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When Ditch kidnaps Katie he keeps her in a near death state through all manner of abuse and torture until she will finally give up and let herself die. That's his ultimate thrill, the buzz he seeks from all his victims...

…The only problem is, she won’t give him the satisfaction of dying.

The longer she survives, the higher up his vile leaderboard she climbs, but first place in this hell hole is just more unrelenting barbaric punishment. The only way out is to embrace death, give yourself to the Reaper, and let Ditch have his win. But can she take that final step and let herself die? Or is the will to live too strong no matter the torment?

Near Death is an extreme horror novella that has every intention of being nasty as hell.
If you enjoy book check out more from Splatploitation Press.

99 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 8, 2022

9 people are currently reading
117 people want to read

About the author

Stephen Cooper

13 books194 followers
Extreme Horror Author

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Leeanne 🥀 The Book Whor3 🥀.
369 reviews192 followers
March 12, 2023
I’ve come to realise that the authors with the sweetest, most innocent looking faces, write the most brutal and depraved books... and Stephen Cooper is exactly THAT author.

This is the first book from Stephen which I have read, and it has to be one of the sickest, vile, violent stories that I’ve ever read...and I loved it!!

We find the ‘once’ beautiful Katie, chained to a filthy bed in a stinking cellar being tortured by the sick and twisted ‘Ditch’. Katie is just one of many women which Ditch has abducted and held prisoner over the years, while he enacts his depraved fantasies of torture and pain, and finally death on these innocent victims, who once had everything to live for.

This definitely satisfied my craving for bloody gore, and I will definitely be reading a lot more from the author. This book is full of triggers...rape, violence, torture, brutality, and will definitely be a winner with the fans of Splatterpunk and the extreme.

No less than a hefty, bloody splattering of...

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Profile Image for Diane .
360 reviews13 followers
January 20, 2024
Wow!! An extremely brutal read,full of non stop relentless torture,blood,gore and lots more!
Ditch sure knew how to put his victims through "Shear Hell"... but learning to be able to stop just before he kills them...he doesn't like that to happen...he likes it to be sexually different!!🤔😮
He eventually finds another victim, Katie...big big mistake...she has more stamina than he can cope with...and it all ends in...YOU WILL HAVE TO READ IT TO FIND OUT!!!!🤣
The ending was brilliant,with an shocking unexpected twist...
Well Done and Thank You Stephen Cooper...you kept me on the edge of my seat with a mouthful of bile🤢🤢🤢🤮
Profile Image for renee w.
265 reviews
October 17, 2022
4 solid ⭐️ What a brutal little novella this was. 😅 This was the story of a man named Ditch. He kidnapped a girl named Katie. Ditch is trying to find the victim that can withstand his torture the longest. This story was relentless torture. I’m ALMOST ashamed to say I enjoyed it this much . As always I highly recommend to those that enjoy the extremely dark and brutal side of 📚
Profile Image for Brian Bowyer.
Author 59 books274 followers
November 19, 2023
Brutal!

This is an extreme horror story filled with violence, torture, and nearly every trigger warning imaginable, and I loved every second of it. I also especially loved the amazing ending. If you're a fan of extreme horror, you can't go wrong with anything Cooper writes. Highly recommended!
Profile Image for DA.
Author 2 books134 followers
November 19, 2022
Brutally intense

Extreme and brutal. I loved how this book was able to convey the amount of torture Katie endured but wasn't overly descriptive or gory. That isn't a bad thing, sometimes that's not what the story calls for. I can't wait to read more from this author.
Profile Image for Rachel M.
412 reviews17 followers
October 17, 2022
I good story of kidnap and torture. I did struggle a bit at 1st with the writing style, but once I got used to it I enjoyed this one.
Profile Image for D.W. Hitz.
Author 38 books175 followers
March 14, 2023
This was an engrossing read of Splatterpunk fun. Not for the faint of heart. Good job, Stephen Cooper.
Profile Image for Carrie Shields.
1,714 reviews188 followers
April 16, 2023
Clocking in at just around 100 pages, NEAR DEATH pulls no punches and is absolutely brutal.

Ditch is one of the most horrific fictional characters I've encountered lately. He's devoid of any real personality and he has zero humanity or empathy for his victims. When he kidnaps Katie, his goal is to torture and abuse her until she succumbs to death, but there's a catch...death can't come from his actions, it has to come because Katie gives in to it. For Ditch that is the ultimate release, and he keeps a macabre leaderboard that tracks how long his previous victims has survived.

