Even the most mundane, everyday objects can become an object of horror. Sometimes, it's just a hint of horror. "Foreshadowing," if you will. Take the ordinary kitchen garbage disposal, for instance. A useful appliance, don't you think? I wouldn't know what to do without mine. Occasionally, though, a lemon seed, a hunk of plastic, the odd spoon, or a bit of bone falls into the drain and causes the grinder to grind to a halt.

Naturally, I just reach in with my hand and un-jam the mechanism, and —

Well, of course I shut it off, first. I'm not stupid.

Then again, I'm not all that bright, first thing in the morning, at 7:00 B.C. (that's Before Caffeine, for those who don't know). It could happen.

Call that "suspense."

My mother worried terribly around things like garbage disposals, deli meat and cheese slicers, and sharp knives. My parents ran a cheese and wine store, back when I was a teen. "I don't want you using that slicer!" my mother would say to me. If she'd had her way, I'd have cut Jarlsberg with a dull plastic picnic knife.

"Safer than that wicked-looking knife you sliced your wrist on," I'd remind her. Nothing like your dad calling you at home, saying "Your mother's cut her wrist. We're on our way to the hospital." There's the "climax." Oh dear, she'd seemed quite chipper just a few hours earlier…

Naah, she was fine. Stuck in a cast for months, after that – wouldn't want the tendon to snap like a rubber band and disappear into her armpit (more "suspense"), but she was fine. She'd been slicing a hunk of cheese for some woman who had the gall to ask if my mother could please cut her a slightly larger hunk of cream Havarti before bleeding to death?

The store bathroom looked like an abattoir. Knowing the truth, and having to clean up the mess? Call that the "denouement."

As a child, it never occurred to me that what I found amusing sent chills down other people's spines. I would have enjoyed having Wednesday Addams for a friend. I thought my parents were quite proud of me and fascinated by my brilliance when I proposed learning, first-hand, how electric house current worked – by "insulating" a paperclip with a rubber band and sticking one end of it into a wall socket.

I still wonder, sometimes… I mean, would the rubber band provide sufficient insulation? Would I knock myself into next Tuesday with the jolt?

When I was ten, I didn't stop to think that the neighboring diners might be put off their feed when I asked a colleague of my dad's, over appetizers at a fancy restaurant, how dead bodies were embalmed. The man, who had been an undertaker in a previous career, looked at my parents for permission. They just shrugged. There's no derailing my curiosity until it is satisfied. Such conversations were commonplace at our dinner table.

Another childhood horror was the garbage truck – the one with the compactor in the rear. For some reason unknown even to them, my grandparents took me to see the movie "Blood Feast" when I was about six. (Ridiculous farce that it is, I took it for serious cinema, at the time, and the images of mutilated women and a limping, club-footed monster were lodged firmly in my brain for years. Until I rented the thing from NetFlix a year or so ago, and couldn't stop laughing…) Anyway, the villain climbs into the back of the garbage truck to escape the police officers chasing him, at the end. How they can't catch the guy baffles blooperologists to this day, but he's in the garbage truck, gloating, when it starts to do its thing.

It ain't pretty, and I was afraid of garbage trucks for years.

Ironically, the only other person I know who's seen the movie was our garbage collector. He completely understood why I crossed to the far side of the street, every time I saw him coming.

One last tale; a sad, true tale. My dad and I used to love to chase ambulances and firetrucks. (Don't give me that look – back when I was a kid, there were lots of shake-shingle roofs and old wooden barns. It was fairly common to see a fire.) One night, we were detoured off A1A as we were driving home from dinner. We pulled down a side street, and my dad and I got out of the car to go see what was going on, that A1A was barricaded. We should have turned back when we ran into a young couple, both of whom were sobbing. "You don't want to see that," the warned.

We were stupid.

We got close enough I saw…a foot. Okay, that's enough…we turned right around and went back to the car. But that image, the image of the flares in the road, illuminating a severed foot, has stuck with me for nearly thirty years.

Isn't it the juxtaposition of totally ordinary and gruesomely, horrifically extraordinary that makes horror work? The notion that "This could happen" coupled with "But it's not going to happen…not here. Is it?" gives horror its creepy, spine-tingling appeal.

It's fairly easy – start with an everyday object. Something sharp, or mechanical; something jagged, or very deep; something tasty, or something wet. Add the secret ingredient: what our protagonist forgot, or didn't know. Ask yourself "what if…?" and ponder all possible answers until one comes to you, and you're compelled to write it down.

C'mon, we all know better than to walk up (or down) the stairs when the scary music starts to play. But life doesn't come with a soundtrack. And, you know…it could happen. What if it did?

Examine the mundane objects in your life and ask yourself how the ordinary might be – or become – sinister. Write a story about it, then submit it below. You might find it featured in an upcoming issue!

In the immortal words of E.G. Marshall, "Until next time…pleasant dreams?"