men & Other Unstable Entities 'Startling, grotesque, and revelatory, The Broker of Nightmares will sink its claws into the folds of your brain and inject liquid gifts of oneiric terror.” – Matthew M. Miskowski, author of I Wish I Was Like You

From first to last line, this is exhilarating, masterful storytelling. 'Padgett wields intellect and poetic sensibility with remorseless precision, and his work possesses an element that a good deal of poetic horror fiction lacks-suspense. One third of all sales of this chapbook will go went to support the ACLU! This is the debut title from the new Nightscape Press Charitable Chapbooks line. Signed, numbered, fully illustrated, and limited to 100 copies.Upon publication of this chapbook, Nightscape Press donated $500 in Jon Padgett's name to the ACLU on October 31st, 2018 and upon selling out, another $500 on November 11th, 2018!.

The Broker of Nightmares by Jon Padgett