October 1st

Blisters on his fingers from such a long day of working tore open as they rubbed. The crows were too bad this year. They ate the crops faster than he could pick the ears of corn, and it seemed the more he worked, the more the birds came. He didn't know how well scarecrows actually did their job, but he felt desperate.

He stuffed the burlap sack that would be the head, blood from his fingertips splotching the material. He knew he needed to bandage them up, but he wanted to finish this job first. Sliding a piece of wood through the sleeves of the old flannel shirt, he secured the board to a much longer wooden beam, making a T shape. He stuffed the pants and shirt with hay, secured this together with rope, and attached the head. The thing looked clumsily assembled, but it would do. It had no face, though. He had no marker or paint, so he improvised, using the blood on his fingertips to draw eyes and a mouth. As a last minute detail, he tied leather work gloves onto the ends of the arms, then stepped back to admire his efforts. The red face gave the scarecrow a gruesome look. He smiled in satisfaction and took his creation out to the cornfield. He'd fortunately already dug a hole with a posthole digger — it was only a matter of finding it. He walked straight into the middle of the cornfield, the sun already setting and the darkness creeping in. He searched in the last greyness of the day for the hole, knowing its location must be close. He stepped forwards and his toe placed weight onto nothingness. He stumbled, the scarecrow going with him, and he barely managed to keep from landing face forward in the dirt. He turned and saw the hole. Raising the wooden post, he dropped it in. The scarecrow stood a couple of feet taller than him.

"I wish you'd scare the crap out of anything that comes your way."

As though to mock him, a crow cawed in the distance.

"Bastards," he mumbled.

Walking back to the house, he stopped and stared at the barn. An orange orb rested on the ground, leering at him, eyes flickering and lifelike.

"Who's out there?" he called. There was no response. The jack-o'-lantern stared out, the fire inside crackling and burning. The face on the pumpkin almost came as a shock. It looked exactly like the blood face on the scarecrow out in the field. "Hello?"

The wind blew and rustled the leaves on the corn stalks. He walked back to his house, cautiously, looking behind him frequently for somebody following. He opened his door, shut it behind him and locked the deadbolt. In the closet was a flashlight and a shotgun. The shells were in a drawer in the kitchen. As he loaded the weapon, he heard a knock.

"Who's out there," he called, pointing the double barrel at the door. Nobody spoke. There was a pounding once more. He slowly turned the deadbolt and unlocked it. With a shaking hand, he reached forth and rotated the doorknob. The assault came immediately as he opened the door. It felt like needles stabbing into his eyes and throat.

#

The sky glowed red with the sun rising in the horizon. It cast shadows of corn stalks in the field, the leaves fluttering like hundreds of flags in the wind. Towering over the harvest hung the scarecrow, its arms extended in a T shape. Blood dripped from the lifeless fingertips and stained the dirt beneath. The eyes, now empty holes of a dead skull, had bundles of hay stuffed into each ocular cavity. Straw filling the esophagus and stomach held open the mouth, outstretched into what had been a final scream; it poked out from between the teeth and lips in all directions, soaked in red.

Go to Fear the Pumpkins                              Go to October 2nd

Fear the Pumpkins

He used the sharpness of the blade

To cut into the skin

He slowly sliced and carved the flesh —

Removed the guts within

The fluids dripped along the edge,

The innards on the floor

He grinned with pride at his design

And then he cut some more.

The heads he carved were thirty-one

Each one a face of death

They showed the fate each one would meet

Exhaling their last breath.

Orange faces glowed from flames within

With evil leers and smiles.

They brought with them fatality

Their intentions were vile

The pumpkin carver knew their doom

And he designed their fate

Their death was his conception mixed

With pure malicious hate

For each day of October's month

So many ways to die

A pumpkin showed how lives would end

Until Samhain arrived

Go to October 1st

Jack-o'-lantern image taken from http://kitchenability.com

Halloween Approaches

When Halloween season comes, to me it's like Christmas. After all, Halloween is the only holiday aside from Santa's workday that the houses are decorated with thematic lights and characters to get people into the holiday spirit. You drive around the neighborhood and see Styrofoam gravestones, zombies, pumpkins, inflatable monsters - all of it is wonderful. It's perfect. It makes me want to watch my favorite scary movies every night, or in the case of my having kids now, watching more family-friendly Halloween movies like Casper, Harry Potter, Hocus Pocus, etc. I always read a scary book or two in October, one of which is always 'Salem's Lot, and I always try to write at least one good scary short story. I don't typically post any of my fictional works online (I save those to send out for publication), but this year, in the spirit of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, monsters, and things that go bump on Halloween night, I am going to post 31 very short stories. On September 30^th, I will post an introduction, and then every night after will be a new entry until the final one on Halloween night. This is going to be a challenge for me since these stories aren't written yet, but I think it will be a good way to get my creative juices flowing. Hope you enjoy, and Happy Halloween.

