No One Gets Out Alive

(image credit: Tammy Kellogg O'Connell)

The home I grew up in was encased in quiet violence, a place where the floors creak at night and specters walked on the same eggshells I did just to survive it. There are broken memories of hiding from my father every day in terror of some unspoken threat from my mother that never materialized since he was not a truly Bad Man but a normal human one fed up with disorder. In my childhood, the big light was always on, it was inconvenient to clothe and feed me adequately, money was always tight but someone was always getting and showing off new things ad nauseum while my bare feet touched the ground through my shoes. A land where electricity buzzed through my head from the outlets and I felt myself driven mad for the sound, where I was expected to sit for hours as a comb was dragged through tangles in my hair that needed a gentle hand and were instead greeted with the same inconvenience and impatience I was and cursed equally. School was hell, home was worse, and if there was any peace at all to be found it was in the company of the media and the natural world- since I was haunted to exhaustion by the paranormal. To psychologists, I was well adjusted despite much traumatic input at home- and demonstrated none of the warning signs you’d expect from the dark media I’ve always consumed. Compliant, silent, and structured; the childhood version of me would floor you for not demonstrating a single warning sign of psychological instability and instead would demonstrate an “abnormal degree of cognitive adaptation” to my circumstances that bordered on surreal. The events of my childhood lie behind thick, stone walls much like those of a later college where my laboratory would become a private fortress in adulthood. Three heavy steel doors that required scan card entry, the many layers of bulletproof glass; all a deeply desirable separation from the outside world. Security was the name of the game, and within that security I continued to remain silent as I incubated the horrors of my earlier life. 

If you ask my older brother, he remembers hours of me just screaming as a small child, shrieking in pain and terror or some secret third thing we now call “overstimulation” in the modern discourse surrounding autism. It’s believed that these tantrums likely stemmed in my case from being treated like a living doll from a young age, as being asked to sit for multiple hours on end is quite challenging for some neurodivergent children. During the teenage years, I stimmed vocally at high frequency and much to the annoyance of my parents. Verbal discharge was not a thing I struggled with, I spoke at such frequency to my family that they often wished I would fall silent for the sake of their own mental peace- and it’s hard not to empathize with them given what I now know about the struggles of adulthood. 

Vocal stimming was pertinent for me not just because I was always into metal and rock as genres for relaxation, but also because the range of animal noises always fascinated me to imitate so that I could make myself feel strong when I was in danger. There is a fantastic scene from the original Harry Potter films where the kids eat jelly beans that make them vocalize as specific animals- and when Ronald Weasley struck upon the lion I had to smile: I used to do that too. From a young age I figured out how to bend and shape my sounds to mimic a puma, and the moment I discovered Drizzt Do’Urden from thinking the book covers looked cool- I of course felt that I was mimicking his colossal cat Guenhwyvar. The idea of being able to project sound so firmly into someone else’s face that the waves and volume acted as a bludgeon to get them away from me was appealing: it would get my assailant to fuck off if nothing else would. Monsters, particularly the archetypes of greatly oversized creatures that could and would use lethal force were inspirational even as a small child- it was an upbringing punctuated by anger. Endless visits to the schools’ offices ensued, as I told my fellow students from the age of 6 upwards all the elaborate ways I would feed them to my beloved Great White sharks. Naturally, everyone was concerned that I would grow into a young adult with a penchant for misbehavior- yet none ever came. As an adult, those screams fell eerily silent and now I often feel worn down in ways I can’t quite describe as I try desperately to help my throat form the shape of them again. 

