"The Glamour" is a short story by horror writer Thomas Ligotti, written in 1991 and first published in his short story collection Grimscribe: His Lives and Works.
Synopsis
The story focuses on an unnamed narrator who has a habit of wandering around places where he has never been. On one of his wanderings, he comes across a strange movie theater advertising a single feature known as "The Glamour". His curiosity piqued, he enters the theater, which he learns is under new management, and also learns from the man at the ticket window that admission is free. Upon entering the theater, he immediately realizes that something is very wrong. The entire place radiates with a sinister glow of purples and pinks, eerily reminding the narrator of human organs. In the theater itself where The Glamour is to be shown, the place is covered with cobwebs reminiscent of human hair, including the projection screen. The place is nearly empty except for a few other patrons who make odd and cryptic remarks when asked about the supposed feature. When it finally begins, instead of a movie be a shown, the screen displays silent scenes depicting some nightmarish other world, and the projection screen appears as disembodied eyes which are guiding the viewers, including the narrator, on a tour of this strange world.
The narrator attempts to flee just as the hair-like cobwebs come to life and attempt to restrain him to his seat and the images on screen depict the ticket man from earlier, now naked and uttering a silent scream surrounded by a purple glow, as if he has been "taken" by the strange being who seems to control the theater. Soon after The naked man appears to undergo some kind of surgery with his organs completely exposed while being operated on. The narrator breaks free from the hair-like restraints and as he is leaving he sees in the projection room the visage of an evil old woman with glowing eyes and monstrous hair, apparently the new "management" spoken of earlier who controls everything within the theater, and is the source of the nightmarish images displayed on screen during "The Glamour".