One Step from The Horror

Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” One of my media professors used to talk about this as dramatic distance. The closer you are to an event, emotionally, the impact of an event changes. Or, put it another way, it’s funny when a moose in heat humps someone else’s car to pieces. But when it happens to you? That’s a $30,000 car that’s been totaled – and who’s betting their insurance covers paint damage from moose semen?

I think that distance is what will help me crack horror writing. Comedy and horror are brothers, after all. They know the value of timing, of setup, and making sure you have just enough skin in the game to make you want to get the punchline.

This all started when I was listening to one of the best weird/horror authors out there, Gemma Files, on the “This is Horror” podcast.

Two things hit me. The first was a sponsorship ad for a book where a deep-voiced narrator described walking on the beach, alone, as darkness sets and seeing a woman in the surf. But when she turns around, she has razor sharp claws and shark teeth and runs at you, looking to devour you! I’ll let you hear it for yourself in the episode.

The second was a weird story idea Gemma threw out there of a man who sticks his hand under his pillow and finds a mouth there, in his bed, in the mattress.

Both cases had me thinking that most of the folks I write about would have had non-standard reactions to both scenarios. The guy on the beach, confronted by the shark mermaid? If he’s alone, wandering at night, he’s probably depressed. Most likely thinking about returning to a soul-crushing corporate job, thinking about his ruined dreams, when he sees something out of myth charging him. His first thought, and likely last, would be how beautiful it was, and how he wouldn’t have to deal with Toby demanding an update on his QBR numbers the next Tuesday…

Or, with the mouth, after yanking the pillows away, our protagonist would stare at the lips and teeth sprouting from the bed and she’d say, “Can you talk? Are there ears anywhere?” After the shock, there would be communications attempt. If it spoke weird languages, she’d try to figure it out so she could speak its language and figure out how it got merged with her mattress, and how to get it home.

That’s not how normal people react. That’s not how horror protagonists react. And part of the horror is the fact it’s a normal person in abnormal situations.

So, I have to step away. My protagonist isn’t the guy smiling as a shark woman rakes her teeth across his naked skin, devouring him. It’s the beach patrol officer, reassigned there after putting seven bullets into a pregnant black lady in her own home, and still believes it was the right thing to do. And the only way to make his beach safe is to take the same attitude to those things coming out of the water.

My protagonist isn’t the lady who finds the mouth, it’s the husband, horrified at the foul thing spouting unwholesome words, seducing his wife to Satan’s bedside. He’d need to get a crucifix, of course, and sharpen it into a knife to cut out it’s foul tongue before his wife went too far astray. The local Baptist pastor is right, after all.

Will be trying this out and seeing how it goes. Wish me luck.