Most crucially: the stories I told myself about what those people and their cycles meant about me have followed me like wraiths through my own relationships at a subconscious level. No one asks to be recreating dynamics from home, and yet much like metastatic cancer, at some point you wake up and discover that there is a neurosis developing that stems directly from the way that your mother would speak to your father in the home and her expectations around your behavior. As I slipped the noose of obligation through my relationship choices, I would do it with the satisfaction of denying my mother’s pattern of simultaneously despising and praising domestic labor. Years passed as I walked through relationships too abusive to tell my friends stories from without them wincing, where my own neurodivergence was continuously being chained and locked away in a closet while I pretended I really just wasn’t that different from anyone else- and that these cycles weren’t slowly eating through my tissues to become chronic illness. Masking my way into pretending my hobbies didn’t matter, that I didn’t love to stim, that these were traits of mine that were just quirks instead of essential aspects of my life to keep the entire thing functioning; it was all one exhausting charade of skin changing after another. As I savor my aloneness these days, unmasking comes effortlessly like sunshine peeking through broken glass in a long abandoned place- I feel the dawning revelation of my own place on the spectrum becoming clear. I fear, at last, that I am indeed lovely and whole and quite irreversibly autistic- and I find that even after a childhood as fraught with challenge as mine, I don’t much mind the idea of it. Let the little autistic gremlin live, it’s the only correct choice.

Yet things have changed dramatically in these haunted halls, for now it is my calm hand that runs the comb through my tangled hair, and soothes to sleep a deeply overstimulated young lady that I speak to with affection and gentleness. It turns out that I am in fact capable of napping, that I don’t like it when people’s words are icky, and that having time off sees me doing creative things just as much as I want to do domestic things- without complaining about it at all. Dishes? Not difficult. Vacuuming? Easy. Cleaning the entire house feels like a soothing ritual because I’m choosing to do it, and along the way taking care of my energetic hygiene after a long week around people, too. Cooking is able to be a fun and relaxing hobby where my little internal gremlin voices her ideas and I try them, I no longer feel chained to the pursuit of endless productivity so much as that when I do stream it’s me choosing to be on or not. As a result, my little autistic gremlin self runs into my own arms for comfort and validation- and seeks me out when she needs something or has an idea. While the realizations have not been easy, I have started to address within myself the deep gaping holes left by examples of femininity that were always centered around the idea of bodily and personal self sacrifice. My mother never got to have real hobbies or interests and see them through, but I most certainly can make choices that differ from hers and fill in gaps left behind from a childhood where pain was the primary driver of action.  

The mother wound is characterized by the pain and trauma left behind from inadequate nurturing, emotional unavailability, neglect, conditional love, or other trauma while you were growing up. Though it’s coined as the mother wound, I suppose the more adequate terminology would have been the Nurture Wound- as this does not simply extend to motherly figures but really comprises a whole category of caregiving. When you have a mother wound, it’s very easy to spot those that share it as well: we thrive on independence, overworking, and frequently meet the idea of gentleness and softness with disdain or outright confusion. Professional goals are easy for me, discipline and structure come naturally, as does a certain tendency to “suck it up”, “move on” and keep things going for the sake of self preservation. What is very hard for me is softness, gentleness, and ease. Historically, my internal voice has been fraught with nasty and petty evaluations of myself and others who have hurt my feelings.

My own gaping mother wounds are not an excuse to dogpile onto my mother all of the blame or shame for a childhood that didn’t quite meet my needs, but rather act as a mirror and a portal. Through working with the realities of my upbringing and seeking to address them, I have been able to reconcile in myself what I need to do in order to make myself feel loved and nurtured properly. Only now that I am reworking my relationship to the things that I desire is it that I can address patterns of behaviors in my relationships where I was frequently the “savior”. Only now that I feel the wind at my back and the calm centered mindset of being properly supported do I feel that I can move from a place of great authenticity that isn’t derived from urgent insecurity or attachment distress. This body is healing, my mind is healing, and while some things never change interest wise, I find that I'm orienting to the world around me differently and the shifts are sustainable.

