O the Horror, O the Writer

 

 

It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

 

I don’t read the genre as much as I did. Like the child Cole Sears in The Sixth Sense, I see horror everywhere.

 

We live in a world where images are manipulated and some graphics are done so well that you don’t know whether they are real or not. An ‘alleged’ example of this phenomenon are the moon landing photos. There are some among us who believe Stanley Kubrick created them in a Hollywood studio for the US government.

 

We live in a world of perpetual surveillance. The GPS in our cars, and in our phones act as personal beacons. Cameras mounted on traffic lights watch us. Web cookies track our browser history. We have been reduced to eyeballs and dollar signs. We research a product on Amazon, then Facebook serves us ads. We subscribe to a newsletter, and the hounds of internet marketing are unleashed. That we are made complicit in the technology that enslaves and mesmerizes us is a form of horror to me.

 

Then there is the horror of perpetual anxiety. Fact-checking doesn’t exist. Inundated with information, we don’t know what to believe because contradictions abound everywhere. The SNL skit that goes back and forth in time about whether eggs, butter, and cholesterol are good or bad for you or not illustrates Information as a case of Orwellian newspeak. The Truth and the Lie will be televised simultaneously tonight.

 

As a child, I burned through the pages of Carmilla, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde unafraid because I knew those supernatural creatures didn’t exist. I liked to compare the stories to their film adaptations. I loved the Gothic atmosphere, mist on the moor, but I read with a keen awareness that horror was about unspoken fears and desires. The Victorians equated the erotic with horror. Paging Dr. Freud.

 

As I ventured deeper into the genre, I never lost sight that horror (and most creative writing) is a metaphor for something else. Hawthorne made real the Puritan fear of the devil in the woods. Vampires were either supernatural bloodsuckers or a metaphor for parasites. German currency once displayed the vampyr as a symbol of rampant inflation. We came to know how the Nazis portrayed Jews as monstrous creatures. We became the robots, the mindless automatons, and monsters. We are the zombies, the unaware and mindless consumers. Both Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde showcase science gone unchecked. Horror held up a mirror to social issues. The Shining is a hard exploration of alcoholism—although the topiary animals scared me. 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale are horrific allegories about the authoritarian state. True crime is the new horror. We started with Dr. Moriarty and ended with Dr. Lecter.

 

A shortlist of what truly scared (and scarred) me as a kid were:

Almost all of Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

Almost all of Kafka.

Horacio Quiroga’s Jungle Tales (Cuentos de la Selva). He is the Spanish Edgar Allan Poe.

Collodi’s Pinocchio, especially the scenes with the Blue Fairy and the ravens.

 

As a writer, I try to challenge myself and not confine myself to one genre. It’s fun to stretch and test our skills. I’ve written and had horror short stories published.

 

·      “Star of the Sea” in Writers Crushing COVID-19. A ‘ghost ship’ is discovered at sea and boarded. Rats have replaced the crew. A ghost ship is an abandoned ship found at sea.

 

·      “Coming up Roses” in the Sandy River Review. Rivalry during the annual rose competition takes a dark turn when a contestant uses special soil and finds a statue of a gnome in her garden.

 

·      “Last Royal” in Horror USA: California Anthology. A cub reporter scores the scoop of a career when a reclusive Hollywood star grants him an exclusive interview at her mansion.

 

·      “Diet Girl” in Levitate Magazine. A young girl with body image issues discovers a novel way to lose weight.

 

·      “Saving Grace” in Snowbound: Best of New England Crime Fiction. Set in colonial Massachusetts, Mercy Goodfeet hides a terrible secret.

 

·      “Zombees” in Black Chaos II Anthology. A small New England town experiences a strange new strain of bees.

 

·      “The Undead” in Paper Tape Magazine. Man renews his license at the local DMV, only to be told he is listed as dead and he has to prove he is alive to the state.

 

·      “La Santa Muerte” in the Doctor T.J. Eckleberg Review. Two young cousins, an injustice, and the Mexican death cult.

 

What’s on your shelf that scares you?