Confession #4: I am really, really, really bad with horror.
Thrillers can be ok, though they make me jump. Gorey things though... not so much. Zombies, slashers, all those kinds of things squick me out, which is weird, because I have no aversion to seeing blood. It's not just movies, either. Even reading Wikipedia plot summaries is a risky business for me. Why? Because I have an incredibly overactive imagination. Just the words themselves evoke images of splattered entrails and screaming teenage blondes and disembodied limbs and...
Despite all that, though, I frequently find myself drawn to the genre. I know exactly what happens when I read a graphic summary. I know exactly how I'll react when I sit down to watch a movie about a group of friends going off to a secluded place for vacation. I can steel myself all I like, but it doesn't stop the inevitable. And yet I keep going back. Sure, it's not a regularly occurring thing, but sometimes I get curious. Maybe it's a challenge to myself. Maybe I just want to know what's making Hollywood tick these days. Maybe it's a sanity check that I haven't become a psychopath (well - more of one.)
Or, maybe it's because I wish I could write for the genre.
Suspense is something that I have a lot of trouble with. As creepy of a person that I am, I can't write creepy scenarios without being hackneyed. Last February, I penned a horror story for a writing competition, and it was just... boring. It lacked that chilling feeling, and unsurprisingly, it did not place. Was it because I lack experience with the genre? Is it because I have such a strong aversion? I don't know, but you know what? I'm not entirely ready to give up on it yet.
I sketched this lass during a meeting last year, or something, from bits and pieces in my head:
Maybe it's Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas, before her locks have grown out. Maybe it's another Frankenstein's monster. Maybe it doesn't even know what it is.
There are a thousand tiny snippets, barely even glimmers, of ideas in my head, multiplying by the hour. In the community, we call these things "plot bunnies." I know, real cutesy, but trust me - they're little bastards. This girlie has one big old hutch of her own.
Consider this - a little girl who lives all alone with her father, who tends to her and bends to her every whim, except for one. She is never allowed to go outside, and she can never look in a mirror. Oh, she can have friends over, of course, but they all seem to go away and never come back.
You wake up on a floor on a tiny cot in a small room with no windows and only one door that is locked. You are fettered and have no idea how to came to be here. Suddenly, a hideous creature pops out from under the cot. It's a monstrous chimera-like thing with mismatched eyes and patched skin, but it seems to mean you no real harm. It smiles a jack-o-lantern grin and asks if you would like to play a game. In exchange, it will help you leave your confinement. Refuse, and who knows what happens.
What else is there? You explore your new labyrinthine environment, and slowly you and your strange playmate discover the secret: the little girl is the dying daughter of a scientist who keeps her alive by cannibalizing the organs of victims lured into the scientist's home. .
Auuuuuggggghhhhh, that's even boring to read now! Someone help me. I cannot write suspense, and I cannot code or draw, but I honestly think one of the coolest projects I could take on would be to create a horror point and click story.
Alas. Some plot bunnies were never meant to reach adulthood. Though I'm sure they make a fine bunny stew.
Until the next.
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