Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Short Story: Reflected

Hi everyone. No talk about writing, editing, or any special subject this week. Instead, just a nice little horror story for you all to check out. Enjoy. 

Reflected



            Barry sat upright in bed, gasping for breath and dripping with sweat. The nightmare again. He looked over at his clock; the bright red numbers telling him silently that it was one thirty-seven am. In the darkness of his one bedroom apartment, he swung his feet out of bed and used them to pull himself out from under the sheets and into the room. Moonlight filtered in through the half-closed blinds, shading the room like a jail cell with horizontal bars. He stood up, carefully stepping among boxes he had yet to pack for moving.
          He shuffled across the hallway and into the bathroom, the light blinding him as he flicked it on with a slight groan. He leaned on the counter for a few minutes, his eyes adjusting to the bright lights. He turned on the tap and let the water warm a little before cupping his hands under the faucet and pulling the water up to his face, splashing it across his forehead and cheeks.
          For the past month he'd had the same nightmare over and over, every night. It felt like he wasn't getting any sleep at all, even though he rarely woke from the dream. He splashed his face again and looked at himself in the mirror. The skin under his eyes hung dark and loose, his eyes themselves red with exhausted veins and arteries. Granules of sleep clung to the inner corners of his eyes. His head throbbed lightly, testament to the sleep aids he took, but which did little to help his search for slumber.
          His neck had started to itch slightly, his hand reaching up and scratching at it automatically. The itch only got worse after a few seconds. He lifted his hand to look and there was blood on his fingertips. He looked into the mirror, craning his head to one side to get a better look and there was a single tiny pinprick in his neck, through which blood was oozing out and moving down his throat in slow drops. He reached into the cabinet and pulled out the small box of band-aids that he kept there. The box dropped to the counter as he watched himself in the mirror. Four more pinpricks slowly appeared in his neck, lining up with the first, blood slowly bubbling from each one to drip down his neck and under his t-shirt.
          He reached for the hand towel that sat in the ring on the wall, pulling it down and wiping away the blood. His eyes widened as he pulled the towel away and saw the claws; reaching around his neck from behind, their tips digging into his skin, causing the pinpricks and the drops of blood. His eyes were locked on the mirror as another hand reached around the other side, its color a sickly pale green.  Its placement mirrored the other clawed hand and its fingertips dug into his flesh.
          He spun around, swinging his arm wide to strike back, but nothing was there. He threw his head left, then right, scanning the bathroom for the creature. He was alone. He turned back to the mirror, and could see the claws at his throat. His hand pulled up and grabbed at the claws, trying to pull them away. He could feel them digging in deeper, the flow of blood increasing. His hand in the mirror grabbed the claws, feeling them under his fingers and against his palm; its flesh ice cold and dry. Its fingers far stronger than his, resisting his attempts to unseat them without the slightest give.
          He swung around again, trying to throw off his ethereal attacker, pulling his t-shirt over his head and off, throwing the blood-soaked thing to the floor. He spun around back to the mirror and still the thing held its death grip on his throat. It's claws dug deeper into his flesh, the blood flowing faster, dripping to the floor, making it treacherous under his bare feet. He grabbed at the reflection and found only the cold glass of the mirror.
          He could only watch, frozen in terror as its head slowly rose from behind him, its pale, green flesh covering a bald head. One eye was simply an empty hole in its skull, the other yellow and oozing pus down its face. It grinned at him, baring split and broken black teeth.  He twisted his shoulders, still trying to get free as more of its fingers drove into his throat, the blood pooling on the blue and white tiles under his feet. He could feel the blood running down the inside of his throat now, the claws worming their way through his flesh. His lungs were filling up and breathing was becoming harder with every second. The creature grinned at him in the mirror and in one smooth motion tore his throat open, exposing the interior of his anatomy as blood showered the mirror. The motion pulled him back and his feet finally lost their grip on the slick floor. He fell back, everything in his sight going dark.
          Barry sat upright in bed, gasping for breath and dripping with sweat. The nightmare again. He looked over at his clock; the bright red numbers telling him silently that it was one thirty-eight am. In the darkness of his one bedroom apartment, he swung his feet out of bed and used them to pull himself out from under the sheets and into the room. Moonlight filtered in through the half-closed blinds, shading the room like a jail cell with horizontal bars. He stood up, carefully stepping among boxes he had yet to pack for moving.
          He shuffled across the hallway and into the bathroom...