The book presented today was one that my little autistic gremlin would like to talk to Bushes about, so by extension we have to talk to you guys about it because my sweet chirpy little pego needs you all to know that if she wants to share a book with Bushes- all of my plans need to take the backburner. Which I can totally do, after all, she is very insistent and it really isn’t that much trouble to talk about our favorite kinky indie horror story. So I chuckled, grinned, and decided that yes- we can certainly reroute from the humdrum I had prepared for this week. So Bushes, if you ever do make it here, read all this and see this message- this one's for you, from her, with love- because the little gremlin simply couldn’t help herself and because I can’t help myself. Without further ado, I offer you my favorite kinky indie horror story: Adam Nevill’s “No One Gets Out Alive”.

*****

Reader, I come to you an addict, because I have found my favorite book online again for the first time since 2019 and I am salivating. The second my eyes poured over the delicious first pages of it again, the softest plop of saliva fell onto my hand where it rested and I gazed at myself in the monitor’s glow with delight and horror simultaneously. This book can still arouse the deepest fear and also the most profound longing in me at once- it both disturbs me and moves me the way a kink should, it’s the sort of book that is so cursed I would curl myself around it protectively and hide it forever inside myself- even from Bushes because I simply couldn’t bear him criticizing it. Yes, it’s actually and truly that deep. I must gently uncurl my clenched fingers from its digital cover and bring it to you all because I cannot hide from you all what this book does to me, there is nothing else on this earth that does what this book does to me, it makes me feel things in places of my psyche that have never once been stirred. When you look at something that is so tantalizingly fabulous, it just cannot be replicated.

Now that being said, you are about to look me dead in my eyes and tell me with your whole chest that I need to check in with my therapist. I completely understand, this book is that kind of book, and the fact I’ve described it as “kinky” probably has you looking to the high heavens wondering what sort of manic ranting this story promises to be. Oh reader, I must assure you, not only is it not manic ranting- it’s so lucid and anxiety provoking that it actually manages to somehow disorganize me enough to find it enthralling. While horror doesn’t normally scare me, this book terrorizes me to my core to the point where if a man looked me dead in my eyes and calmly said the name “Fergal” I would get goosebumps I couldn't shake off for weeks. If an obsessive thought were crafted into an indie horror novel- it’s this one, and it’s none other than the same trippy Adam Nevill who gave us my other gem of a horror read- The Ritual. Now if you know me, you know that this is a serious statement: just starting to read NOGOA again has me looking over my shoulder, hearing noises in the house with extra clarity, feeling my steps speed up at night. It’s enthralling, and honestly? Kinky.

So let’s talk history with this book because the context might help you understand the distinction better. When I first read “No One Gets Out Alive” by Adam Nevill, I stared at my tiny iPhone screen glowing in the dark amidst a horrible breakup after what had been the most traumatic year of my life: 2019. We all still talk about it and shiver, it makes even the deepest depths of hell seem completely trivial by contrast- by the time I picked up this book I had the most surreal set of weeks that have ever transpired for me. I was in the spiral of pain that comes from chaotic grief: Tyler had died, I had been horrifically assaulted and not been believed about it by my then-partner, attended a professional conference with Nobel laureates where my vocal cords seized too horribly for me to present at full capacity, was reeling from the emotional exhaustion of recognizing emotional abuse during the conference, came home to my mother being hospitalized for alcoholism after passing out in the family pool, and didn’t give a fuck about anything in all the world because it felt as though there was simply no solid ground beneath my feet. The events simply overcame me, and despite many years of therapy and many solid coping mechanisms- I fractured under the weight of every sector of life being on fire at once. It all culminated in a breakup that would rock my sense of self for a good long while, and so I needed a distraction from the endless string of women my ex was only too happy to lie to me about sleeping with during a fresh break. We were trying to be friends, that’s what civilized people do, right? Oh reader, I was naive. 

