Favorite Kills

When my wife and I watch horror movies we can often be heard saying "Good Kill"
My wife likes the first kill of Freddy versus Jason where the girl is instantly pinned to a tree by Jason's machette.  I however like the scene in HellRaiser 3 where the girl's entire skin is ripped off of her and her body is then sucked into the statue. Go PinHead!  So horror fans.  What is your favorite movie kill?  

News stories

Wow you read the news today and it reads like a horror story sometimes. Headless or dismembered bodies.  Abductions and people being held prisoner for years.  Talk about Horror.  It's almost like a writers biggest competition is real life and not even each other. Just a thought.

Congratulations

Congrats to both Draven Ames and Adriana Noir for their recent publishings. Keep up the good work.

Their sites
http://adriananoir.blogspot.com/
http://dravenames.blogspot.com/

Psychos

I find myslef increasingly wanting to take on the challenge of writing a novel from the perspective of the pshyco.  How the progression goes from normal or semi normal to full blown pshycotic with murderous desires fascinates me. What is it that triggers the onset of madness? Guess I'll do some research and begin putting together a story.  I might decide to make it two insane people working in tandom, maybe a brother sister combo and have them be super twisted.  The possibilities are endless I suppose. I just have to pick one and go with it.

What scares you?

It's a simple question that all horror writers ask.  What scares people? For me it's a swarm of rats.  I think it goes back to when I ws a child and my parents took me to see Willard (the original) at the drive in theatre.  The scene where Willard takes revenge on his boss, played by Ernest Borgnine, stuck with me for many years.  Share what makes your skin crawl.

Blogs I follow

Check this one out by Draven Ames.  For writers it's worth the trip

http://dravenames.blogspot.com/

Another good site for writers to check out good short stories there

http://stlgzine.wordpress.com/

Check this site out I kind of like it.

http://www.horrorbound.com/news.php

Beastly

It rises like the pressure of a dormant volcano that sits waiting to spew grey ugly ash.  Once the rise begins, there is no stopping the increasing momentum until finishing what it seeks to do.  I can’t stop the rise, I’ve tried.  I’ve grappled time after time, trying to hold it deep within me.  It always gets away from me though.  I wrestle for control that I can never have, as fury is unleashed on the world around me.  An intense fury that must find release or the energy from the vehemence will destroy that which it has taken over.  I feel the rage coursing through every minute fiber of my being seeking to set free the power.  It’s almost as if my body will vibrate into tiny particles if the release is not found. 

One side of my mind… let’s call that side Tidy… always starts out in a low voice telling the other side… let’s call that side Terrible … to stop.  Tidy side starts out softly.

“Please stop, your being unreasonable”   As if the word please could stop the rise from happening. 

 Terrible, at first ignores the other until he eventually gains enough strength to deal with Tidy.  Tidy continues over and over with the pleading, until he has made a nuisance of himself.  That’s when Terrible starts to talk back.

“Enough… go away.  I’ll do what I want.”

“You’ve got to stop before it is too late.  Someone could get hurt.”

“I don’t care.”

“He does though.”

“Not for long.”

At first I lend my strength to the tidy side.  I do want it to win.  I try to will my good side to push back, to hold down the rising badness.  Tidy tries, but with each attempt, Terrible pushes back, just a little harder.  So goes the see saw battle within me until finally, my good side ends up yelling in a last ditch effort.

“Stop! Please for God’s sake stop!” 

Not only is Terrible not paying heed to Tidy, but now he is mad at the other side for trying to stop him.

“I have had enough, you little piss ant.  Go away!”  His booming voice thunders in my head, causing me skull splitting pain. 

That’s when I realize it is time to forfeit my opposition.  Maybe the rage isn’t so bad.  After all, this war within me is causing me pain and hurting me.  Wouldn’t it be better if the pain subsided?  It is at this moment, when Terrible realizes I have pulled my support from Tidy, that he rises up and begins his consumption of the weaker, now deflated side of my mind.  Terrible never fully eliminates the other, he wants something left of Tidy to hide behind when he is done.  The bad side knows that he cannot be strong forever and must at some time, sleep again to rest and renew his strength.  He keeps enough of Tidy alive to suit his needs.        

That’s how it starts, with Terrible creeping up as Tidy seeks to block his ascent.  I always side with Tidy at first.  I never want to allow Terrible the chance to gain the upper hand.  Somewhere along the way, I end up empathetic towards his point of view however, and eventually, I succumb to the idyllic feeling of the rage that consumes me.  It’s the addiction to the blissfulness of the wrath that changes me into this unreasonable being who seeks out gratification that can only be had from brutality.  

