The Inside Out Man
by Fred Strydom
A young musician receives an unusual offer from a wealthy stranger in this haunting story of psychological horror. Bent is a jazz pianist living gig-to-gig in a dark city of dead-ends. With no family, and no friends, he has resigned himself to a life of quiet desolation. That is, until the night he meets the enigmatic Leonard Fry. After accepting an invitation to his countryside mansion, where Leonard resides on his own, Bent is offered a deal of Faustian proportions. "There is a room in this house. There's only one way in and one way out . . . There's one lock on the door, and only one key to that lock. Now, what I'm going to ask may seem strange to you. I don't necessarily need you to understand, but what I do need is for you to agree to help me." Disillusioned with his life of excess, Leonard has decided to explore the final frontier of his existence, the margins of his mind, by locking himself in a small room in his mansion for a year. In exchange...