random horror thoughts: horror story annoyances

I love a good horror story. I even like a bad horror story far more often than I should. What I don’t like is seeing a talented writer sabotage the potential of their story. Below are a few things that I implore all you horror writers out there to please, please not do (or at least think very carefully if it is really integral to the story that you do so.)

Making the protagonist [or any key character] a writer. Far and away, this is my number one pet peeve. Do you know how many careers exist out there? Millions. Do you know how many people make their living as a writer these days? Few. This smacks of laziness and self-absorption—more times than not, it’s the equivalent of inserting the author into the story. Nothing personal, authors, but we readers don’t care about you. We would like, however, to care about your story.

I mean, seriously. Make your protagonist a software designer, a gas station attendant, a lawyer, someone running for city council, someone who drives a street cleaner…anything! Horror is such an imaginative genre and I fail to understand why writers, after dreaming up fantastic scenarios and creatures and even entire worlds, stop short when it comes to their characters’ professions. “Write what you know” is not meant to be taken literally and honestly it doesn’t apply to the weird tale. There is this fantastic thing called the Internet that most of us have access to. Five minutes on it and you can learn enough about a profession to apply it to a character if the profession itself is not central to the story. You might need a whole half hour if it is.

This practice made a bit of sense a few decades ago when being a mid-list writer was something you could make a career out of and still be free to battle the demon in the sky or under the bed, something that can be hard to make believable for a person with a 9-5 job and its requisite interactions. But in this day and age technology has completely changed the workforce. People work all sorts of hours in all sorts of places. It’s not hard to adapt this background to your story.

Exception that proves the rule: early Stephen King. ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining. But Misery and The Dark Half and seemingly every other book he’s written since 1985? Not so much. And he’s a master storyteller. Not that I don’t love those books, some very much so, but it’s gotten ridiculous.

Setting your story in the world of academia. Hey, academia is a dry world and needs a bit of enlivening, eh? And all the chances for forbidden knowledge! Look, many of my friends (authors and otherwise) make their living in academia and I’ve nothing against the occasional story using it for a backdrop, but like the protagonist writer, it generally comes off like a lack of imagination, the writer’s equivalent of a binky. Throw that binky away and challenge your imagination!

Once more, this made sense in decades past as it provided an easy way for a character to get in contact with forbidden information. But technology has changed that paradigm, and anyone with Internet access can do the same. Truthfully, the nut in his basement obsessing over something weird on the Internet is a far more believable archetype than the academic obsessing over ancient texts in a stuffy library. And I love stuffy libraries. But I can’t say I believe that’s where the door to other dimensions is going to appear, and few writers have convinced me otherwise.

Exception that proves the rule: Lovecraft. But that’s because he’s Lovecraft.

Getting all meta. This is becoming a big problem in a lot of current horror fiction I read. Making a horror story a commentary on a horror story with knowing winks comes across arch and too often as a substitute for characterization. If the writer can’t make me care about his characters, then trying to show me how clever and aware he is won’t improve anything; it will just make the taste of the story that much more sour. It’s the worst kind of writerly navel-gazing and comes across as an incredibly limiting perspective. I want to get lost in the story, not constantly be reminded that I’m just a dude sitting in a chair reading the story. As in the other annoyances above, it’s a failure of imagination.

Perhaps it’s not fair to single out horror stories for this; it’s a problem of culture (thanks Internet!) And I think it’s sometimes the result of grappling with the fact that no one knows where exactly the weird tale can go right now. Technology makes it hard to be alone and isolated, key components in many a horror tale. But sending up the traditions of the horror tale doesn’t make for a good story either. It’s like making a comedic horror film; it almost never works. You are working in a genre of the strange and fantastic; use your imagination!

Exception that proves the rule: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. But his subsequent work makes it appear this was probably a lucky fluke. Fantastic novel, though.

There are other, more minor annoyances but these are my personal big three. And of course all of this is subjective, as anything is when discussing art. If you love horror tales with a writer working in the backdrop of academia while dropping clever asides about the novel he is writing that just might come true, more power to you. All I ask, is that with the limitless possibilities of the imagination, writers consider that there is more than one tale to tell.

tender things

Those of you close to me personally likely know there has been a lot of darkness in my life and those around me the past six weeks. Out of this has come the story below. Except that I think it may be more of a prayer than a story. Perhaps someday I will be able to judge it. Right now it is too close to the bone, but it seems wrong to leave it in the trunk with all the other stuff I write. So here it is. 

They spoke of tender things as the birds flew above them. 

Long had they had worked on this and now that the work was nearly complete the space between them warmed once more. But it was a different kind of warmth; a warmth born of loss and sacrifice. A warmth born in the moment between conclusion of intent and a new world unknown. Between knowing and unknowing. They spoke through the birds, having cut their lips and removed them from their body. Their lips, their skin and most importantly, their blood.

They thought blood was enough because there was no one to tell them blood was never enough. Small cuts grew to larger cuts. The fur of the plush rabbit that had guided them turned from brown to maroon as it soaked up their blood. When they could cut each other no more she picked up the rabbit and, using her paring knife, cut a slit down its belly. Together they pulled out the fluffy entrails and soaked them with their blood. This they cast at the foot of their creation, the result of their work together. They knelt before it as if to pray.The birds went silent but continued to fly in a circle overhead.

