RRP - the Red and Rotten Project
My new horror book is out now on KDP:
RED AND ROTTEN: (RR project) (English Edition) eBook : Project, Unknown, P., D., P., M.: Amazon.it: Kindle Store
Here's a little draft:
Red and Rotten began as a collection of fragmented thoughts and short stories scribbled in a notebook—an unfiltered expression of ideas that slowly evolved into what you hold in your hands now. Some of these jottings were the seeds that inspired the stories, while others grew to become the stories themselves. For instance, Peaceful Death was born from a single thought that haunted me:
“LXXXIII. PITCHFORKS
The monster doesn’t know why it exists; it cannot conceive of itself, nor does it understand how it was created. It is likely the result of multiple factors: events, distorted visions, authority, isolation, and denigration. The monster cannot be accepted by others, let alone by itself.
The monster spews out the hatred of others and turns it inward upon itself, then vomits out its own hatred, both for others and for itself. The monster recognizes its own nature and knows it cannot live, cannot live because it is not accepted by others. Everyone runs away from the monster, even the monster itself. The monster wishes only to end its suffering because it knows that, by continuing to live, it will become ever more shapeless and repulsive, ever less accepted, ever more rejected, ever more marginalized. It knows that others might hunt it down, that they might exterminate it. This thought fills the monster with both fear and relief, and it knows that perhaps the choice of being killed is the wisest one.
But the monster is afraid. It fears pain, regrets, suffering, and death. Yet at the same time, it loves and admires these things; the monster knows it is wrong and takes a kind of pleasure, just like others, in destroying, torturing, and executing itself. The monster can only anticipate others' actions and torture itself to keep itself in check because a wounded monster is less frightening, and perhaps in this way, it hopes to be spared.”
Originally, I wrote these pieces to pass the time and gauge my friends' reactions. My goal was simple: to shock them—and it worked. One friend, in particular, was so drawn to my work that he contributed an idea of his own, which eventually became the story Fallen. For that, I owe my thanks to D.P. for his inspiration and collaboration.
As I delved deeper into writing horror, I found myself constantly striving to push boundaries, to make each story more unsettling than the last. It became an obsession to disturb, a goal I would chase relentlessly, even if I never truly reached it. This led me down a rabbit hole of consuming dark, provocative content—books, films, and music—in a desperate search for inspiration. But ironically, despite all the disturbing media I consumed, nothing ever quite reached the level of discomfort I aimed to evoke in my own writing.
And so, the question lingered: Could I write a story unsettling enough to haunt someone long after they turned the last page? This challenge became one of the driving forces behind this collection, particularly in the last section of the book.
Now, Red and Rotten stands as a curated compilation of those early scribblings, divided into three sections. The first section contains short horror vignettes—brief, unsettling glimpses into the macabre. The second section offers medium-length stories, each spanning one or two pages. Finally, the third section presents the longest and most detailed tales, where the horror is allowed to fully unfurl and linger in the reader's mind.
I hope that these stories will provoke, disturb, and perhaps even haunt you, just as they have haunted me. Will I succeed in unsettling you? Only time—and your sleepless nights—will tell.
