What do you think?
Rate this book
You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams
For over 20 years, Carlton Mellick III has been writing some of the strangest and most compelling novels the bizarro fiction genre has to offer. Described as one of the top 40 science-fiction writers under the age of 40 by The Guardian and "one of the most original novelists working today" by splatterpunk legend Edward Lee, Mellick returns with a surreal horror story that explores sexual tension and the darkness hidden within the human psyche.
Dreams shouldn't kill you. If you die in a dream you should be fine in real life. But that's not what Elias learns once he moves in with a girl named Roe who has the terrible habit of pulling people into her dreams with her whenever she falls asleep. Although she's the nicest, coolest, most attractive woman Elias has ever known while she's awake, Roe is a complete psychopath in her dreams. She will stop at nothing to kill anyone who finds their way into her subconscious worlds. But Elias has no choice but to survive her crazy dreams every night if he ever hopes to make it in a world that has been torn apart by a global pandemic and economic collapse.
In the tradition of Nightmare on Elm Street, comes a surreal and violent love story from the author of Neverday, Spider Bunny, and Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen Your Whole F**king Face Explodes.
Dreams shouldn't kill you. If you die in a dream you should be fine in real life. But that's not what Elias learns once he moves in with a girl named Roe who has the terrible habit of pulling people into her dreams with her whenever she falls asleep. Although she's the nicest, coolest, most attractive woman Elias has ever known while she's awake, Roe is a complete psychopath in her dreams. She will stop at nothing to kill anyone who finds their way into her subconscious worlds. But Elias has no choice but to survive her crazy dreams every night if he ever hopes to make it in a world that has been torn apart by a global pandemic and economic collapse.
In the tradition of Nightmare on Elm Street, comes a surreal and violent love story from the author of Neverday, Spider Bunny, and Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen Your Whole F**king Face Explodes.
- GenresBizarro FictionHorror
118 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 15, 2025
About the author
Carlton Mellick III
118 books2,248 followersCarlton Mellick III (July 2, 1977, Phoenix, Arizona) is an American author currently residing in Portland, Oregon. He calls his style of writing "avant-punk," and is currently one of the leading authors in the recent 'Bizarro' movement in underground literature[citation needed] with Steve Aylett, Chris Genoa and D. Harlan Wilson.
Mellick's work has been described as a combination of trashy schlock sci-fi/horror and postmodern literary art. His novels explore surreal versions of earth in contemporary society and imagined futures, commonly focusing on social absurdities and satire.
Carlton Mellick III started writing at the age of ten and completed twelve novels by the age of eighteen. Only one of these early novels, "Electric Jesus Corpse", ever made it to print.
He is best known for his first novel Satan Burger and its sequel Punk Land. Satan Burger was translated into Russian and published by Ultra Culture in 2005. It was part of a four book series called Brave New World, which also featured Virtual Light by William Gibson, City Come A Walkin by John Shirley, and Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan.
In the late 90's, he formed a collective for offbeat authors which included D. Harlan Wilson, Kevin L. Donihe, Vincent Sakowski, among others, and the publishing company Eraserhead Press. This scene evolved into the Bizarro fiction movement in 2005.
In addition to writing, Mellick is an artist and musician.
Mellick's work has been described as a combination of trashy schlock sci-fi/horror and postmodern literary art. His novels explore surreal versions of earth in contemporary society and imagined futures, commonly focusing on social absurdities and satire.
Carlton Mellick III started writing at the age of ten and completed twelve novels by the age of eighteen. Only one of these early novels, "Electric Jesus Corpse", ever made it to print.
He is best known for his first novel Satan Burger and its sequel Punk Land. Satan Burger was translated into Russian and published by Ultra Culture in 2005. It was part of a four book series called Brave New World, which also featured Virtual Light by William Gibson, City Come A Walkin by John Shirley, and Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan.
