In this masterful collection of horror stories, George Zebrowski divides these nineteen tales into personal, political, and metaphysical terrorsstories to scare you individually, stories to frighten you as a social animal, and stories that should terrify the entire human race. In I Walked with Fidel, a young man encounters a once politically powerful zombie; Jumper focuses on a young woman with a dark and troubled past, while in The Coming of Christ the Joker, the lighthearted banter of a celebrity TV talk show becomes something far more serious. A Piano Full of Dead Spiders is an eerie story of genius, its demands, and its delusions; in Passing Nights, the truth behind a recurring nightmare is revealed; The Soft Terrible Music depicts a man who must hide his past even from himself. And in the title story, the novella Black Pockets, Zebrowski asks: What happens to a man when his desire for revenge becomes all-consuming? With an introduction by Howard Waldrop and an afterword by the author, George Zebrowski reveals himself in Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts as a writer who can play on our more disturbing emotions even as he impels us to deeper thoughts.