 Horror/Scary: July 23, 2025 Issue [#13223] |
This week: Illness Edited by: Annette-Outta Town-See Ya 8/22  
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| “I am reminded of an image...that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more -- sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.” ~ Nina Riggs, The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying |
Illness
Being scared by monsters is mostly fun. As long as we are talking about things like werewolves, vampires, sea serpents, Mothman, Godzilla, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers.
All of these things are not real. Even if they give us bad dreams or make us weary about going into the basement after nightfall, we are also fully aware that the fear of any of these is silly. There is even a sort of comfort in dreading the unreal. Because it's unreal, it cannot ever touch us.
True Crime stories fill part of the horror/scary genre with speculations and investigations into terrible events that really happened. Although the stories themselves are real, readers and viewers of those can still feel detached. While anyone can become the victim of a crime, reading about someone else's experience is still detached and thus bearable.
Doctor and hospital stories deal with illness. And often these stories have a veneer of something sexy. Either the doctor is very pretty or the nurse is super handsome. Even the patients somehow achieve to look good. So these stories are rarely labelled as horror.
One story I remember is Richard Bachman's (Stephen King's) "Thinner" in which a man gets cursed and starts losing weight. What feels like a blessing at first soon becomes a horrific ordeal based in the rapid changes to the body of the main protagonist and his struggle with his condition. He has to go through great pains to find out how to reverse the curse before he just vanishes into nothing.
As you think of ways to scare your reader, don't forget to use the thoughts and emotions going through the mind of a person who has been given a count-down timer of remaining life by their medical professional.
What terminal illness frightens you most? |
| | | Shinigami (13+)
She was given specific instructions if she hoped to regain her freedom.
#2236197 by iKïyå§ama  |
| | Whispers (13+)
Are the voices in my head an extension of myself. Or something else entirely?
#2293297 by Jeremy  |
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Replies to my last Horror/Scary newsletter "Prison" that asked: What can be worse than being robbed of freedom?
S 🤦  wrote: I have met many people who went to prison. Australian prisons are rather different to those in the US, and differ from state to state as well. I find the best resource for a prison is to talk to a former inmate. I have done this and found that here prison is not scary - it is boring. The tedium is mind-numbing and demoralising. You are a number and that is all. Fed, made to work, but there is so little to do that the mind starts to break. I guess that's the point. |
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