In the late 90's, he formed a collective for offbeat authors which included D. Harlan Wilson, Kevin L. Donihe, Vincent Sakowski, among others, and the publishing company Eraserhead Press. This scene evolved into the Bizarro fiction movement in 2005.
In addition to writing, Mellick is an artist and musician.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 10, 2023
Definitely a weird one. And perhaps one of Mellick's more humorous and heartwarming books too? I found myself effortlessly swept up in the story. Read the whole thing in less than a day.
October 31, 2026
Imaginative, nightmarish, and a little... bittersweet.
You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams follows Elias, a young man who's into art and has never left his small hometown until it's time to enroll himself into college somewhere in some city.
But his college is weird and strange— just like his roommate, Robert.
Ah, but Robert is a girl. We'll just call her Roe.
She's in an all male dorm on accident, but just read the book.
Anyhow, Elias is just trying to survive in a crazy pandemic-fueled world with a giant economic collapse. What doesn't help is that his new roommate is always trying to kill him in her dreams.
When Roe is awake, she's an attractive and sweet girl— but when she falls asleep, she turns into a raging psychopath and Elias, pulled into her dreams, struggles to survive her post-apocalyptic and hellish dreamscape.
It's a condition she has, I guess.
The story is simple enough, bouncing back and forth between the real world and Roe's dream state, and every time— Elias must duck and dodge to make it back to reality.
What you don't expect, is for this book to turn into a bittersweet, bizarre horror-romance between the pair.
Yet, it all happens in the dreamscape— giving a feverish, uncanny, and surreal feel to the story.
You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams was a little slow in the beginning, but it quickly ramps up until it's odd and inventive ending. As utterly bizarre as it was, in typical Carlton Mellick fashion— it had heart. I found this tale to be heartwarming with a touch of sadness, adventurous, and dreamy.
Rating this one with ★ ★ ★ ★ stars because it's always a treat to find the quirky love stories in the CM3 universe.
You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams follows Elias, a young man who's into art and has never left his small hometown until it's time to enroll himself into college somewhere in some city.
But his college is weird and strange— just like his roommate, Robert.
Ah, but Robert is a girl. We'll just call her Roe.
She's in an all male dorm on accident, but just read the book.
Anyhow, Elias is just trying to survive in a crazy pandemic-fueled world with a giant economic collapse. What doesn't help is that his new roommate is always trying to kill him in her dreams.
When Roe is awake, she's an attractive and sweet girl— but when she falls asleep, she turns into a raging psychopath and Elias, pulled into her dreams, struggles to survive her post-apocalyptic and hellish dreamscape.
It's a condition she has, I guess.
The story is simple enough, bouncing back and forth between the real world and Roe's dream state, and every time— Elias must duck and dodge to make it back to reality.
What you don't expect, is for this book to turn into a bittersweet, bizarre horror-romance between the pair.
Yet, it all happens in the dreamscape— giving a feverish, uncanny, and surreal feel to the story.
You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams was a little slow in the beginning, but it quickly ramps up until it's odd and inventive ending. As utterly bizarre as it was, in typical Carlton Mellick fashion— it had heart. I found this tale to be heartwarming with a touch of sadness, adventurous, and dreamy.
Rating this one with ★ ★ ★ ★ stars because it's always a treat to find the quirky love stories in the CM3 universe.
January 30, 2025
A good Mellick's book articulates around three pillars: a crazy premise, empathetic characters and a fucked-up environment. Some of his works are very good at some of these aspects and some others are at all of them, with this being one of the latter. Elias and Roe are somehow adorable, and they meet each other at a very peculiar university (the scenes with the lecturer are hilarious!). The thing with the killing dreams is not new, of course, but here it is driven by a character from the waking reality and also has a twist whereby it ends up being something completely different and far from terrifying. This time even the comic strip is brilliant and adds value to the book. Great stuff.
