Blurred

by Peter Fugazzotto

Horror is in the eye of the beholder.Beneath the veneer of our world, darkness roils, kept at bay by a thin veil. Murderers, evil, and tentacled beings loom in the shadows. Every once in a while that veil tears…Phil Waterston, former Pulitzer Prize winner, has not taken a great photo in years. Unless you count shots of drunk celebrities and car crashes. So when he’s asked to shoot an elusive Latin American drug lord, he jumps at the chance to capture the first ever photo of El Diablo. But capturing that photo will come with a price. And his quest will become a living nightmare as his crippling guilt about his dead wife and visions of a tentacled monster erode his sanity.Will Phil shoot the elusive drug lord, or will his demons consume him? Buy Blurred today and be dragged into a terrifying vortex of cosmic horror.

120 pages, Paperback

Published February 24, 2021

About the author

Peter Fugazzotto is a writer of horror, fantasy and science fiction. His short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Grimdark Magazine and Siren's Call. He is an espresso lover and a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

More information about Peter and his writing, including free stories, can be found at www.peterfugazzotto.com

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic short piece of fiction by Peter Fugazzotto!

Phil is a guy who regrets his past. He carries his guilt with him everywhere, and working as a paparazzi is slowly killing him. Taking this new job seems to be the thing to put him back on top. But like all of his choices, they are for the wrong reasons. He is chasing something that cannot be caught; it doesn't fulfill. It is hollow and leaves you craving more.

A taut descent into madness. Is the darkness clouding Phil's vision real? Why is he seeing such horrifying images through the camera lens? And what is the creature he keeps seeing that feeds on our evil inclinations and suffering?

Recommended!

[Joel Eis]

Review: Blurred, Peter Fugazutto.
© 2021, Joel Eis

I hated what was happening but I couldn’t put it down. Peter Fugazutto’s, Blurred is a terse, front line-reportage styled tale of personal anguish manifested into the world itself pulls you along with the kind of grip you get on the downhill rush of a roller coaster ride.
Fugazzoto’s rapid fire action scenes have you ducking your head as the story unscrambles. Phil Waterson, a one time top notch, Pulitzer prize winning combat photographer has fallen on hard times. Caught behind the parallax of Waterson’s personal crisis, you can only hold on for dear life. He is awash in guilt and alcohol after following a career assignment instead of nursing his wife through terrminal cancer. She wanted him to be at her side and he knows he should have been there, but was deep in a combat zone and did not—or could not—get home. The guilt over this choice has destroyed his life and his sense of self-worth until the assignment of a lifetime comes his way and he has to go back into the valley of the shadow death and his own guilt and despair.
Reality blurs so badly that inexplicably his camera can only capture images fogged over by his anguish, until he addresses the problem, too late to fix much of anything.
Did he save himself or move into the hellish world that his view finder captures?

[Lana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very thought provoking novel which I was very intrigued whilst reading. Phil Waterston is a pulitzer prize winning photographer who attempted to take the most shocking photos depicting the most horrific situations which depicted the thin line between life and death. Until the death of his wife occurred and he was not there for her, filling him with shame and remorse. However Phil was afraid of death and he hid behind the lens of his camera which sort of kept him apart from those whose photos he was shooting. With Sam’s death he no longer ventured into dangerous terrains torn by poverty, famine and war but ended up shooting photos of celebrities. Finally he was being forced to face the truth of what his life had turned into, meaningless and one dominated by fear. Haunted by the monster in his own head, created by his own mistakes, things he had done, or neglected to do which now came back to haunt him. There is no hiding from death, it will always find us, but how we face life could in the end make a difference in how it finds us. This is a breath taking novel, haunting in that it could pertain to all of us and gripping from start to finish in the usually brilliant Fugazzotto style of writing.

[Astrid Addams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Check out my review at https://gingernutsofhorror.com/fictio...