Now the rage courses through my veins in the way that the venom from a rattler does.  The anger is like a drug that overtakes and transmutes me into a dangerous, hideous being.  It feels good, powerful.  It feels right.  I’m energized, like a superhero capable of doing herculean feats.  This energy has to go somewhere, containment is not an option.  I can feel the pressure inside of me demanding a release.  Otherwise it will turn on me.  I can’t let the fury do that.  I must make sure that the attention of what has gotten hold of me is directed at a proper recipient.  A specific beneficiary of the terrible side of me is not necessary.  There is no pre-chosen person that fits any particular criteria, no vengeance is on my mind.  It is completely and utterly random. Sometimes, on rare occasions, even inanimate objects will suffice if the damage inflicted is great enough to sap my strength.  The key is, in order for me to return to a normal plane of thought, a vicious attack on persons or property must take place.

Many times I get inklings that the anger will be approaching, usually early on in the day.  A nagging feeling in the back of my mind that tells me that this day might be special.  I look to place myself somewhere that I can release it with the most appeasement, and protection for myself. The duality of my actions is not lost on me.  Even though I know I will fight the rising of the anger, I also know in my heart that I cannot hope to win the battle that inevitably takes place within me.  Armed with the knowledge that the beast within will be unleashed, I look to place myself in a situation that keeps me from being discovered by the outside world.  I know that once the rage has come upon me, all critical thinking will be gone.  I will act on instinct, fulfilling a base desire to let loose the energy that has welled up inside of me.  Rational thought plays no role and if I am to protect myself, I must think before the monster is loose. 

Restlessness is the first inkling I get.  A feeling of that wherever I am, I need to be somewhere else.   I don’t need to be watching TV with my family, or cooped up in my office.  I must be out there, in the world, looking for what or who I don’t know yet.  I just feel I have to be somewhere else.  The restlessness ultimately turns into crankiness.  That’s the next inkling, my crankiness.  Nothing anyone says or does can ease my feeling out of sorts.  That’s when I know I need to be away from the people I know and love.  I must protect them from the beast.   They can never see that side of me.  They wouldn’t understand… they couldn’t. 

Now I am on the hunt.  I’m looking for the place that takes my restlessness turned foul away from me.  It’s never the same place as previous times, but I always gravitate to secluded spots.  On one occasion I ended up at a quiet little beach by a mountain lake in mid fall.  Sitting on a picnic bench all alone in the crisp air, I fought the inner battle.  The conflict raged for a long time that day and ended when a young woman, who I suppose happened to enjoy the seclusion of a beach in October, made the unfortunate mistake of choosing that place on that day.  The beast swelled up within me and the spewing began.   Her screams for help went unanswered as the rock I held repeatedly pounded into her head.  Even as I silenced her with the stone, Tidy tried to get me to stop with a whimpering.

“Please stop, this is wrong.”

There was no reasoning with me at that point for I had become the monster that Terrible wanted me to be.  The only thing that mattered was the euphoria that I felt each time my swing connected.  The awareness that now the rage had its reason to exist delighted me.  This was why the beast rose.  This was the very purpose of the fury.  It needed to belong, and in order to belong, it needed an action that embraced the sensation like a lover embraces an amorous partner.   Violent actions embrace rage, they feed off of the emotion giving it reason to be present.  I serve as the conduit for those actions and that emotion to collide and meld.  I have a purpose, a reason to be.  That woman, on the beach, she had a purpose as well.  Hers was the most noble of all, to give the fury of the beast the satisfaction it so desires. 

I walk amongst you.  At the grocery store.  At your children’s recitals, and in your church.  I sit next to you on the bus or in a plane.  Oh you’d never know it to look at me.  I’m an unassuming person who five seconds after you see me, if you don’t know me, you forget me.  I’m your next door neighbor or your best friend, maybe even the Godfather of your youngest daughter.  You don’t know the terrible side of me.  Tidy takes care of that.  He keeps me smiling when the beast is dormant.  He makes me stick that dollar in the Salvation Army pot.  Tidy comes in handy when I stop by your house to drop off the Christmas cookies my wife baked for your family.  He makes me say all the right things to you.   Tidy helps to cook at the charity barbeque or makes me stop for you if your car is broken down on the side of the road.  That’s his purpose.   

 I have a question for you….do you know your purpose?

Excerpt from my latest project about Zombies

Day 1

We did the mash, we did the monster mash

If it was any other day, the world might have had a chance.  But it wasn’t, it was Halloween.  Halloween wasn’t celebrated in every country, but it was acknowledged, or at least some version in enough countries so that by the time humanity realized what the hell was going on, it was too late.  There were too many of them by the time we caught on and the only reason that their spread slowed at all, there weren’t many of us unaffected left. They ran out of fresh food, plain and simple.  Who would have thought that all the zombie movies would be part of the reason we got caught with our pants down.  For over forty years we watched as Romero’s zombies ate Barbara over and over again on tape and DVD, never suspecting that what we were watching could ever happen.  Oh all of us zombie fans joked about zombies being the apocalypse, but we never really believed it for a minute.  Ok maybe some of the hard core horror freaks half believed it but the rest of us knew it was fantasy.  Yeah what a bunch of dumbasses we were.  Turns out the freaks were right all along.