Iron Maiden and my writing

I just received word that my short story "The Devil's Dance" is going to be in an anthology with a bunch of other stories that take place in Salem. I wrote the story years ago, have edited it and tweaked it many, many times, but the original idea for it came from the album cover of one of my favorite bands, Iron Maiden.

Quite honestly, they are a band that I don't think gets enough credit to how great they are. I know they are thought of by some as satanic because of their controversial album "The Number of the Beast" (A song that was written about a nightmare one of the band members had after watching Damien - The Omen II. It's not about Satan worship) and because of their album covers, all of which include their mascot, Eddie, who is especially creepy looking. Basically, he looks like some kind of demon faced crypt keeper.

Eddie                                                               Crypty

In the pictures and album covers over time, he's been mummified, lobotomized, mutilated, electrocuted—basically anything you can imagine. I don't think the band does this to make their stuff look evil, but more because, like me, they probably love horror. Their album covers are awesome, and their music is excellent. Aside from my wife who is always giving me good story ideas, I don't think there has been any other single inspiration to my writing like Iron Maiden has been.

I saw this image, and had a vision of demons at a masquerade ball. Elaboration plus my own creativity developed into my most recent publication acceptance, "The Devil's Dance". That story was not my first literary work to have been inspired from this album. The title song is actually a long poem/story about a man experiencing the Danse Macabre. The first time I heard this song, I loved the way the lyrics told the story, and the feel of this poetry led to me writing my first draft of "The Land of the Shadows" that same day. "The Land of the Shadows" was the first thing I have ever written that was published, and it gave me the motivation I needed to keep writing and not give up. Since then, I have had things published many times, but it was that first poem that was the start of it all, and it was that song that led to that poem.

The above picture inspired me to write a story about a monster similar to the creature depicted in artwork. The story, entitled "Arbor Mortis", has never been published, and has gone through numerous rewrites. It is much better now that it was initially, and I think one day it might get the appreciation it deserves if the right person reads it. The story is basically about a tree monster that hides in plain sight and feeds off living creatures. Really don't need to go into much more detail than that. Just imagine if this thing was in the tree in your front yard, a yard where children like to play, then watch the very much underrated movie The Guardian, and you can get the idea of what the story is about since I took inspiration from both sources.

Another story inspired by a single image is my story "Dead Man's Prayer". I set the story in the Whitechapel district of London at the time of the Jack the Ripper murders. The story involves a mortician who has a predilection for homicide. He isn't Jack the Ripper, but he is responsible for two of the murders that took place during that time that were determined not to be victims of Jack. A good story, but like so many other stories of mine, it hasn't found its publication home yet.

Inspiration can come from anywhere - album covers, paintings, strange shadows - I've written half of a novel based on my two favorite stuffed animals when I was younger and my fear of monsters under my bed.

I'm sure if I looked I could find plenty of pictures and single images that would have the potential of becoming an amazing story. I love Iron Maiden, however, and I know that if I wanted, I could always find inspiration for my writing, in both their music and the artwork that accompanies it. My first publication was a direct result of listening to their music, and this gave me confidence I needed to continue as a writer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fixing crappy screw-ups.

So I went to see the new Terminator movie today, which was actually pretty good. They did good casting Emilia Clarke as Sarah Conner, who looks like a young Linda Hamilton.

No so much with the hair, but their faces look similar

And it made me wonder about other entries to this ongoing and almost tiresome franchise. Terminator: Salvation came out a few years ago introducing Christian Bale (Batman) as John Conner and Anton Yelchina (Chekov) as Kyle Reese. If they wanted to have ANY continuity between movies they would have cast Bale as Conner once again and cast Yelchina as Reese, but they didn't. And in doing so, they made the fourth Terminator movie a pointless entry into the franchise and a waste of millions of dollars of studio money, and created a film that should never had existed. It made me wonder how many other franchises have made the same mistake. I'm not talking about movies that have come out with shitty sequels, because any moderately successful film has done that.