He is simultaneously impressed and annoyed by how long Katie holds on, and when the tables are turned after he brings her a 'gift', it's a fight to see who survives. The ending is wicked, vile, and superb. Off to add the author's other books to my cart. Available in paperback and on Kindle.
985 reviews27 followers
April 8, 2023
Ditch had long hair, googly eyes, a very unremarkable man in a boiler suit that would try to mask the shit, piss and blood from different girls. Always plotting, scheming, behaving deplorably, he kept fit from all the torturing and kidnapping. A cellar, a hell hole, girls who had been chained. Ditch kept a pristine board with pictures in different stages of abuse and how long they had lasted. The top one enduring the most heinous, depraved, sickening and horrifying torture before death. He relished in breaking their human soul. Ditch has his latest girl Katie. She will feel like death, smell like death, most of her teeth ripped/smashed out, unrecognisable nose and face, missing eye, burnt, finger and toes missing, half her bones broken. Ditch hates going to get petrol and do the shopping when he has someone in the cellar. Brutal, relentless, gore and suffering. One needs to die and come back to get retribution.
Profile Image for Milt Theo.
1,816 reviews151 followers
January 24, 2023
Outstanding! A fresh, genuine torture tale that pulls no punches - contrary to that sick individual, Ditch, the kidnapper and torturer, that is. This tale needs nerves of steel: the descriptions are detailed, the suspense unrelenting, and the outcome never happy. Katie, Ditch's unfortunate victim, proves to be something like a meta-'final girl': the ending allows her to survive without actually surviving. If this sounds ominous and mysterious (as it should be!), please go and buy the book, read it and find out how weird an ending Stephen Cooper chose for this awful, twisty, brutal, and sickening story!
Profile Image for Eve L. Fell.
Author 11 books76 followers
March 2, 2023
I enjoyed this book. Ditch is beyond your normal serial killer. He gets off torturing women for as long as their bodies can take it. But Ditch picked the wrong woman to kidnap when he picked Katie. This is a nice revenge book that I didn’t expect to go down the revenge road. I honestly thought Katie would just die. The grim reaper twist was a nice touch as well ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Daniel Lorn.
Author 7 books77 followers
October 22, 2022
A disgusting, vile and nasty gore fest! In terms of genre, you would do well to have a look at Stephens's excellent website, which will give you an idea of what you are getting yourself in for. Otherwise, this is a no holds barred torture fest, and for avid fans of this genre, you are in for an ABSOLUTE TREAT!
The only real respite offered from the relentless pain and suffering is a timely sense of humour. The scene which made me chuckle most was the "if she wants cake that badly, she could have just asked"
Really enjoyed this story, and Stephen is getting better with every book. It's a short read (100 pages), but I, for one, prefer reading novellas, as I enjoy reading my books in one sitting. So if blood-soaked nastiness is up your street, get this story read.
Excellent stuff!
Profile Image for wormy ♡.
92 reviews
September 19, 2022
//rtc

this novella never lets up.
the characters, Katie (poor poor Katie) and the evil man keeping her hostage, Ditch, are some really well written folk.
Ditch has this leaderboard - who survived the longest? & Katie is making her way up to the top, experiencing excruciatingly detailed torture.
there's a third character looming in the corner of the room - one who is watching and waiting and not doing anything to help Katie's plight.
with just 3 characters and a basement/dungeon setting, this is SPLATTERPUNK! well done extreme horror is so nice to find.
uncomfortable, gross, but there's that underlining arc: is Katie going to make it? is she going to make the leaderboard? who the hell is the guy in the corner?!
you feel for Katie, you hate Ditch, you're full of questions (that do get answered in a very satisfying way) and grimacing and going "oh fuck" at the same time.
this novella hit all my points, and i really enjoyed it.
highly recommend to fans of splatterpunk.

check out my full review and interview with the author on my blog!
Near Death : A Review + Comments By The Author
Profile Image for Kelly.
174 reviews30 followers
November 4, 2023
The book flipped between the two timelines of Katie in captivity and how she was abducted, but even with those I felt the story was lacking another timeline. Maybe it was necessary to give Ditch his own timeline outside of the bunker of how he behaves when he’s not torturing Katie just to give him more of a human side to make the reader hate him a little more. Because at the end of the day, a person can hate a monster when things are black and white, but if he has to put on a show to keep up appearances and look like a good guy, it could be harder for some people to be so harsh on them.

I had mixed feelings about the end of the story.

This book told the reader about the torture that Katie endured but only showed bits of it. For example, her beaten face and cut off toe were described but we weren’t shown how he sliced through the skin, then the muscle, and finally snapped the bone off like it’s a baby carrot. Were just left to see a stub of a tow he cut off a few days back. It also was mundane torture. I was thinking it would be something from a more twisted mind but Ditch seems like a straight forward, unimaginative character.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews

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