By the time the zombies came to town, we all thought nothing of it, after all it was Halloween for God’s sake and we had all seen zombie movies a hundred times.  Hell zombies were becoming an in thing much to the chagrin of us hardcore zombites.  Right before the outbreak, there was even going to be a series on TV about zombies.  I was so looking forward to watching that, now I won’t know how it went.  I mean who would stop to think that a zombie is out of place on Halloween?  Oh well, anyways Halloween rolled in that grey Sunday with us preparing for our Halloween party.  Now let me give you a quick history of my family and Halloween.  We are Halloween.  By the time our kids were six, they could do the time warp as good as Richard O ‘Brian and knew that a sweet transvestite was about the funniest thing on tape.  We loved Halloween…we ate it, we drank it, and we breathed it.  I once wrote a self published novel that sold a whole hundred copies.  I think this one will have even less readers.  Our house had been photographed for the local paper twice for decorations and we frequently had debates as to who was more kick ass, Freddy, Jason, or Chucky.  Horror wasn’t just for Halloween to us.  It was an all year fascination.  My wife Lori and I once rented nine horror movies on a Friday night and watched them all by Saturday night.  Get the picture yet?  We loved horror. 

On that particular Halloween, my twenty four year old son Jason, and wife of twenty five years, Lori had been out getting the liquid refreshments for the night’s festivities.  Both of my daughters Courtney and Jessica along with Courtney’s boyfriend were decorating the man fort for the party. The man fort was the basement that I had lovingly built a bar in for entertaining.

  Damn… I loved that man fort….fucking zombies.

 I was sitting in the living room watching the AMC fear fest on TV and rolling my own cigarettes.  I was rolling my own cigarettes because it was half the price of a pack in the stores, and less taxes to the government too.  I think that’s what I liked best, less taxes.  And yes, they were cigarettes.  If it was anything else, it might explain better what I saw.  I reached into the bag of tobacco I had bought that day and pinched some between my forefinger and thumb to put into the rolling machine.  Although I really don’t understand why it’s called rolling a cigarette, it’s more like the machine stuffs the tobacco into the little tube with the filter on the end.  I guess rolling sounds cooler than stuffing.  While I was rolling cigarettes I glanced out the window at the common area across the road from our house. 

We lived in what was known as the Beebe River section of Campton New Hampshire.  Beebe River was a series of old mill houses that had been built for the workers of the by then defunct wood mill.  Now they were just houses to rent from a nice fellow named Bob.  Hmm, I wonder if Bob made it?  The houses were almost identical to each other.  They were two story white houses with small porches and one car garages next to them.  They lined three roads that formed a loop near the edge of a pond.  Little white houses, that stood all in a row.  There were common areas in the village that the houses shared.  A common area was any area of grass that wasn’t attached to a particular house.  The small kid’s park to the left of our house was one such common area, and so was an area three hundred feet long by about one hundred and fifty feet wide, standing across from us that the mailboxes were on the edge of.  It was in the common area behind the mailboxes was where I got my first glimpse of the walking dead, otherwise known as a zombie.

My eyes were drawn to a jerking motion, or rather, a person making jerking motions out on the common area.  I got up to look out the living room window and at first I was like what the hell is that? In the time it took me to ask myself that, I came to the false realization that it was Halloween and I was looking at what had to be the best costume I had ever seen.  I mean this costume looked insanely real. In an instant I was both in awe at the realness of the costume and jealous that someone had created a better zombie than I ever had. 

“Holy shit…” I muttered to no one, “That’s an awesome costume.”

The Halloween reveler ambled across the grassy common area with a sort of sideways step.  Half dragging, half stepping his way along as his head lolled back and forth like it was on some sort of weird swivel.  I remember thinking to myself that this guy was really taking Halloween to the next level.  I mean here was this guy, an obvious adult, and he was wandering around our village like a zombie.

Cool. 

For a fleeting whimsical moment I thought to myself, “Wow I knew the end of the world would be zombies.”  Chuckling at the “funny” I had just made, I continued to watch as the costumed man made his way slowly towards the house across from our own.  Just when I was getting bored at this obviously over the top impersonation of a zombie that I figured was  meant to scare the two little girls in the house across from us, my attention was drawn another adult who was also dressed as a zombie.  Twenty yards or so behind the first one, a woman dressed as a zombie shuffled into view.  Now my interest was really piqued, one was a curious enough sight.  The sight of two of them was downright strange.