November 30, 2025
Too Old for This Dream 🛏️🔪
I bounced off this book harder than I expected – which is saying something, because it’s short and reads fast, like a student’s attention span. You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams sells itself as “surreal dream slasher love story,” but what it really nails is the horror of being young in a dead system and choosing numbness over rebellion. Unfortunately, this book on paper was my thing, but in practice - I felt about ten years too old for it. Mellick could’ve gone full, vicious satire on predatory education and wasted youth; instead, for ~70% it reads like a grimy campus comedy that thinks being chaotic is the same as being sharp.
The true horror isn’t supernatural at all – it’s capitalism in clown makeup and its slow erosion of young people’s lives. Sensitive, already-tired kids take out obscene loans to perform the ritual of “studying”, learn nothing, and anaesthetise themselves with booze instead of admitting the future is a void. Nobody pushes back, nobody leaves, nobody even files a complaint. Even language is rotting: “racist” gets tossed around like “jerk”, stripped of meaning, just another lazy insult in a place where nothing really matters.
Roe and Elias aren’t a romance; they’re mutually assured immaturity. She’s half-drunk, half-dissociated, immediately shakes him down for booze money the moment they meet. He hands it over, because of course he does. She’s permanently half-drunk, half-dissociated; he’s a walking doormat with savior syndrome, mistaking admiration and obsession for devotion. The dream set-up should be pure bizarro gold – a girl whose subconscious drags you into murder-dreams – but most of the slasher sequences feel weirdly thin, like Mellick skimmed past his own best material just to get back to hangovers and pouty art kids.
Dreams here aren’t truly nightmarish, they’re cheap escapism with a body count. Horror dissolves into comfort fantasy, and honestly, that might be the bleakest idea in the whole book.
It’s framed as tragic romance, but underneath it’s about a man choosing fantasy captivity over adult accountability, and a woman so split from her own interior world that her desires become a separate, monstrous self. .
Verdict: 3.5 / 5. Brilliant premise and a weird, haunting final note, buried under shallow characters and frat-level campus chaos. I’m rounding up for the ideas, not the execution.
For those who want sharper teeth in their dreams:
• A Nightmare on Elm Street – Wes Craven (film): the blueprint for dream-logic murder that actually hurts.
• Come Closer – Sara Gran (book): possession, dissociation and domestic ruin with real adult menace.
• American Pie (film): if you really just want to watch messy students waste their youth, might as well go to the source.
#DreamJailRomance #CampusOfBadDecision #TooOldForThisDorm
I bounced off this book harder than I expected – which is saying something, because it’s short and reads fast, like a student’s attention span. You Always Try to Kill Me in Your Dreams sells itself as “surreal dream slasher love story,” but what it really nails is the horror of being young in a dead system and choosing numbness over rebellion. Unfortunately, this book on paper was my thing, but in practice - I felt about ten years too old for it. Mellick could’ve gone full, vicious satire on predatory education and wasted youth; instead, for ~70% it reads like a grimy campus comedy that thinks being chaotic is the same as being sharp.
The true horror isn’t supernatural at all – it’s capitalism in clown makeup and its slow erosion of young people’s lives. Sensitive, already-tired kids take out obscene loans to perform the ritual of “studying”, learn nothing, and anaesthetise themselves with booze instead of admitting the future is a void. Nobody pushes back, nobody leaves, nobody even files a complaint. Even language is rotting: “racist” gets tossed around like “jerk”, stripped of meaning, just another lazy insult in a place where nothing really matters.
Roe and Elias aren’t a romance; they’re mutually assured immaturity. She’s half-drunk, half-dissociated, immediately shakes him down for booze money the moment they meet. He hands it over, because of course he does. She’s permanently half-drunk, half-dissociated; he’s a walking doormat with savior syndrome, mistaking admiration and obsession for devotion. The dream set-up should be pure bizarro gold – a girl whose subconscious drags you into murder-dreams – but most of the slasher sequences feel weirdly thin, like Mellick skimmed past his own best material just to get back to hangovers and pouty art kids.