I'm talking to you, Johnny Five.

I mean movies that have released a sequel that nobody gave a damn about, then ignored that film's existence and tried again to reboot the franchise with a new film that ignored and rejected the attempts of the previous film. It happens more often than you think, but I've listed what I think to be the worst offenders.

Halloween III: The Season of the Witch

Seriously, why was this film made? Anybody who is a fan of Halloween – what are the movies about? Michael Myers killing the shit out of people. What was Halloween III about? An evil corporation who stole one of the rocks from Stonehenge to make masks that will kill the children who wear them on Halloween. Why? To what end? What does this have to do with the other films before and after this movie? How the hell do they make watching a Halloween song to the tune of "London Bridge" cause snakes and spiders to emerge from a mask and kill the wearer? 

Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning

For anybody has ever taken a knife to a vegetable or taken a stick to a stuffed animal and comically yelled "Die! Die! Die!", guess where that came from? Jason Voorhees was and is the most unkillable movie villain out there. In Friday the 13^th part four, appropriately named "The Final Chapter", Jason Voorhees dies. He actually dies. And his death comes from a young Corey Feldman holding the psychopath's own machete, swinging it over and over again onto the hockey mask-wearing assailant, yelling "Die! Die! Die!"

             
That's where that shit came from. It came from the hockey mask murderer's actual death. But fans didn't want Jason dead. They wanted more killing, so in a desperate attempt at a cash grab before figuring out a way to revive the dead, the studio came out with Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning. Sorry for the spoilers, but if you haven't seen this movie that came out in 1985, at this point I couldn't give a damn if I am spoiling a movie that has already come out with seven additional entries to the franchise. The movie is about a man whose mentally unstable son is murdered. He dresses up as Jason and takes his revenge, basically as a copycat killer. The next film brings back Jason, but part 5 was a waste of film, almost independent from the rest of the franchise with the exception of Tommy Jarvis's character as the only means of linking the films together, but after watching part 6, one can easily argue that part five could be skipped over without missing anything at all.

Highlander II: The Quickening

                Considered by many to be the worst film ever made, this long awaited sequel to the most awesome fantasy/adventure movie ever thought of or filmed was a huge disappointment. The entire theme through the entire first film was "There can only be one". In the end of the movie, there was only one. It was great. It was awesome. Leave that shit alone. Let there only be one. Instead, they turned the immortals into aliens from a warring planet and made a film about saving earth from the o-zone layer. Stupid fucking movie. Horrible ass movie. The other films after this, which could never suck this bad even if they tried, don't ever acknowledge any of the events of this film, as though nothing in it ever happened. I don't blame them.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

                Freddy Krueger is one of the most iconic villains in modern film history. He started off a brutal stalker of nightmares, escaped to the real world in part 2, people learned how to kick his ass in part 3, but then things just started going downhill after that. Anytime they have to replace a main character with a different actor or actress for the direct sequel to the last film, you know something is wrong.

Patricia Arquette

Not Patricia Arquette

Part 4, 5, and 6 all sort-of sucked in this series, but I guess you got to give them props for determination. But in part 6, Freddy's Dead, the series reached an all-time low,

Tom and Rosanne Arnold in the film should have been a major red flag!

               Freddy took one of his victims, sucked him into a dream video game, and controlled him, having the guy jump around like a stiff jointed Mario until he fell and died.

Rocky V

                So in Rocky IV, what I consider to be the best in series, especially after the bro-love fest that was Rocky III, The title character has to become the most all powerful badass to defeat Dolph Lundgren's character Ivan Drago after Ivan killed Apollo Creed (Rocky's best friend) in a boxing match at the beginning of the film (one of the most "Holy Shit" moments in film history, at least for me).

Don’t fuck with Drago

Then they went and made part 5, with a character named Tommy Gunn, a dumbass with a mullet named after a mobster weapon.

Fuck Tommy Gunn

                They made the sixth Rocky movie (Rocky Balboa) and had Rocky actually boxing again (unlike the horrible fifth film), and  now they have a part 7 I am looking forward to where Rocky is training Apollo Creed's son to fight.

Might be good, might suck. You never know.