So, feeling for all the world adrift already and desperately in need of something that would soothe me- I searched on Reddit for a feed of horror books since nothing scared me once Tyler died and horror comforted me in ways that are difficult to express. Horror had become my soft landing place where my dark thoughts were being mirrored and echoed back to me by the void and I could sit for hours engrossed in someone else’s tragedy instead of staring into the bleakness of my own. It felt cozy and familiar, enthralling, to watch others’ lives fall completely apart as my life was also fracturing- a quiet solidarity in the darkness as I privately cheered for them to make it out of what I knew I could not escape. 

This book did not soothe me, it did not coddle me, from the first moment I read the introductory paragraph I knew it would hurt some part of me so deeply that it would dismember entire sectors of my personality. There was freedom in that, and a sort of delicious sense of danger that I rolled up my sleeves to start scrapping with. At once, I became so maternally protective of the protagonist Stephanie, that I knew with a deep sense of horror that what happened in those pages would change my cortex forever. Deep within my mind, I did the numbers- 27 wasn’t so terribly far from her age at 21 and I could surely have helped her if I was there and had the ability, right? I wouldn’t fail her, right? This still sounds hard to believe all these years later, but I didn’t take the pain of the narrative personally, I knew that this book was written to perform surgery. There is nothing I welcome so much in the entire world as voluntary psychological surgery on myself, on parts of me I’ve been stashing away or reeling from. The heat was rising, my phoenix moment was coming, I can feel that sometimes in a body of work before I even begin, a ripple of intuition that both arouses and terrifies me at once- because I know something is about to fuck my world up forever. In that first paragraph, it was starting.

With No One Gets Out Alive, it was passionate and damned near narcotic sensation of obsession from moment one, my eyes locked onto the pages and suddenly we were flying through the text digitally at speeds I’ve never read since early childhood- chapter by chapter was gobbled away in a single evening until I gazed at the clock in the upper right corner of my phone and groaned to realize I had only two hours to sleep before I was due to the lab. A little over half of the book was left, and I figured I had already sussed out the worst that this story had to offer me. I was profoundly wrong in that assumption, to the degree where my incorrect trajectory makes me guffaw and grin a little to this day- truly I expected a “linear” horror experience. I expected human trafficking, I expected some sort of deranged dance with the dead and the grit of forced sexual labor, and oh my dear reader- what I got instead was such a larger gift of anxiety and terror that lingers with me into the present moment as I slide my eyes over my shoulder and check the door for the sixteenth time since sitting down for this session.

When I arrived to perform experiments the next day, my mentor stared at me and blurted out outright concern, but I couldn’t stop hearing only the words I had read inside my mind reverberating in oscillations through me. All I could think about was the book, all I could dream about was the book, and my dreams were not natural because nothing about this book is natural. For a few days this went on obsessively, even long after I had finished the text. Everything felt alive and terrifying in ways that I had never contemplated in my waking reality, and all at once every intrusive thought I have ever had was validated by a singular piece of text. Whether due to Nevill’s style resonating with me or simply the horrifying content of the story- this book changed me forever and the way I would relate to external circumstances. Did it wake up latent obsessive compulsive tendencies? I think it’s very possible. Not saying I wasn’t already predisposed since autistic gremlin mode is not known for its subtlety, but perhaps this book tipped me fully over the edge. As I discuss more about it, I assure you that you will understand what I mean. 

*****

So naturally the only thing I can start out talking about this passionate piece on is a gentle disclaimer: this book is really vulnerable for me and it’s also really fucked up. Unfortunately, it’s become my favorite book because of how fucked up it is, and because of how difficult it is for me to reread- which is exactly why as I sit here typing I am gazing over my shoulder compulsively and sweating because I know the horror that awaits me very soon as I stare at these pages again. You see reader, I wrote this whole thing before I do a full reread of my obsession book. What awaits us both as I talk about it on the other end is unknown to me, and the 32 year old is a little worried- admittedly.

