For some people the measure of a monster is how many it requires of them to be scary. Opinions vary from the necessity of one being more than enough danger all the way up to requiring hundreds of them. Some people don't even require there to be danger. Certainly this is true for a lot of people when it comes to creepy crawlies. Things with six or more legs--the more the scarier--tentacles, leathery wings, partially furry bodies, rubbery skins and faceless ends, chitinous maws, wings and stings--these are a few of the creepiest things...
More than anything it isn't the physical aspect that scares the worst, but the intent. A bunch of spiders drop on you and run around. It chills the blood of some. When they drop down and crawl into your clothes and burrow into your skin.... there's the stuff of nightmares. When wasps sting you so that you scream and the rest of the hive can crawl into your lungs and nest there... can you help but cough reading that? When the old seer leans forward to tell you your fortune and he opens his mouth to reveal his tongue has been replaced with a six-pack of long worms... you have to wonder what the...
Science usually takes the fear away from things, but when it comes to the creepy and the crawly it sometimes only makes it worse. You think your the height of life on the planet and you learn that you're outnumbered by insects by more than you want to seriously think about. You think that you can get away from them, but you're never any more than six feet away from a spider--imagine if they stowed away in your mountain climbing gear to go to the frozen heights, or worse one materialised in your diver's mask, or your space suit, just to make this rule absolute.
Music: Riad N' the Bedouins by Guns N' Roses. Or get MP3s.
For the longest time I have remembered the writing process for, and the results of, what I consider my first real short story. I also know I went on to write three sequels to it in relatively short order after. This was way back in public school. I was likely eleven given that I was one of those children carted off to school a year earlier than my classmates because my birthday is late in the calendar year--one of my cousin's started school a year older than her classmates because her birthday was in the first part of the calendar year. I could thank the teacher for starting me on my storytelling path if only I could remember her name. I think I may have dedicated the final part to her since I don't recognise the initials I used in the dedication. Even then I considered these stories, and spoke of them, as a series. I also had grand illusions filling my head of a computer game in the Choose Your Own Adventure style like old games I can no longer name, and thus can't Google. I began coding the game in Basic on a TRS-80 Model 3 that you ran programs off of 30-minute audio tapes.
I pulled out the stories recently. It's immediately obvious that I was young, over melodramatic, and didn't mess around with small time stories--I put the smack down on Lucifer not once, but twice. The funny thing is the brevity. I don't know how long I spent on each piece but they are so incredibly short looking now. I also lost most of the last paragraph of the first story--I think that's all that's missing. I think all is not lost though. I'm fairly certain the first story has the last same paragraph as the second story with one small but significant change. Oddly enough the change still exists in the broken paragraph. Sometime after the initial writing I added a prologue to the first story, and mirroring the ends an altered version on the beginning of the second story.
The importance of these stories is more than just that they set me on the path of a writer. They set the tone for the kind of world building I engage in with my fiction--as opposed to role-playing game settings and work. They also formed the basic premise of a more recent work, that again is only the first part of several. I have always wanted to go back and rework the best parts of these stories, and with the rediscovery of the manuscripts, I may be closer to doing that than in a long time. I know the character, I have the feel down again, and all I need is the time.
Music: The Gunslinger by Demons and Wizards. Or get MP3s.
