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Harsh Mistress
- Forest Whitaker: Cory Williams dreams of being a rock star, and all that it brings: fame, fortune and a endless parade of women. But for some, this dream comes with a price. For Cory, that price will be something far greater than he ever bargained for.
- Directed by Brad Turner
- Written by Bradley Thompson & David Weddle
Cory Williams is a struggling musician looking for his big break. After discovering a special guitar, it grants him fame and fortune, but little does he know, his new instrument has a price attached to it.
Tropes for this segment include:
- Downer Ending: Cory's attempt to destroy the guitar fails and it survives the car crash he dies in. The guitar then ends up back in the music shop, ready to claim another victim.
- Paranormal Mundane Item: The guitar. It grants the musician great music abilities, but is extremely possessive over who uses it and will murder anyone the owner grows attached to.
- Forest Whitaker: A warning for all you wannabe rock stars. Make sure you have the talent to back up your ambitions because sometimes dreams die hard. Just ask Cory Williams, currently on tour... in the Twilight Zone.
Upgrade
- Forrest Whitaker: Perfection. Isn't it something we all yearn for? Annie Macintosh does. She wants the perfect house, the perfect family, the perfect life. But she’s about to learn that perfection is an illusion. And a terrifying one at that... in the Twilight Zone.
Tropes for this segment include:
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Annie outright wishes that her family could be more perfect, and they slowly start getting replaced by newer, prettier, and smarter versions of themselves.
- Chekhov's Gun: The family portrait, which slowly changes when each family member is replaced.
- Oh, Crap!: Annie starts to freak out when she looks at the portrait and sees that she has been replaced.
- Ret-Gone: Annie wishes for a perfect family. She gets her wish, and her children are replaced by more perfect children. However, eventually she is replaced. It's revealed that they live in a computer game, whose player decided to replace her characters.
- Tomato Surprise: It turns out that Annie and her family were characters in a The Sims-esque people simulation game.
- Forrest Whitaker: Just a game, or is it? How do we know we aren’t just characters in some computer game called life? At any moment, each of us could be replaced by someone a little smarter, a little younger, and a little more perfect.