Within the first day of the reread, I dreamed that I was forcibly drugged and kept from my ailing dog by IV sedation that took hold while my identity was simultaneously being stolen online by a former friend. It was a dream of running through peanut butter, desperately trying to make it to a point where I could simply take my dog and go home, a point where I could simply make the intrusive stealing of my identity online stop. It was horrific, like eating a bowl of parasitic worms still wriggling. I woke up clawing frantically at consciousness, feeling all of the prior versions of me awakening in their own beds and panicking to make the images stop and the thoughts quiet down. It never occurred to me to check a calendar, but I really should have. The date of course was a significant anniversary of having to leave a beloved space: drenched in sweat and yet freezing cold- I stared grim faced into a long day. Without hesitation I can tell you all: the book got avoided for a few days until my brain cooled off. 

As I started the novel for the second time, what becomes immediately clear as you enter the scenes is that it’s impossible not to feel a sense of protectiveness for Stephanie and sinking horror in your gut- particularly if you’ve ever known anyone that’s lived on the poverty line. Our protagonist isn’t just garden variety broke, she’s been thrown out of her home by a raving stepmother a la Cinderella after her father’s death and thrust into this home because she had the audacity to desire more for herself with what little money she had. Not only is Stephanie desperate, she’s clinging to the frantic hope that comes from an early 20’s where you feel adrift and don’t quite know how to put your footing right in the world. Everything about her oozes fragility, and that’s before we even get into the proper meat and potatoes of the story. So as it goes, Stephanie enters this house and is being terrorized within the first night (common for haunted houses everywhere that give you an “initiation” night), and her sleep deprived self is immediately greeted with the sheer lack of care this home has received up until this point. The counters are covered in dust, the rugs crunch beneath her, it is a horror story if for no other reason than the sheer quantity of grime coating every imaginable surface. All you feel is disgust welling deep within your gut as you read, all you want is for Stephanie to say “fuck the money” and quite literally go huddle on a street corner instead. 

Of course, Stephanie does not do this, she tries to back out of the rental in the kindest way possible and it backfires horribly. I don’t know what to tell you as a woman about the character of Knacker except that, point blank, I would not be anywhere near a man like this even under pain of death. Knacker is as grimy as his house, wearing new shiny expensive clothes that clearly come from fast fashion purchases he’s made with Stephanie’s deposit that she of course would like returned. Things escalate, and it’s quite clear Knacker is the sort who doesn’t just like to spend others’ ill begotten funds- but he clearly has no issue contemplating violence as well. In addition to an evening where Stephanie fell asleep listening to the sounds of what we can assume is one tenant assaulting another, it’s the setup for a claustrophobic anxiety trip that makes you desire to just scoop Stephanie up yourself with the car and find her quite literally any other home to live in. 

I know what you’re thinking: Ephy, why the fuck is this your favorite book?

Reader, I have no idea. This is a thought that lingers in the back of my mind a hundred times a year, minimum, no exaggeration. Why do I love this book? For the first time in my life this book massaged a place of me that has never once been addressed before, and that is the simple fact of the claustrophobia of wrongness. Before you criticize, let me explain: if you lived your entire life in situations that were wrong, but your gut never actually knew what “right” should feel like so there was no real association with it- wouldn’t you absolutely salivate at the first time your gut really experienced WRONG in all blazing red letters? Wouldn’t you celebrate as well if for the first time a book not only validated you, but made it so clear what WRONG is that anything that feels like this book can become a warning sign to make sure you get the holy hell away from anything even remotely resembling it? That is as close to an approximation as I can come as to why this is my favorite book. It’s got so many clear WRONG gut signals that in contrast what feels right is very clearly discernible amidst the muck. It woke up my intuition, it was a lightning rod moment that shook me out of complacency once and for all. 