This next one doesn't count, because like I said, I'm not counting shitty sequels alone unless they had a better follow up to make up for the previous shitty entry into the film series - but if they ever do make a sequel, this one is a notable mention:

The Matrix II and III

                Sorry, but I just had to go here. Such an awesome movie, the first Matrix movie. It ended greatly, and spawned part two, which can be summed up quite easily – there is a lot of cave dancing where people with dreadlocks fling there sweat everywhere, then a complex mesh of puzzles set up to find this guy called "The Architect" who uses language that only a person who has recently studied for the GRE could understand.           

                Part III came out during a lot of anti-war real world stuff, and the movie seemed to make a political statement. It ends with Neo asking for Peace with the machines, while the entire purpose expressed in the first movie is to release humans from being slaves in the Matrix. Basically this franchise took one of the most awesome films ever made and transformed it into the most disappointing franchises ever.

How many did I miss? Any other film series that had shitty entries but made up for them with a better follow up? I'm certain I missed some. Leave me your comments and let me know what other offenders there are.

Crossover Films and Shows

For those who watch Penny Dreadful or who plan to watch it but are not fully caught up, I want to give you a heads up that this posting contains spoilers.

Awesome show

So I was watching the latest episode of Penny Dreadful today, an awesome and bizarre horror show on Showtime that manages to combine the characters from different classic horror novels so that they are all living in London together. Not the most unique idea. It's been done before (and has failed miserably).

Exhibit's A and B (League of Extraordinary Gentleman was so bad it made Sean Connery quit acting forever).

But Penny Dreadful has managed to place Dorian Grey, characters from Dracula (but not the head vampire himself… yet), and Victor Frankenstein into this show where they all interact with one another and deal with crazy supernatural shit. The spoiler surprise ending from the last episode of season one was Joshua Hartnett's character turning out to be a werewolf the whole time (totally unexpected with nothing to give that twist away). It was like The Sixth Sense of endings.

And now, this latest episode, you find out that Hartnett's character, Ethan Chandler, has been hiding his identity and that his real name is Lawrence Talbot.

Lawrence Talbot

So now my only question at this point, is where the hell is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Or Jack Griffin?

When trying to combine franchises, characters, movies, etc. into one big combined mess, sometimes you can get it right, and sometimes it ends up being… a giant turd of a movie.

Giant turd of a movie

Gianter turd of a movie

Seriously?

Avengers got it right, but they are also taking their stories from comics where all of the same said characters also share the same universe and interact on a regular basis. The source material is a combined universe, so I am not sure how much that one counts. But it seems like more often than not, these kinds of mergers are not too successful. It takes a good story, good writing, to make something like this work. A Sci-Fi Channel (sorry… SyFy) original movie is most likely not going to be revered for its outstanding story and amazingly written script. Sometimes it's good to just leave a good thing alone. You don't always need sequels, you don't always have to have in-depth background stories, and you definitely don't need to have characters from one film meet characters from another completely unrelated film.

Yeah… don't think this one would work.

Toy Story 4 fan fic poster from http://brechtvanco.deviantart.com/art/Toy-story-4-321291433

Christopher Lee: The most interesting man in the world

I meant to write this yesterday when I heard the tragic news, but things got busy, as life so often is. As an avid fan of horror, and of film in general, as well as a metal head, I find the news of Christopher Lee's death to be something I never in my life wanted to hear of. I knew, and I'm sure anybody who is a fan knew, that it would come eventually. The guy was very old, but he was the most badass old man in the history of men over 90. Christopher Lee was the star of Hammer horror films in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. The original horror monsters of the 1920's, 30's, and 40's were shared by Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr. Christopher Lee played them all in the Hammer Horror film revival years.

The man spoke six languages, fought the Nazi's, played a Bond villain, starred in my two all time favorite movie franchises (Lord of the Rings and Star Wars), and all around, he was awesome. I have his two heavy metal albums Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross and Charlemagne: The Omens of Death, both of which were recorded in the last five years.. The man was superior in everything he did, and he was a hero of mine. I have a list of five people I wanted to meet in my lifetime, and unfortunately, that list is down to four because he was number one at the top of that list. I could go on and on about his life, about how awesome he was, but this has been done so many times that my ranting would be moot and redundant. Just Google Christopher Lee, read about the most awesome man in the world, a man who live his live to the fullest, who did more and accomplished more in his lifetime because he knew that he could, and because he is the definition of pure awesomeness. He will be missed, and this world will have an emptiness without him.