Juliette Miranda

Happy (early) Halloween, y’all. I’m about to embark on a whirlwind trip to Vegas with my guy and his band for a show, then we’re off to Disney World for Halloween week. Yes, we rock.

I am something of a lameass as a writer these days, I’m afraid. My Clarissa story, which has been my focus this month, is slowly killing me (and not in a cool, skin peeling, blood letting kind of way, but an “I’ve created a hellishly perfect character that won’t let me bend the rules of a narrative” kind of way).

It’s not the actual writing part that’s got me chewing the color off my pen caps, because I seem to have no trouble whatsoever coming up with amusing ways to describe Clarissa’s sociopathic tendencies and lust for extreme, nonconsensual body modifications. My trouble is in the technicalities of the story.

Apparently, suspension of disbelief only works in the movies, and only marginally so. There’s no way I can convince a reader that Clarissa, whom I’ve created to be meticulous and calculating and brilliant, would accidentally put herself in a scenario where she is at a disadvantage just so that I can see through a super cool blood scene I wrote and refuse to toss or revisit.

I suppose I could change her intentions, but that would take my story in an entirely different direction, and force send my silly brain on an hour-long visit to the black hole in the depths of my mind that I’ve reserved for Clarissa. I’ve already been caught more times that I care to admit in a glazed over state when I’m venturing into my mental basement.

It is particularly funny when this happens at work:

“What are you working on, Juliette?”

“I’m trying to determine the appropriate needle gauge to insert into someone’s eye without damaging the structure, and debating whether this can be done in a car, or if it should be done in a more sterile setting with fewer witnesses.”

Needless to say, no one ever visits office any more.

I’ll spare you the rest of my writer’s woes and instead finish this cheater blog off with a total cheater move: a meme. It’s Halloween themed at the least, though that does little to assuage my writer guilt. Memes are for losers who can’t write but feel compelled to foist themselves on the public anyway.

Which is, apparently, me today. Real writing to come as soon as I return from vacation. Really.

Halloween 13

 1. What is your favorite work of horror fiction? Bad Things, by Tamara Thorne. It’s a brilliant combination of folklore, horror and suspense. Better yet: it takes place during autumn. I reread this book every October along with Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

2. What is your favorite work of science fiction/fantasy? Anything by Neil Gaiman, but especially Neverwhere. It’s dark, oddly comical, and completely unlike any other fantasy book I’ve read. For which I am grateful.

3. Who is your favorite monster? I liked the giant killer bunnies in Night of the Lepus almost as much as I liked the mutant sheep in Black Sheep.

4. What horror movie gives you the most chills? My standard answer is The Exorcist. To be sure, this is the scariest movie ever made. However, I recently purchased The Girl Next Door (which was based on the Jack Ketchum novel) because it was the first movie since The Exorcist to give me nightmares after watching it.

5. Freddy versus Jason? Jason SO won that battle!

6. What is your favorite Halloween treat? Chocolate-based, it would have to be Milky Way bars. Non-chocolate: Good ‘N Plenty.

7. Ghosts or goblins? Anything but bicycle-riding midgets. They’re harbingers of bad luck. Trust me.

8. Have you ever been in a real haunted house? I’ve been in some places that I believed were haunted, but that was based entirely on my perception, not actual happenings.

9. Do you believe in ghosts? Absolutely.

10. Favorite Halloween costume? A co-worker has created the ultimate Halloween costume for herself this year: A Cookie Monster Slayer. She has placed the head of a stuffed Cookie Monster on a spear and covered boots and a cape with blue fur. Genius. I am proud to work with someone this demented.

11. Will you dress up this year? If so, what as? Absolutely! I’m going trick or treating on Main Street in Disney World (no, really). I’ll be dressed as a semi-slutty cowgirl (this will be Disney World, after all) and am trying desperately to convince my guy to go as Wyatt Earp.

12. Have you ever used a Ouija board? Yes. And I will never, ever do that again.

13. Would you ever eat a live cockroach? I won’t even venture into the same room as a cockroach, so it’s safe to say I will never be placing a live one in my mouth.

“You need to stop talking. Now.” 

I’m not normally one to be quite so snippy, especially when talking to my guy. But when gripped with a terror that is so intense I can feel it vibrating in my ears, conversation is the last thing I can handle.

My guy meant well, of course. He likely didn’t expect to have to go on suicide watch when he agreed to our outing. Not that I cared; I was too busy sucking back the world’s most violent panic attack.

“You don’t have to do this. We can get up right now,” my guy said.

I shook my head. Every Halloween I like to mentally vegatize myself in new and torturous ways, and I was determined to see it though.

As soon as we started moving, I knew I had miscalculated my threshold for pain. It wasn’t just the speed, or the rumbling, or the horrid sinking feeling that made me long for a sharp knife to plunge into my chest, it was the thought that for the next 2-ish minutes, everything that happened was completely out of my control. And that’s when I ceased breathing.

Try as I might, I am never going to like roller coasters.

I warned my guy of this before we embarked on our trek to Fright Fest at Six Flags Great America, but I’m not sure he entirely believed me. Admittedly, the outing was my idea. What kind of idiot would want to go to a theme park known exclusively for its roller coasters if they hate thrill rides in general?

Me, actually.

But it was more the haunted houses, freak show and Halloween festivities that lured me to Great America; not the prospect of discovering what a prelude to a heart attack feels like. Still, it being Halloween and all, riding a roller coaster seemed a fitting celebration in seeing just how much I can scare myself.

What I wanted was the same exhilaration I feel when watching horror movies or walking through haunted houses; what I got was a physical nightmare that brought me closer to knowing what demonic possession must feel like than I ever wanted to experience.

My guy, I’m sure, was on the watch for my head to start rotating. If my pale face and dead silence in line wasn’t his first clue that something was amiss in my little world, then the obscenities I started spewing the moment I got buckled in to the ride made my terror all the more vivid.

“What the fuck have I done? Fuck me. This fucking sucks! I want to fucking die!”

And that was before the ride had even started.

My guy tells me that as we climbed the first hill, I started clawing at his leg. I have no recollection of this, though I suspect it was some sort of primal urge to dig myself out of the grave I had deliberately thrown myself into.

As the cart plummeted and banked and turned, my eyes rolled back into my head. I could only liken myself to Linda Blair in The Exorcist, where she’s being flung violently up and down on her bed, body shaking and screaming out for help.

Of course, my terror didn’t end when the ride did. The scariest part of my night was when the ride pulled into the dock and I attempted to bolt from the cart. My seat belt unbuckled easy enough, but the safety bar refused to budge.

“Get me out of this thing!” I wailed, terrified that the ride would somehow take off and I’d be forced to endure it another time.

Pulling, yanking and cursing, I couldn’t get the damn bar to move. The person waiting to take my seat tapped his foot impatiently.

“Let the power of Christ compel you! Let the power of Christ compel you!”

No amount of praying or holy water would move that bar. My guy thankfully stepped in and said, “You have to press it down first, then pull it up.”

Yep, that’s me: the retarded Exorcist.

While I do harbor some amount of pride in surviving the ride and my own demons, I can’t say it’s something I ever want to do again. If anything, it has only affirmed my decision that Disney World is indeed the best possible place to spend Halloween week, both for the atmosphere, and the gentle “short bus” rides.

My guy, who is still prying my fingernails out of his leg, couldn’t agree more.

(Two pictures from the night are below, a before and after. Click thumbnails for larger images.)