Dread is a novella written by Clive Barker. It was first published in the 1984 collection Books of Blood, Volume II.
Plot[]
Steve, a young university student, becomes acquainted with an older classmate named Quaid, an intellectual who has a morbid fascination with dread. Quaid reveals to Steve that he kidnapped a vegetarian classmate of theirs and imprisoned her in a room with merely beef for sustenance, only releasing her when she finally overcame her dread of eating meat to prevent starvation; she eats the meat even though it has spoiled. Steve becomes Quaid's next candidate for his experiments, held captive in a dark, silent room, forcing him to relive a childhood period of deafness that terrified him. Steve is driven insane by this forced sensory deprivation and eventually escapes. Steve then happens into a homeless shelter where he is mistaken for a drug-addicted vagrant and is given new clothes and shoes, but these don't fit him well. He is mad, pale with shock, and his lips are red and chapped from dehydration. Later, Steve steals a fire axe from the shelter and breaks into Quaid's home. Quaid's experiments, all along, were to try to help him understand the nature of fear in order to cure his own coulrophobia, but he is ironically butchered by Steven, whose ghastly appearance, ill-fitting clothes, and over-sized shoes have given him the appearance of a clown.
This story has been made into a film, with Jackson Rathbone playing Steve. The film diverges from the short story and introduces new characters, but retains some basic concepts.