The man walks into a bleak looking house and hears a whispering sound from the basement. He steps towards the door, the rusted handle twitching with the wind that rattles the windows. A whisper comes to him through the door as he grips the handle.
He opens the door. There’s a song coming from the basement, he recognizes it as a Johnny Cash tune being sung in Portuguese. “What the…” He goes into the basement.
I love reading horror. There is nothing more enjoyable than a story that can terrify you out of your comfortable armchair or an eerie book that has you analyzing every sound in your house. I have had countless ideas for horror stories, but there’s one problem: Everything I write turns out funny.
So the man in the above snippet will walk in on an all-Portuguese Oompa-Loompa production of Walk the Line in the basement. They force him to make them whiskey sours and translate the playbill into Esperanto.
Clearly the work of a deranged mind, but not quite as disturbing as Stephen King. More like a mix between Roald Dahl and David Sedaris.
In writing, maybe more than any other artistic venture, you have to be true to yourself. There is no way to fake your abilities or your strengths. Can you imagine Danielle Steele writing hard-boiled detective fiction or Stephen King writing a light romantic comedy?
Not really.
And for this reason I am always somewhat frustrated with my horrific efforts. I’ll write out a story that seems terrifying in my head to find that it reads more like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
But I have decided to make literary lemonade. The story in the link (and post) below – My Domovoi – is about a guy who finds a ghost in his flat and then buys a cat for protection. Hopefully it’s a good example of mixing humor and horror (or spookiness, anyway). In honor of Halloween I have put it up in hopes that it either gives you the creeps or gives you a giggle.
Or with any luck, both.