Then, you see, the book turns so cleanly left and completely off the rails that to even think about what happens next actually springs pain up to my temples. This is by no means a story for anyone with a weak stomach, or an aversion to violence. Not only does Stephanie discover the absolute horror of the occupants’ pursuits, but the tale continues and becomes a case of claustrophobic anxiety that one simply cannot shake. As I laid awake reading it that first time, my heartbeat was throbbing inside of my throat. For the first time, somewhere deep within me, an emergency brake I didn’t know existed came off the vehicle of my personality entirely and permitted me to fully unhinge. Reader, your eyes will struggle to even believe the words on the page when you are at this point, because the only real correlate we have for the levels of emergency that will course through your body are witnessing real human violence at that scale happening in front of you as you’re helpless to stop it. I can’t spoil this one for you, it would be deeply unethical, so I will not tell you how the book ends or any of the claustrophobic scenes within- but we need to focus our lens on one very specific aspect of this story and why it has such deep impact: claustrophobic anxiety.

At face value, this text presents itself as a simple work with a linear concept: a young vulnerable woman exposed to poverty moves into the least favorable conditions possible. Even though I am wise to the tricks of this book psychologically, I am still tempted all of these years later as I reread the text to believe it can be simple. But you see, reader, I had a dream last night that I was responsible for the untimely demise of an Anne Hathaway doppelganger using blunt force trauma to the ribcage so severe it punctured her lung and heart and she perished in front of me with her eyelids fluttering as she bled out internally. Two nights later, a dream about an Epstein Island situation where a young woman is saved by channeling the dead former best friend of a wealthy patron of deeply disturbed people. If there is any text that will challenge your psyche the entire way through- it’s this one. My home, a bastion of paranormal activity on an average week, has been churning out clicks and taps, full body apparitions, and objects throwing themselves at walls for weeks since beginning this task. Truly, I wish I was kidding, and I almost never have dreams of a violent nature- but here we are. 

NOGOA has challenged my psyche in a manner that is so deep and twisted, my therapist bows before it in awe. In the weeks since I began this adventure back into reading it, I have been tormented by all kinds of psychological and physical life events that are highly distressing- and have been jumping steadily through each hoop as it comes with a calmer and regulated nervous system. Streaming has been my coping mechanism, in which I keep delving into games where my limits are being challenged so that I can outrun the inevitable consequences of cracking this book open again. Facing my own obsessions and phobias with kindness in hand ready to deploy, talking to myself differently and choosing a version of my own life story where I do not smash my head in for having desires and needs, but lean instead into grace and mercy- these are not simple actions either in concept or delivery. I have been trying to outpace my body, seeking refuge for my mind, roving through the forest like a madwoman desperate to escape the sensation of someone pursuing me. The truth is, my own shadow is what’s pursuing me, the real reason NOGOA is terrifying: I identify with it.

For context, my parents were both born into the sort of extreme poverty that defined lower-middle class America in the 50’s: both had parents who were neglectful, both had extreme adverse events rule the day, and both were vulnerable- however my mother specifically was subjected early on to the violence of adult men in a way my father experienced differently. At 11, my mother was nearly abducted by a strange man who tried to grab her by her arm and force her into her car. By screaming for an elderly male neighbor, my mother was able to save her own life by a hair- as the man drove off and wound up returning to her small Massachusetts town to abduct another child that looked nearly identical to my mother weeks later. Years passed, my mother recovered from her trauma and felt secure in the world again, and was greeted with an adult man standing in her childhood bedroom staring at her in the middle of the night at the same location- very likely the same perpetrator returning to confront her. Though I doubt my mother ever allows herself the opportunity to fully bask in the horrors of these events, the common recurring theme throughout my childhood was that there was always a discussion around the idea of the serial killer or hidden perpetrator waiting to harm children that lived in every shadowy area. 

