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The Scariest Monster Of All
Last month I discussed using all five senses when describing your monster. But to me, there is no better monster in a horror story than man himself. The depth of cruelty and evil that man can perpetrate on his own kind frankly stuns and baffles me. But as promised, I thought I would share with you an excerpt from the novel I’ve been working on. Of course, it is not complete, but I felt it would convey a sense of what I am trying to achieve here. It’s called…
THE NEIGHBOR
Sometimes if you stare at something long enough it becomes something else. Like when you look at the whorl of wood grain within a door, or the symmetric shapes upon linoleum. If you just relax your eyes long enough, you’ll start to see all kinds of things.
That’s how it was for Harley Shaw, except he was staring at dead cows as they chased each other down a conveyor belt. He watched as their skinned and bloodied carcasses formed a never-ending line that rushed forward for sectioning.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
Harley's stainless steel knives gleamed blue beneath the static haze of fluorescent lights, and with each cut, he transformed dead stinking meat into Family Packs for somebody’s backyard barbeque. Large, full-sized bovines entered one door, and then left out another in tiny pieces.
Overhead, an old tinny radio blasted The Rolling Stones, Beast of Burden and Harley hummed along as his heavy blade cut again and again in time with the music and sent jolts of intense happiness through the riveted wooden handle and up into the arm of its wielder.
A smile of satisfaction creased the corners of his lips. He loved his job.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
Harley saw all this, and at the same time he didn't, the way a deeply preoccupied man might see and obey traffic signals without really noticing them. His mother had called it the ‘in-between’. “When you see ‘in-between’, when things that are not there suddenly are there, it’s the first sign of madness.”
Of course his mother had been mad, as was his grandfather before her. Harley only figured it was a matter of time for him. His destiny was like train wheels on a track, turning on a known path toward a predictable future. It was just a matter of time before something derailed him.
Behind thick, horn-rimmed glasses, Harley’s brown eyes floated like strange fish in a world all their own, and in this dreamy-eyed stupor, they looked like the eyes of a man who can see signs in the sky and perhaps hear voices whispered from the depths of a dark closet. Harley's world was as volatile as a force of nature: a hurricane, a lightning storm, a planet-smashing asteroid hurtling through the void.
He had read somewhere once, that there are no explanations for mental illness, only excuses. Insanity is one of those things that just happens to people, like the complexion of their skin, or the color of their eyes. Harley’s skin was black, and under his brow, his eyes were deep wells with foul water glistening darkly at the bottom.
His mind was constantly occupied with a deadly sense of being hurried and crowded—a claustrophobia of sorts—that crushed him like the unused fallow, bone and gristle that always ended up in the hot dogs and preformed hamburger patties. In his neighborhood, in his mind, he wished all the people dead, street after street of them, mile after mile, by the millions, and wished all their houses to ashes, and all the lawns to dust.
The neighbors who knew Harley had become concerned. On several occasions they had seen him in his front yard, his face buried in his hands, making a mask of his palms and fingers and crying.
Perhaps, they thought, he had just lost a close relative. Maybe he lost a lover, or even his job. But they watched Harley cry in the way that grown-ups cry, keeping it inside as much as they can, and hating it when it still pushes out at the edges. Sometimes they saw him as he strode back and forth through the spray thrown by the lawn-sprinklers, breaking the rainbows with his body, and pounding his fist into his open hand while having a heated argument with himself. But what they didn’t know was that Harley had slaughter on his mind and that he spent most of his free time honing the edges of his knives.
He babied them; took them home every night and meticulously sharpened them for hours. He knew all too well that a meat cutter makes a knife cut every two or three seconds, which adds up to about 10,000 cuts during an eight-hour shift. A dull knife makes you apply more pressure, and that can only lead to back problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, and 'trigger-finger' (a syndrome in which a finger becomes frozen in a curled position). He'd seen it happen before. Many of his coworkers had quit because of it, and it all stemmed from one thing, dull knives. For over twenty years, Harley cut and sectioned beef as fast as he could swing his knife. His chest, shoulders and neck were massive; he stood nearly seven feet tall, and had titanic limbs that dangled like branches from a human tree.
