Down the Rabbit Hole

Spectacular Horrors and Clinical Confrontations

"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
DAY 967 November 1, 2016.
Prompt: What elements can a writer use to make his work in the horror genre scary?

Over the past year I have found a new fascination with the horror genre after some of my work was selected for publication in the Once Upon a Scream anthology. I found the experience of writing horror very liberating in a way I hadn't anticipated. I've always been a reader of the genre and a fan of King, Straub and Koontz. The experience with this anthology exposed me to reading more diverse selections, cross-genre delights that inspired me to consider writing more myself. The greatest appeal for me about writing horror is the freedom of it, the limitless potential of fear. The fact that from phobias to the paranormal, the field of what scares us is wide open and highly relative. Let's face it, there is so much that scares us, fragile, impressionable bags of flesh that we are. The writers I feel master this genre the best are always the ones to take the most liberties with fear. They can take something innocuous and make it terrifying by applying just the right angle. Great horror writers can leave us with pulsing hearts and racing adrenaline long after we close their books. That's impressive.

Who hasn't read Stephen King's "It" and not been forever uneasy with clowns ever since confronting Pennywise among those pages? Stoker's Dracula is as an indelible character in literature as there has ever been. Bentley's "Jaws", had us all thinking twice before "going back in the water" didn't it? What was it that these writers used to scare us so effectively? They exploited the primal fears embedded in our DNA. They mutated the mundane into something that could not be easily contained, controlled or defeated. They made us feel unsafe. For me, the biggest scares always come as a surprise, after we've told myself the worst is over, then we find out Hell has another floor...

I don't know how effective I am as a horror writer but I enjoy making the attempt.

"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 1447 November 1, 2016
Use these random words to discuss something on your mind: drip, clinical, regret, contemporary, greed, power, and balloons. It's your blog, make it a rant, a poem, or a story. Have fun.

Jackie's heels made hollow click-clacks on the linoleum as she walked down the urine-colored hospital hallway. The flowers sagged in her arms, now heavy and smelling sickly sweet from the extra hours in her warm car. She should have tossed them but hadn't wanted to come empty handed. Truthfully, she hadn't wanted to be seen coming empty handed, the man at the end of the hall couldn't have cared less what she brought.

She stopped at the nurses desk, and stood there watching the clinical hustle and bustle and waiting for someone to address her. A hefty nurse with too pink lipstick finally turned and asked if she needed anything. Jackie told her who she was there to visit.

The nurse pointed a thick finger at the big dry erase board on the far wall and said, "Room 151, but he's not back yet. You can wait for him in his room."

Jackie nodded and made her way to her uncle's vacant room.

There was precious little in the small contemporary space aside from a weak, partially deflated bouquet of balloons clinging to the far corner and a dried out violet in a blue clay pot. Jackie added her own flowers to the sad tableau and took at seat across from the foot of the bed. The sheets were tossled and the saline drip bag hung emaciated from its stand, its hose snaking over the mess of sheets like a marauding serpent. She felt herself shudder. This was the hospital room of a tyrant, a man who had lived a life consumed by greed and power and was now facing death alone because of it. It made her sad. It made her also feel vindicated somehow. Hadn't she warned him about this? Hadn't she hurled the prediction over her shoulder at his scowling face as she had felt his home?

Jackie heard the thumping gurney wheels approaching and she instinctively stood, drawing her arms up around her. Her eyes on the door, she forced herself to breath as she prepared to face a man she hadn't seen in over fifteen years.