Dreams here aren’t truly nightmarish, they’re cheap escapism with a body count. Horror dissolves into comfort fantasy, and honestly, that might be the bleakest idea in the whole book.
It’s framed as tragic romance, but underneath it’s about a man choosing fantasy captivity over adult accountability, and a woman so split from her own interior world that her desires become a separate, monstrous self. .
Verdict: 3.5 / 5. Brilliant premise and a weird, haunting final note, buried under shallow characters and frat-level campus chaos. I’m rounding up for the ideas, not the execution.
For those who want sharper teeth in their dreams:
• A Nightmare on Elm Street – Wes Craven (film): the blueprint for dream-logic murder that actually hurts.
• Come Closer – Sara Gran (book): possession, dissociation and domestic ruin with real adult menace.
• American Pie (film): if you really just want to watch messy students waste their youth, might as well go to the source.
#DreamJailRomance #CampusOfBadDecision #TooOldForThisDorm
April 9, 2026
Entiendo perfectamente tanto a los que le dan cinco estrellas como al que le casca un dos. Es un libro que juega en la fina línea que separa el "Mellick inspirado" del "Mellick que estira el chicle".
Juega casi todo el rato con la misma carta. La repetición del sueño, el mismo conflicto, la misma mecánica. Y eso, reconozcámoslo, es peligroso en un autor que nos tiene acostumbrados a que cada capítulo sea una vuelta de tuerca más bizarra que la anterior.
Me interesó más el conflicto final que el desarrollo principal de los sueño a lo "Elm Street".
Si eres completista de Mellick, léela. Si buscas una puerta de entrada al bizarro, empieza por otra.
Juega casi todo el rato con la misma carta. La repetición del sueño, el mismo conflicto, la misma mecánica. Y eso, reconozcámoslo, es peligroso en un autor que nos tiene acostumbrados a que cada capítulo sea una vuelta de tuerca más bizarra que la anterior.
Me interesó más el conflicto final que el desarrollo principal de los sueño a lo "Elm Street".
Si eres completista de Mellick, léela. Si buscas una puerta de entrada al bizarro, empieza por otra.
November 13, 2023
The cover alone really drew me in. I've been very interested in the bizzaro genre so here we are!
Roe has powers that she isn't even aware of. Her whole life.. friends, people, boyfriends have all just disappeared without her knowing why. When she gets to college she meets her new roommate Elias
Elias is shocked to have a female roommate but doesn't make a big deal about it. She seems great...until she falls asleep. Elias then realizes that his whole life is about to change because of his roommates dreams
This was short, cute, and a quick read! Looking forward to reading more from this author
Roe has powers that she isn't even aware of. Her whole life.. friends, people, boyfriends have all just disappeared without her knowing why. When she gets to college she meets her new roommate Elias
Elias is shocked to have a female roommate but doesn't make a big deal about it. She seems great...until she falls asleep. Elias then realizes that his whole life is about to change because of his roommates dreams
This was short, cute, and a quick read! Looking forward to reading more from this author
September 2, 2023
Has this become one of my top five CM3 books?
Absolutely yes.
This Bizarro tale was truly bonkers, fast-paced, exciting, and wonderfully emotional. Just like Elias, I wanted to live in a dreamworld with Roe by the end of the book.
I adored this very.
Absolutely wonderful. 🖤
Absolutely yes.
This Bizarro tale was truly bonkers, fast-paced, exciting, and wonderfully emotional. Just like Elias, I wanted to live in a dreamworld with Roe by the end of the book.
I adored this very.
Absolutely wonderful. 🖤
October 20, 2023
Fast paced. Exciting. Really caught my interest right from the start. Loved the dystopian like description of university life. A tragic love story with gore and magic. Racists!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 30, 2023
Solid storytelling in this novella, with some slasher concepts a la Nightmare on Elm St. His books of late have all had a Goosebumps for Adults vibe, which is not a disparagement.