When he drove to work, he would listen to his tires. They did not sing across the road but instead emitted a shrill one-note scream. It reminded him of the dreams he’d been having of late, or of the sound from the bellowing cattle trapped within the large holding pens that wrapped around the slaughterhouse. They crammed so many of those cows in the pens, they could barely move—packed in so tight, they couldn’t even turn around or lift their tails to crap. So they crapped on themselves, and the unfortunate ones that were squeezed in behind them. To Harley, it was obvious they could sense their fate. With heads lifted high, nostrils flared and snorting as if they had just finished a stampede, their large brown eyes would roll until you could see the whites. They smelled the blood, and the scent of death washed over them until it drove Harley, and the cows, mad.
Sometimes he’d watch, as several men stabbed at them with electric cattle prods, and coaxed them up a ramp toward the waiting chute door.
Harley liked to watch. He liked to follow the cows as they entered in single file over a steel bar stored in the floor, their legs straddling both sides. Slowly, the floor would drop away, and at that point they were carried along on the bar which was actually a conveyor belt. When they passed through the first station, a man stood on a catwalk above them. Harley watched as the man bent over the cow with an object that looked like a power nail gun. He was the "knocker", the man who welcomes the cattle into the building. He wore safety goggles and a hardhat; his face was splattered with gray matter and blood.
For eight and a half hours, the knocker shoots the cows in the head with a captive bolt stunner—a compressed-air gun attached to the ceiling by a long hose. Harley watched as the man pressed the gun to the cow’s head, and pulled the trigger. There was a loud ‘pop’, like the closing of a steel door, as a metal bolt, about the size of a thick pencil, was fired into the cow’s brain. Sometimes he missed and had to shoot the same animal twice. Harley liked that part. Then the cow sagged heavily upon the bar, its legs kicking spasmodically, as if it could flee the nightmare. But the real nightmare was yet to come.
As soon as the steer fell, a worker would grab its hind legs, shackled it to a chain, and then the chain lifted the huge animal into the air. Sometimes a steer would slip from its chain, fall to the ground, and get its head caught in one end of a conveyor belt. The whole production line would stop as workers struggled to free the steer, stunned but alive, from the machinery. The cows were powerful and imposing for one moment and then gone in an instant, suspended from a rail, ready for carving.
Another man moved in toward the cow. He was wearing a clear plastic apron dripping with blood and clutched a long knife. He reached in toward the cow’s throat, pierced it with the fine pointed blade, and cut the aorta. Now the blood ran freely through a steel grate in the floor, and the cow was finally dead.
The kill floor was hot and humid, stank of manure and blood, as a worker with a power saw sliced cattle into halves as if they were two-by-fours; their hides were then ripped from their bloodied carcasses, and it really began to feel like a slaughterhouse.
Harley loved it.
So I hope you come away from this knowing a little something about Harley Shaw. Maybe you might even be inspired to write about your own crazy person. Remember, don’t give it all away at once. No one goes completely mad in an instant. It is something that happens in increments—tiny pieces of lunacy and psychosis that roll down hill until they become something much bigger.
Until next time,
billwilcox
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There Be Crazy People Here...
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A man's worst nightmare comes to fruition in the form of a curse. Extended version.
#1398678 by Nomar Knight  |
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In an asylum for the criminally insane, a young orderly discovers true possession...
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Letters From The Asylum
Nomar Knight
Submitted Comment:
Bill, you did again. From the build up in the way you described the setting to the marvelous detailed descriptions of the monster, you showed us all how it should be done. You're so right, the five senses should be used. You left me wanting more when you mentioned the most frightening monster of all, the normal looking guy. The one that's not right in the head. I'm looking forward to the next issue my friend. Keep up the good work.
Thank you, Knight. This week's newsletter is for you.
Suser:seisa2}
Submitted Comment:
Wow, Bill, another chillingly horrifying description from you. I just love reading your "monsters"! 
bazilbob
Submitted Comment:
For me, the scariest horror is when you never see the monster. Good old fear of the unknown.
⭐Princette♥PengthuluWrites 
Submitted Comment:
Bill dear...thanks SOOO MUCH for that horrific description when I'm sitting here in the dark, at 1:30 in the morning, and I'm expected to sleep later on...  Great newsletter. Although very creepy to be reading at night...late at night...when I'm the only one up...*shudders*
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Horror/Scary: July 02, 2008 Issue [#2475]
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