Day 27: Scary Story

He home from setting traps that day. Passing dozens of skulls along the fence. Scaled skins were stretched out on frames along the side of the house, drying in the strong sunlight. He made a mental note to wipe them off tomorrow before too much dust could settle on them.

He paused at the door. The screen door was closed but the door was wide open. It shouldn’t have been that way. The air was on and Mary was always anal about keeping it closed to keep costs down.

He eased himself inside. Humidity clung to him like a second skin. The air was off.

“Mary?” He called out, hoping to hear his wife call for him and say that the air conditioner was broken.

He heard babbling from the nursery and hurried to the door, trying to be as silent as he could.

The door was wide open. Laying sprawled out on the floor, face down was his wife. Her long brown hair sprayed everywhere.

Sitting in the rocking chair holding his infant son was a woman that looked scarily like Mary. Her skin was scaley and a sickly dark green. His son’s skin was beginning to turn scaly and green as well.

A gasp escaped him at the sight.

The woman looked up. Her yellow eyes striking fear into his very core. She smiled at him, her lips parted revealing dozens of sharp, reptilian teeth.

In her face, he saw every single innocent alligator he had ever hunted. And she was here for revenge.

Day 16: Least Favourite Monster

And we are back for yet another installment of my favourites and least favourites. If you haven’t checked out my previous post where I talk about my favourite monster I would suggest going and checking that out first. Or, if you liked hearing me complain here, you can check it out afterwards.

Monsters can be defined two ways. The first is by horrendous deeds done to the innocent. The second is by their strange appearances. By our modern definition a monster generally ticks both boxes, especially if they want to be featured in a horror movie or video game.

Now there are countless monsters out there, some are scarier than others. Some of you might not even like monsters in general due to them scaring you as a child. And that’s fine. The monsters that scared me most as a child are the ones that continue to scare me today, now that I’m in my twenties.

But, when I say least favourite, I don’t mean the ones I don’t want to run into in a dark alley in the middle of the night. Or woods. Or my basement. Or pull me out of bed when I can’t sleep and hear a strange noise. I’m talking about the ones that have either been over done, poorly written, or were just plain made lame by Hollywood.

If you are curious about the creatures that do genuinely scare me I will be doing a post later on in the month about that. But, without further ado, I’ll address the question.

My least favourite monster?

Vampires.

I can probably leave this post here and people will understand why that is, but I feel the need to further explain. And get a little bit of a higher word count going.

You can thank Stephenie Meyer for the reasoning of this.

I will be honest and say that I have not read Twilight and I do not see the appeal of it.

But I will also be honest and say that what she herself had done alone, just in her own works of Twilight, has not ruined vampires for me. It’s the mass wave of sexy, bad boy, overbearing vampire boyfriends and cardboard cut outs of dishrag heroines that came after its success.

I can’t necessarily fault her for taking creative license and making her vampires sparkly, like that’s fine. But the fact that it became the standard. And how now if you have a vampire in your novel people automatically assume that it’s either wish fulfillment, a fanfic of the original, or a carbon copy.

Vampires initially were dark, disfigured creatures that shunned the sunlight and other people. Kinda like writers. And I have no problem with vampires being immune to sunlight, or some of the folk tales being complete make believe. It’s your story, do whatever the hell you want.

But it’s gotten to such a point in fiction that when I wanted to write a vampire character in a wip of mine that revolves around witches, demons, werewolves, fairies, goblins, wendigos, etc., I really struggled to write him the way that I wanted because I didn’t want people to think it was in the same vein as Edward Cullen, or any of the other countless stupid characters like that. And I still am.

If you really want to write vampires, or see more of them in media portrayed in ways you want, sometimes you need to roll up your sleeves and be the change.

I am not a point where I can realistically give that story or its characters the life they deserve, so it’s not going to be here for a while yet. That being said, I’m not giving up on it.

I would love to see more vampires depicted in media, I would actually love to see all monsters portrayed better in media. But I want to see them done well.

I’m pretty sure that the sparkly vampire phase of our existence fizzled out in 2015, 2016. There are still people who swear by books like Twilight and will probably call for my head on a spike after reading this. That’s fine, this isn’t for you. We’re in a new era of consumption where we, the average person, can decide what we like and the big book houses, movie producers, video game makers, etc have to listen to us lest they lose their market.

Well, now that I’ve gotten sufficiently real enough. Do you agree with me about vampires? Is there another monster you really don’t like for one reason or another? Tell me about them in the comments. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Thank you so much for joining me for day 16 of my October 2018 Blogging Challenge, which is where I post a fall or Halloween themed post everyday for the month of October. So, if you liked what you see you can come back tomorrow for what I have for you then. Or, if it’s after the 31st, you have all of these posts to go through at your leisure. Either way, I hope you are having a great day/afternoon/evening/night, and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

Day 15: Favouite Monster

We’re in the thick of it now.

Monsters have existed since the beginning of man. At first it was the big predators, and the darkness, sickness, the devil. In more recent times, when people think of monsters they think of the bogey man, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc. Something that makes all of these scary is the element of unknown. There have been countless renditions of each of these monsters throughout history, some better than others. But the generally consensus is that these monsters are human sized or larger, difficult to kill, crazy strong, come out at night/in the dark, and not a lot is known about them.

I love monsters just because there is so much you can do with them, both from a story telling perspective and a costume perspective.

Monsters have terrified and befriended me as a child, and I loved every second of it. And now I face the dilemma of telling you what my favourite is.

And I have to say, Swamp monsters.

 

Now, I love sea creatures, they fascinate me. But swamps, bogs, lakes. You can’t see the bottom. You can hardly see in front of your face sometimes. You have no idea what’s in there or how isolated things have evolved.

One of the things I love the most is what you can do. You can have a fish swamp monster. A lizard. It can be a skeletal creature covered in moss and algae and gunk. They can be gigantic, or human sized, or small. They can be like Muk the blob from pokemon and just a giant, anthropomorphic ball of sludge.

They don’t even have to be evil either.

I know when a lot of us think monster we think bad, or evil, or something that just wants to cause us harm. Monster can just be considered as aesthetically unpleasing. It looks different or strange to our narrow eyes.

A swamp monster could just be territorial. Or kind, but because of threats from humans remains recluse. Or has never encountered a human before.

They can be carnivorous, or photosynthesize in order to live.

One of the reasons I really like them too is because swamp monsters haven’t been over done. There isn’t a lot of media depicting them. Double edged sword I suppose, but they are a versatile creature with so much potential. And I would love to see more of them if they are done well.

It was really, really difficult for me to pick one. I know there are others that I missed, probably some really good ones. So, what’s your favourite monster? Tell me in the comments. And it doesn’t have to be like an old school horror movie monster either. Urban legends, folk tales, monsters that exist in your part of the world. I would love to hear about all of them.

That’s all I have for now. Thank you so much for joining me for day 15 of my October 2018 Blogging Challenge, which is where I post a fall or Halloween themed post everyday for the month of October. If you liked what you saw here, please come back tomorrow and see what I have for you then. And, if it’s after the 31st, you have all of these to look through if you want. I hope you have a great day/afternoon/evening/night, and I hope those creatures don’t come for you. I’ll see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn

P.S.

If you are interested in finding out where I got those pictures, I have links for you here. Some of them came from devianart, so go and support those artists there if you liked their work.

https://www.moddb.com/groups/orc-clan-and-orcs-fan-group/images/swamp-monster

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/505599495640789523/?lp=true (This one I could only find a pinterest for, if anyone knows who the actual creator of this was please let me know so I can properly credit them here for it.)