In YATTKMIYD, CM3 satirizes the distinctly American college-age pursuit of perpetual drunkenness. He is a good writer in my opinion not because of polished sentences or deep philosophy, but in respect to his ability to create believable characters. You will hate some of them and root for others. Any author who is able to design a character to elicit a response from the reader is usually also able to design a plot to do the same. Well-couched in genre fiction, Mellick still manages to avoid some clichés, while embracing others, mixing the expected with the unexpected, fan service with surprises. The ending was open to interpretation, but much more interesting than the rest of the book. I felt for Elias, our protagonist, as he is gaslighted and abused. This theme of putting the main character through a hellscape of slightly skewed modern life has been repeated throughout his oeuvre, and is mightily convincing here. The present tense perspective felt a bit too faddish though.
As usual, the book capitalizes on humor, gross-out factor, and some goofy violence. Most characters act the way characters typically act in horror films, which is to say they seem determined to sprint toward their own inevitable demise.
Of course it was not non-stop fun. The way several characters repeatedly glance at or mess around with their electronic devices multiple times per page became irksome. I read books in order to escape this irritating behavior. Of course, Mellick sees the phenomenon in our culture and puts it in his book. It is an alternate history of now, where the bleak reality of living is too egregious to tolerate on a daily basis, and young, aimless students can't face the void of ineluctable adulthood.
Aside from the virtual instructor who elicited laughs, I noticed the inclusion of side characters illustrating various layers of youth, whose radical activism and ennui is bloodborne and recursive throughout, coupled with such contemporaneous tics as that peculiar modern mental disease which causes some people to utter the word "bro" at the end of every sentence.
In terms of flaws: Roe's penchant for dream-slaughter ceases rather abruptly. She awakes into a dream consciousness, departing from her instinctive behavior into full awareness of her dual nature. It seems that her partial spontaneous combustion was an arbitrary constraint lacking purpose. Several aspects of the scenario were not fully fleshed, and the ending flew by. He could have carried it further, but the last line of the book stirred a lot of emotion.
In YATTKMIYD, CM3 satirizes the distinctly American college-age pursuit of perpetual drunkenness. He is a good writer in my opinion not because of polished sentences or deep philosophy, but in respect to his ability to create believable characters. You will hate some of them and root for others. Any author who is able to design a character to elicit a response from the reader is usually also able to design a plot to do the same. Well-couched in genre fiction, Mellick still manages to avoid some clichés, while embracing others, mixing the expected with the unexpected, fan service with surprises. The ending was open to interpretation, but much more interesting than the rest of the book. I felt for Elias, our protagonist, as he is gaslighted and abused. This theme of putting the main character through a hellscape of slightly skewed modern life has been repeated throughout his oeuvre, and is mightily convincing here. The present tense perspective felt a bit too faddish though.
As usual, the book capitalizes on humor, gross-out factor, and some goofy violence. Most characters act the way characters typically act in horror films, which is to say they seem determined to sprint toward their own inevitable demise.
Of course it was not non-stop fun. The way several characters repeatedly glance at or mess around with their electronic devices multiple times per page became irksome. I read books in order to escape this irritating behavior. Of course, Mellick sees the phenomenon in our culture and puts it in his book. It is an alternate history of now, where the bleak reality of living is too egregious to tolerate on a daily basis, and young, aimless students can't face the void of ineluctable adulthood.
Aside from the virtual instructor who elicited laughs, I noticed the inclusion of side characters illustrating various layers of youth, whose radical activism and ennui is bloodborne and recursive throughout, coupled with such contemporaneous tics as that peculiar modern mental disease which causes some people to utter the word "bro" at the end of every sentence.
In terms of flaws: Roe's penchant for dream-slaughter ceases rather abruptly. She awakes into a dream consciousness, departing from her instinctive behavior into full awareness of her dual nature. It seems that her partial spontaneous combustion was an arbitrary constraint lacking purpose. Several aspects of the scenario were not fully fleshed, and the ending flew by. He could have carried it further, but the last line of the book stirred a lot of emotion.