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Going in the Wrong Direction

We've all made mistakes. When being creative, those mistakes can find us winding down paths we never expected or planned for into a gravel pit from which our creations may never be able to claw their way out. More often than not, if you pay attention, you can see you're going in the wrong direction far ahead of actually getting there and you can turn around, or at the very least cut your lost time. Sometimes though, we have no idea we've wandered astray until it's far too late.

You see this happen a lot in movies. A stand-alone movie becomes a surprise blockbuster and the next thing you know, continuity is out the window as Hollywood tries to pump out a couple sequels to cash in. Good examples of this are the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movies. Freddy and Jason both seem to die in every movie, but return the next one with no comment on how they manage it. Of course, now that's part of their campy charm, but as someone who takes storytelling fairly seriously, it's hard not to notice things like that.

Another good example is the movie series Tremors. The original is a great, fun, horror movie. So, of course, they had to try and milk it. Tremors 2 brought in several of the original Graboids, who popped open and produced "Screechers" by the dozens. The third movie brought back Graboids, and Screechers, but then introduced the creatures the Screechers changed into, called, rather affectionately, "Assblasters" (Seriously. Look it up.).

So, what is the point of this post? Am I going to delve into how to tell when you're going in the wrong direction? Not hardly. Your work is your work and only you will really be able to tell if your story has veered so far off course that you're barreling down the hill and into disaster. The most I can tell you is pay attention to your story as you write it. Be aware.

The point of this post is to tell you all of a little story of what might have been.

Now. A little bit about me. I'm a dinosaur/kaiju/godzilla fan. Really. (For those of you who haven't heard, Legendary impressed Toho enough with their new Godzilla that not only are they doing a sequel, they have permission to use other monsters. At San Diego Comic Con 2014, it was hinted at that we may see Rodan, Mothra, and even Ghidorah in the next movie. How mother-freaking awesome is that?!?!?)

Ahem. Anyway. After years of false starts and claims. We are finally getting a Jurassic Park 4 next year. Currently titled Jurassic World. I can't tell you how excited I am. The original Jurassic Park remains to this day the only movie I've seen more than once in the theater, and believe it or not, I read the novel when it first came out back in 1991. I was only in fifth grade. It took me at least two months to work through it, but I did.

However. There have been several false starts on our way to Jurassic World. Many of them seem to have forgotten the message of the original and it's appreciation and respect for nature, as well as the warnings of the dangers of genetic manipulation. One of the ideas that actually made it past the spoken out loud part (If I'd been there, the guy suggesting this would've been slapped on the spot and told to sit his ass down), was the idea that governments were taking the dinosaurs and trying to modify them into soldiers to wage war with. Of course, they rebel, and we have the whole battle of man vs. dinosaur vs. man-dinosaur.

This probably isn't far from what we would've gotten.

But someone did like the idea, and approved people to go ahead with art and model mock-ups to try and see what they would be working with. Thankfully, with actual pictures and models in front of them, they were able to see that it was indeed the wrong direction for the franchise and scrapped it, but it certainly gave us some good nightmare fuel. So, without further ado, I'm going to share with you all, the leaked concept art of the Human-Dino hybrids that was done for the Jurassic Park we (hopefully) will never get to see. 

Yes, that person there is for scale for the Man-Rex.

I believe I promised you some nightmare fuel. 


To help you relax before I release you back out into the interwebs, I have one more image to share with you. 


Fingers crossed. 

~ Shaun