The first gift he'd brought to her: apples. He dropped them as he presented them to her. She picked each one up, admiring the bruises. The splintered floor they fallen upon had torn patches of the apples’ skin. She piled the apples carefully on a cracked bone china plate covered with painted roses. She’d never seen or touched a rose. The apples covered the painted roses. They sat before the plate of apples for a time. Then she led him to the dirty mattress lying in the furthest corner of the room. On the floor next to it sat seven candles.

She lit two and crawled, clothed, beneath the frayed blanket covered with fading dinosaurs. He followed, nervous, and pulled the blanket gently over them both. They did not touch and eventually slept.  

The second gift she brought to him: a paring knife with a broken handle. He accepted it, grateful, but was unsure what to do with it. She produced a paring knife of her own and held it in front of him so that he could see the handle was also broken. Lowering it, she reached out and took his hand—the first time she touched him—and led him to a small coffee table opposite the plate of apples and far from the mattress. In the middle of the coffee table sat a dented mixing bowl full of tomatoes. She picked one up and with her knife, carefully peeled the skin off, spilling not drop of tomato juice. He attempted to do the same but the skin tore and juice ran down his arm. She came up behind him and reached her hands around to guide his. She did this for two tomatoes. He did the rest by himself and, with the last tomato, succeeded in not spilling a drop of juice.

She lit four candles and allowed him to lie naked next to her beneath the dinosaur blanket. She wore ragged clothes that smelled of sugar and opium. He closed his eyes and focused until his breathing was steady in his chest. He did not touch her. It was a long time before he fell asleep.

The third gift he brought to her: A bundle of sticks tied together with a strip of oil-stained cloth torn from his jeans. She accepted the bundle in her outstretched arms. He built a fire in a concrete bowl next the cracked window which he propped open with seven unread books. She knelt in front of the fire and lay the sticks in the flame. Together they watched them burn until only ash remained and the fire went out. She reached into the warm ashes and rubbed her fingers together. She withdrew them and drew a sigil on his forehead and a matching one on hers. This was the fifth gift, and it was for both of them. The sigil warmed his skin and he knew it would remain there always.

She lit six of the seven candles and removed her clothing before slipping beneath the dinosaur blanket. He did the same. They did not touch, but after she fell asleep he reached over her and took her stained t-shirt from the floor and lay it atop his pillow. This time he fell asleep quickly.

When he awoke he felt the sigil’s shape as it wrapped a warm embrace around his head. She was not in bed. He dressed and searched the small apartment but she was gone. He could leave too but anywhere he might go would be empty without her. He would wait. If she did not come back, let him join the dust covering the floor. He sat, cross-legged, in front of the plate of bruised apples, the first gift. The bruises had grown darker. He stared at them, hungry, but he did not eat nor touch the apple. He sat like this for a long time but she did not come. His stomach growled and his body ached. He was thirsty. His head ached. He ignored all of this and did not move. Eventually, despite his concentration, sleep overtook him.

This time when he awoke he was naked and many birds were painted on his skin. This was the sixth gift. She was sitting next to him and, seeing that he was awake, reached over and touched one of the birds, a small crow on his belly. The crow took flight and circled over them. She touched another, a raven on his shoulder, and as he watched with wonder it also took flight. She lay her naked body next to his. As they made love, all of the birds on his skin took flight and flew above them, circular, creating a cocoon with their flight. He cried when he climaxed and she touched his tears with her finger, drawing them to her body. He could not see, in the dim light of the seven burning candles, if she cried too. She guided his hands until she climaxed. Moments later, she arose and opened the window. All of the birds flew out.

This was the seventh and final gift. Now they started their work.

The plush rabbit they found in an alleyway near the apartment the first time they went outside together. He was lying on his back on the wet pavement, a rain storm having just passed through. They crouched down next to him. She picked him up. He was covered in brown fur with a white streak across his back and his opaque plastic eyes held them both. They knew he was to come with them. Once back at the apartment, the rabbit sat on the dirty mattress and guided them through their work. When they went for supplies the rabbit told them what to get even as he remained in the apartment. In this way they gathered wood, wire, nails, canvas, paint and other things. All of it for the work.

Once they had all the supplies they began to build. They worked, naked, without resting. They did not eat and they did not touch each other. The air in the apartment grew cold. They framed the canvas and painted many doors until they painted one to the rabbit’s satisfaction. Then they built that door, first of wood and nails and wire, until the rabbit instructed them to wind their skin throughout the door and its frame.

This they did, using their paring knives. The knives, dulled further from the previous labors, tore their skin instead of slicing it clean. The pain was great but neither cried out. They collected the ragged pieces of skin and entwined them with the wire on the door and its frame. Their blood collected on the floor, their tender things exposed to each other. After this, the rabbit went silent. They sacrificed the rabbit and lay his blood-soaked remains in front of the door.

The birds flew back into the room and they knew they were done. The birds cried songs in a thousand different languages as they circled overhead. They knelt and spoke of tender things to each other through the birds.

When there were no more words to exchange, they linked arms. Organs and viscera falling to the floor, tender things covering the remains of the plush rabbit, they pushed open the door and stepped through. The birds, crying no more, followed.