My childhood was a dark inkblot of psychological pain and terror. When I wasn’t hiding under the dining room table with a dog that hated me as my mother chased me around with a knife in hand- high off alcohol and Ambien combined- I was isolating myself as much as possible to try and find some semblance of normalcy. It was a horrifying experience, and not made any easier by having an obsessive parent who not only sought to appeal to the male gaze- but did so with open resentment and a sense of resignation that this was all women amounted to. My weight was mercilessly commented on, the focus was always on being beautiful enough to be left alone by men, and the constant tone of the household was that I either behaved in ways that constantly appeased men or I would find myself on the other end of their inevitable violence. Suffocation hardly summarizes the experience, the expectations of my mother were strangling me. It’s only now, as I undo the damage done by this life experience, that I remember to breathe deeply and that not every man means me harm. It is only now, as I do the work of addressing my gaping mother wounds, that I realize these are completely unfit conditions in which to raise a child and I would make very different choices if given the opportunity. It is only now, as I witness firsthand what happens to an adult child of a struggling, substance-addled parent, that I feel the real grief and weight of what my mother experienced and recognize that it should have never happened to anyone- and it also doesn’t excuse what happened to me. Forgiveness comes easy when your nervous system is calm, and I forgive her, it’s all been nonstop horror since she was old enough to identify it as being wrong. 

This story has hung like a dark shadow over my family for many years, and while I cherish the fact that my mother clearly made it out of a situation that was about to become quite dangerous, my heart aches for the little girl who was never found whose case remains a mystery to this day. Though I have tried to do what I can to piece together details of my mother’s testimony and reach out to local authorities, admittedly, no one is really looking for a man who was harming children in the 60’s. It’s disappointing, and makes me deeply bitter, that there can be no resolution here to a situation that urgently needed it and that poverty dictated that my mother and her neighbor were not worthy of prioritizing. NOGOA strikes terror into the heart of any woman who has ever struggled to make ends meet, had to speed up to get to her car as footsteps sped up behind her, surrendered and called an ex boyfriend she couldn’t stand just for the sake of men hearing another man’s voice on the line and believing she would be defended, and learned to clutch her keys like a weapon as she walked home so she could try and fight back. NOGOA is a story that, in light of the horrifying Epstein Files and the discovery of the Motherless website, is timely for me to read in that it begins on the note of Stephanie being unable to access the warmth and safety of maternal energy as her stepmother rejects her. It’s a story that is uniquely masterful and terrifying because you can feel the suffocating weight of both male violence close at hand working to stifle Stephanie and kill her- alongside desperate hope fluttering inside you for her freedom. Whether you are female, male, or neither at all- this story will touch your spirit and remind you that just as there is much evil in the world, there are also forces at play that can be on your side in your darkest moments. All you want for the entire story is to help Stephanie free herself, to call the police, to be of use- but you know in your heart that this story will not have a good ending. As that dread sinks in, it eats through you corrosively until you feel as though you are dangling dangerously close to an edge you didn’t know existed in your psyche. 

The book is a shock the entire way through, and I will not spoil whether or not the ending of the book is good for you as a reader, but I will tell you this: a word of caution as you set sail into these treacherous seas- for though there is much treasure to bring to therapy, there is also much real peril in facing your personal shadow to this degree. Every aspect of the Self is present in NOGOA, and throughout the story you will find yourself having all sorts of revelations and torments that you didn’t ask for. Against my will, there are things that have been dredged to the surface about my own belief systems that I wished never found the light of day to begin with, and here I am- setting off and going forth to confront them. While I am doing so with a licensed professional, I would seriously suggest that you do the same if you plan to start down dark roads in your reading material- as you just might be surprised what bobs up to the surface.

It was shortly after I reached the point of the story where the nightmares were daily that I put back down "No One Gets Out Alive", and while I thank the text for all of the wisdom it still has to offer, I choose better mental health these days. If you, dear reader, also feel your mental health starting to buckle under its influence due to how dark the material is- I hope you would make a similar decision out of self preservation. Reader be warned: this one hurts.

The Pinterest board I created for No One Gets Out Alive:

https://pin.it/5x54DtqBZ