Taking a bit of a break from the stready stream of novels I’ve been reading this year for some of the collections of short fiction I’ve been meaning to get to for ages now.
Specifically, collections of horror short fiction. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed more than my fair share of Stephen King doorstop horror novels, but there’s something about the format of the short story that seems to me to be the ideal form of horror fiction.
There’s just enough space to establish a creepy premise, spend some time exploring it, get eaten by a monster or completely unravel the fabric of reality and get out before you get a chance to become accustomed to the strange reality of the story and have it lose some of its unsettling power.
The two scariest stories I’ve ever read are Stephen King’s “THE MONKEY and H.P. Lovecraft’s “THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE”.
I’ve since reread Colour many times, and while I still think it’s brilliant it doesn’t scare me as bad as the first time I read it. (I had to watch Futurama for an hour in bed before I’d turn off the light and go to sleep that first time).
I read THE MONKEY when I still lived with my parents. I was in high school and had recently moved into the basement of our house and out of my former bedroom upstairs on the same level as everyone else in my family. I liked the shape of the room in the basement better, it was closer to where all the video games were and also provided a much safer location for covert “making out” with my former-girlfriend-whom-I-married.
The story is in the collection SKELETON CREW and it’s about one of those monkey toys with clanging cymbols, every time the toy was made to clang its cymbals somebody would die suddenly. For some reason this scared the proverbial balls off of me and I promptly moved back upstairs for a few months.
Later, on the night I moved back up my father burst into the room banging two cooking pot lids together and making monkey noises. I suspect someday I shall forgive him.
Pretty much everyone I’ve met who has read THE MONKEY and heard my story usually stares at me,puzzled. “That story?…. really?”
I’ve purposely never reread that story, mostly because I’m sure it would not scare me like it did and I’d be puzzled by my own reaction to it all those years ago as well and I’d prefer to keep the memory of that pure horror intact. There is also a little part of me that won’t reread it because what if it terrifies me that bad again?!
Currently Playing: Phish – “Sand -> Ghost -> 2001. 2016-01-15, Riviera Maya, MX“
Currently Reading: THE WIDE, CARNIVOROUS SKY AND OTHER MONSTROUS GEOGRAPHIES, John Langan
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