“Girls!”  I hollered down at the floor, to the man fort.  “Come up here quick!” 

  “We’re busy” Courtney called back.

“No, you got to see this shit.  Something weird is going on.”

“You better not be trying to scare us.” Courtney announced as she opened the door to the man fort.

 The girls came into the living room.  Jessica followed Courtney and walked over to where I was standing.  I pointed out the window indicating that I wanted them to look.

“What the…..”Jessica asked to no one in particular.

‘See I told you it was weird.”

“Well it is Halloween Dad.” Courtney found the need to remind me.  She was always pointing out the obvious.

“Thank you captain obvious” Shane, Courtney’s boyfriend said as he came into the living room. 

“Stick it Shane” Courtney shot her playful response back at him.

“Nice Courtney, nice” Shane scolded her in a kidding manner.

“Shut up both of you. Look at this shit.”  I was starting to get a bad feeling in my gut for no apparent reason as I watched the first zombie reach my neighbors porch. 

Something was nagging me… there was something out of place.  Besides the fact that at two o’clock in the afternoon it was too early for trick or treat, there was something else wrong I couldn’t put my finger on.  The man struggled up the stairs to the neighbor’s porch, almost as if he was having a hard time making the short climb.  By now the female zombie had reached the road in front of their house, and ignoring the man on the porch, she aimlessly shuffled down the road, her head lolling about.  She had an empty stare in her red eyes.

 Red eyes? 

Wow awesome makeup.

 I was just about to leave the window and go outside to praise them on their costumes when I heard the first moan.  The woman moaned a low, slow, and lonely moan like none I had ever heard.  Not even in the movies.  This hollow moan chilled me to the core and I could see by the looks on my daughter’s faces, that they felt something was wrong as well.  Courtney inched a little closer to Shane and Jessica inched a little closer to me.  My daughters were eleven months apart and at the age of twenty one, Courtney was the older of the two.  Both of them had long dark hair like their mother, and if you put the three of them together and it was obvious that they were related.  All three were on the tall side with my wife being the tallest one of them at six feet.  Just then though, with the look of fear in their eyes, the girls looked a lot younger.  They reminded me of the little girls that played in the yard and bounced on my knee.  

About the time the female moaned for a second time, the male began to hit my neighbor’s door as if he was attempting to gain access to the house.  For an instant I thought about heading out to chase them away as they were starting to unnerve me, but as I contemplated that line of action, my neighbor Larry opened up his door.  I could hear him laugh and start to say,

“What a great cost…” his sentence trailed as he went from talking to yelling.  “What the f…”    the rest of his sentence was choked off. 

The woman on the road turned her attention to Larry’s house and she turned around and sped heading in the direction of the commotion. If you could call what she did speeding it was faster than her original speed but not really fast and it was awkward movement at that.  Loud screaming from Larry’s daughters and wife came from within the house.  I realized this was wrong… very, very, wrong. 

I ran out of the living room, up the stairs and into my bedroom.  In an instant I found what I had gone up for, my Saturday night special that I kept in my nightstand drawer on my side of the bed.  More reacting than thinking, I ran back down the stairs and out the front door, bolting for my neighbors place.  It was obvious to me that he was in trouble and I was determined to help.

The front door to Larry’s was open and I could see the feet of a prone body sticking out just over the door jam.   As I neared their porch it looked like the two people who had pretended to be zombies were….

No…

They couldn’t be….

 Fuck….

They were….

They were eating Larry!

 Dumbfounded, I stopped in my tracks about five feet from the front door, just off of their porch.  Larry’s wife and kids were screaming from the living room.   I watched as Larry’s wife Amy grabbed a lamp, and started beating the man, who was eating her husband’s throat, across the back.  My mind went to all the Zombie movies I had ever watched searching for what to do. 

The head…. that was the key.

“Hey! ....Assholes!”  I yelled, trying to get their attention.

It worked because they looked up at me and started to rise. The lamp had broken, and now Amy had taken to beating the male zombie with her fists as she yelled hysterically.  I yelled for her to stop. 

Too late, the zombie turned his attention from me and onto Amy who was beating him.  He grabbed one of her swinging arms in a vise like grip and chomped.  He bit her arm with enough force to tear her flesh. She screamed and tried to pull away. The female kept her gaze on me, never taking those red eyes off of me as she got up and came at me.

BLAMM….

I fired my .38 right between her eyes and she dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Wow!!

The movies were right!!

Welcome

Welcome all. I'm going to post some of my work here for people to see and give feedback. Looking for all kinds of honest feedback to help me be a better writer.  So don't worry about hurting my feelings. Thanks for dropping in and letting me know what you think.

John