Written by Paul Dail
As a horror writer, I have had several people wonder two things, either A) if there’s something wrong with me, or B) where I get my ideas. For such a nice guy, how could I come up with such disturbing material? The truth is, it’s really not much of a choice. It’s just how my brain works, how I see the same things as everyone else but just interpret them a little differently. Like most artists, I suppose.
I present to you a day in the mind of a horror writer; or, “how my brain is different from yours.” So come along with me… if you dare. Muah ha ha!
You awake.
If it was a good night in your house in the middle of nowhere, you slept all the way through without any nightmares that made you sit up, put your across your wife’s chest in an apelike protective manner and whisper, “I just saw something outside the window,” before falling back on the bed, instantly asleep. (Your wife loves when this happens, by the way.)
Many of your night terrors come from the fact that sometimes you sleep with your eyes open. If there’s just the slightest form of light in the room, even though you’re asleep, your eyes are still registering your surroundings, as well as what your sleeping brain is seeing. So when you’re having a nightmare, you will often project the content of your dreams into your bedroom.
But now you’re awake.
It’s the weekend, which means working on house projects. Today, it’s the deck. At one point, you drop your carpenter’s pencil, and it inevitably slips between the boards and falls into the 6-inch space under the deck. On your hands and knees, you can see the pencil in the shadows under the deck, specks darting through the thin slits of dusty light, but the positioning of the deck is such that you can’t look at the same time as you reach underneath.
Flat on your stomach with your arm stretching under the deck, you start to think about what types of insects might live under the deck. The pencil is just a little beyond your grasping fingers, so you wriggle a little more on your belly, pushing to reach just a little farther into the darkness, now starting to think about what types of fictional creatures might be living under the deck. Probably things with stingers. And fangs.
Just a little farther…
Your father asks you to meet him in town to help him pick up materials for one of his projects. The 7 miles of frontage road from your house to the interstate is a death trap for wildlife. The frequent deer in the evening are the most dangerous obstacles for drivers. As you pass the carcass of one, your first impulse — even before wondering how the vehicle that hit that deer ended up — is to switch your air from “fresh” to “recycled.” If for no other reason, you remember from biology that the smell of anything is actually miniscule particles of that thing. So if smelling a yummy cake is actually inhaling tiny particles of it, what does that say about the smell of death? Even beyond the science, you wonder about some sort of airborne bacteria that will turn you into a zombie or something.
But you refrain from switching the air. You’re not crazy, after all.
After getting on the interstate, you see in the distance several police cars pulled over by some cottonwood trees. There’s an ambulance. And a fire truck. As you pass, you catch a glimpse a white truck flipped over in the trees. And again, before you think of how the driver of this accident fared; you wonder why they need that much law enforcement at what appears to be a single-vehicle accident.
You think about “The Stand” by Stephen King, where the soldier escaped from a military base after being infected by some sort of super flu, then crashed his car at a small-town gas station, effectively setting off the end of the world. Maybe that’s what happened here. Some sort of super flu.
Or maybe it’s something that will turn you into a zombie.
Maybe you should stop watching “The Walking Dead.”
After helping your father for the afternoon, you go back home just as dusk is settling. You go out to your 6,500-square-foot garden carrying a steel humane trap. Something has been eating your broccoli and cantaloupe. While setting the trap, you hear something rustle in the foliage. Maybe just a breeze in the corn. Or maybe something hiding under the huge leaves of the pumpkin vines.
Did it just get a little darker?
You shout out, “Is there anything out here? Now’s your chance to come out and show me where you go under the fence.”
At first, you are picturing one of the thousand rabbits living out there in the middle of nowhere. Then you wonder what else might be under those leaves, and a shiver runs across your arms, up your shoulders, and down your neck. You remember the old saying, “Like someone just walked over my grave.”
But there’s not another sound. Whatever it was is silent now. Watching you… as the blue sky darkens to gray… and waiting… to black.
You finish with the trap and hustle inside.
When the day is done and you lay down your head, you hope that you will sleep the whole night through, in your house in the middle of nowhere, without any nightmares that will make you sit up, put your arm across your wife’s chest in an apelike protective manner and whisper, “I just saw something outside the window,” before falling immediately back to sleep.
“Because I think she might leave me,” you tell your friends, “or at least request a separate bed if it keeps up for too many years.”
In a way, you are almost afraid to fall asleep, but with so much to think about during the day, sleep almost always comes fast, without much struggle.
And when night comes, your mind starts to play again…
You can find more of my musings on www.pauldail.com, a horror writer’s not necessarily horrific blog.