January 5, 2025
4.5 rounded down
Elias wants to be a famous artist and heads off to college to make his dreams come true. What he doesn’t expect is his roommate Robert aka Roe. She is completely unaware of her special ability that sucks nearby persons into her dreams. But what really sucks it that she tries to kill people in her dreams and often succeeds….The age old tale of if you die in your dreams you die in real life is very much the truth. Elias has to figure out a way to live with his new roommate.
First off. What a joke of a school. The teachers. The dorm rooms. The curriculum. The strictness. Everything sucks or is laughable.
Roe is complicated because she doesn’t seem to know what she does in her dreams after she wakes up. She never remembers anything. Dream Roe and Real Roe are very different people.
Elias being stuck in Roes dream for so long was super interesting because the direction of the book brings to pivot.
Elias ends up stuck in a tough situation because he knows and befriends both the real Roe and the dream Roe. He begins to crumble as he learns to live in both worlds sporadically, but he definitely prefers one over of the other. Needless to say that his life will never be the same after running into Roe.
The ending was something I didn’t quite expect and it really leaves you wondering where both Roes and Elias’s future is headed. Is it a love story? Is it a tragedy? Either way, a very entertaining read.
Elias wants to be a famous artist and heads off to college to make his dreams come true. What he doesn’t expect is his roommate Robert aka Roe. She is completely unaware of her special ability that sucks nearby persons into her dreams. But what really sucks it that she tries to kill people in her dreams and often succeeds….The age old tale of if you die in your dreams you die in real life is very much the truth. Elias has to figure out a way to live with his new roommate.
First off. What a joke of a school. The teachers. The dorm rooms. The curriculum. The strictness. Everything sucks or is laughable.
Roe is complicated because she doesn’t seem to know what she does in her dreams after she wakes up. She never remembers anything. Dream Roe and Real Roe are very different people.
Elias being stuck in Roes dream for so long was super interesting because the direction of the book brings to pivot.
Elias ends up stuck in a tough situation because he knows and befriends both the real Roe and the dream Roe. He begins to crumble as he learns to live in both worlds sporadically, but he definitely prefers one over of the other. Needless to say that his life will never be the same after running into Roe.
The ending was something I didn’t quite expect and it really leaves you wondering where both Roes and Elias’s future is headed. Is it a love story? Is it a tragedy? Either way, a very entertaining read.
November 20, 2023
This one was a little hard to get into at the start for me but when I got further into it it got better and better, and true to form it was all wrapped up beautifully at the end. A great reminder of why I love reading Carlton's work.
January 23, 2024
It’s the first story I had read where you can get in love with a slasher killer and even form a happy family and have a child together. That means that love can win everything, no matter what!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 7, 2024
Superlatively imaginative, wonderfully told story of Elias and his dream girl.
June 9, 2024
Least fav of his. Just something was missing
November 14, 2024
The ending after Roe woke up was pretty fucked up but the afterword comic fixed it. Solid 5*. Takes up the spot of second best Mellick right after BioMelt.
May 25, 2025
I absolutely loved this little novella I buddy read it with my friend and we agreed that it gave goosebumps and fear street vibes for adults! It was a cute and interesting entertaining read.
July 15, 2025
As always with Mellick, simply brilliant!
August 16, 2025
This book was very interesting. I couldn’t stop reading 😂😂😂 NGL I expected this from Carlton and I’m not mad💀 FULLY ENJOYED!
November 25, 2025
Very good
I've always enjoy Carl's work. His storytelling world building and character development was pretty good in this. A very interesting story
I've always enjoy Carl's work. His storytelling world building and character development was pretty good in this. A very interesting story
January 2, 2025
Check out my video review! Hit subscribe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK7u9...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK7u9...
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews