Some Short Stories I Read: Vol I
Hello and welcome back to Hinterlands. As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I read some short stories! This may or may not be a recurring feature on the blog, but I’m titling this post as though it will be (I live in hope). For October this year, in addition to my tradition of trying to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days (a tradition with a spotty track record), I thought since I’m in the business of writing again and writing short stories in addition to other things (in fact I wrote short horror fiction all month! Some of it may even be available soon!), perhaps I should also read 31 horror short stories in the month of October. After all, reading a short story takes significantly less time than watching a movie.
Another thing I had planned to finish in October - keep your eyes peeled
Long story short, October has come and gone and while it was here I watched 7 horror movies and read 3 short horror stories. You can’t win ‘em all, but you can write up your thoughts on this blog, if you’re me. Write up your own thoughts on your own blog, or alternatively write them in the COMMENT SECTION below. For the record I chose these stories by googling “best short horror stories”. That gave me a list of the 50 best of all time, according to some guy’s blog. Seeing as I’m also writing on some guys blog (different guy) I thought it was a great fit – the original list is here. Thanks to Mark Lukens. I started from 31 rather than 50 because that’s the number of stories I planned to read, of course. Given that I only got through 3 I guess I should’ve started at 1, but hey, this way I get to have 28 even better short stories to look forward to.
A Collapse of Horses – Brian Everson, 2013
Read it Here
crazy tail on that horse
This was originally published in The American Reader and it does a great job of creating a sense of fuzzy uncertainty that leaves the reader unmoored in reality. Where many short stories in the more literary style (and I would neutrally tag this story with that label) use mundane details to create a distinct sense of place, this story uses strong narration and a lack of detail to create a sense of un-place, a sense being not in a physical space, but in a mental one. Readers are successfully put inside the head of a man whose ability to make sense of the world has been severely damaged.
The story is about a working-class guy who has a brain injury. His family moves to a new house while he recovers and he becomes convinced that parts of the house change in small ways from day to day, including the number of children he has. To escape this confusion around the home, he goes for long walks and eventually stumbles upon the titular scene, which also opens the story. He finds a horse paddock where the horses lay still and unmoving upon the ground, while a man with his back to the horses fills up their trough with water. The narrator is deeply unsettled by the scene. Are the horses dead, or sleeping? Is the man unaware of their state, or unconcerned, or having some other reaction? Furthermore, in one of the story’s strongest moments the narrator fixates on the similarity of the words “horse” and “house” and becomes convinced that the two situations, his unreliable house and the collapsed horses, are the same. It’s a linguistic trick that I think really captures a kind of manic, damaged thinking that is at once alien and familiar, in a sideways kind of way.
Anyway, I won’t spoil the back half of the story. It tries to end with a twist, but I found the ending much less interesting than the uncanny section in the middle. Still, a good story!
The Box (Originally published as Button, Button) – Richard Matheson, 1970
I didn't realize until I found this image that they made a whole ass movie out of this in 2009. That's probably what the rooster teeth sketch referenced below is riffing on. 2.7 on letterboxd, yikes (probably generous)
Hey! It’s the thing where there’s a button and if you press it, you get a bunch of money but someone you don’t know dies! This is where that comes from! That’s neat! I don’t think the story itself is actually very good. I’m about to spoil the entire story, so proceed with caution. You can easily read it yourself with a quick google and 10 minutes. Okay here goes:
A couple who are just scraping by get a surprise package: a button, with a note that says if you push the button, someone you don’t know will die, and you will receive $50,000 (that was a lot of money in 1970, hell, it ain’t bad now). The couple agree it’s silly, and obviously a joke or an experiment or something, and they put it away. But the wife can’t stop thinking about it, continually bringing it up, and her husband gets increasingly upset, pointing out that a life is a life, whether or not you know who dies it’s murder, and it’s Wrong. But the wife just can’t stop thinking about it. She wants to have a baby, but they can’t because they can’t afford it. And she’s upset that she has to work in an office, but wants to stay at home. And so she pushes the button. Immediately she gets a phone call: her husband was pushed onto the train tracks and died. The insurance payout? $50,000. She calls up the sales rep for the button, upset, and he says “What, you didn’t think you REALLY KNEW your husband, did you?”
So, it’s one of these. You won’t be surprised to hear that this became a twilight zone episode given its structure, the twist, and the kind of nasty genie logic at its heart. I just didn’t find any of it very compelling. Maybe there’s something here as a metaphor? Getting rich in exchange for people you don’t know dying could stand in for imperial subjects reaping the superprofits from capital’s subjugation of the global south. The wife does point out that the person who dies might be some random villager somewhere who wasn’t going to live very long anyway, and while her husband does eventually say that a life is a life, his first counter-argument is “well a baby in America might die too”. Nevertheless, let’s be real: the story isn’t really interested in that.
As you may have gathered from my summary, it reads fairly sexist. Obviously, putting selfish desires over someone's life is bad, but the desires shown to lead to temptation are so gendered you're left tugging your collar. It's a classic selling your soul narrative, and as the audience we get the thrills and chills of seeing this woman get punished for giving in to temptation. But what do we take from the choice of target, and the desires that lead her to temptation? This is the early 70s, the position of women in society is changing. The end of the single breadwinning family is nigh, if it’s not here already. You have to wonder if the story's intended audience is a contemporary woman reader, if the main character's position is supposed to be relatable and familiar? I'm just trying to wrap my head around the thought process that gets you to a horror story that feels reactionary but also punishes a female character for wanting a traditional gender role. Maybe it’s one of those double standard things. What comes through loud and clear is the commentary that, despite being married, two people can be estranged psychologically and emotionally.
This is a classic case of an idea having become so absorbed by popular culture that the original becomes underwhelming outside of its context. In this case, maybe that’s fine. I like the Rooster Teeth sketch where a millennial gets the button offer and just keeps hitting the button over and over again as fast as possible.
Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad – M.R. James, 1904
Read it Here
Hell yeah dude, now we're cooking.
Okay now we’re cooking with gas. M.R. James is a guy who’s been on my radar for a couple years now as the master of the ghost story and someone whose work represents a gap in my knowledge of speculative fiction. It felt immediately familiar and comfortable to me, probably because of my long years of reading horror fiction from the first half of the 20th century. James’s writing is dense but warm, giving the sense of reading a letter written between friends in a bygone era, and this friendly tone allows the reader a safe distance to watch the horror creep up on the unsuspecting characters.
The story itself is delightful. It’s about a quiet and bookish professor going on a golf vacation where he befriends a grouchy old military man, finds an ancient whistle in the ruins of a templar church (damned papists, muttered the Major), blows it, and finds himself experiencing a strange creeping terror, unusual occurrences, and finally he is confronted in the night by a formless being wrapped in the sheets from the spare bed.
There’s an extended scene where the protagonists inability fall asleep and the horrible things he sees when he closes his eyes are described in great detail. I found the whole scene vivid and compelling, especially as someone with a history of troubled sleep. Furthermore, I appreciate that the spirit central to the climax of the story is not a conventional “ghost” as we might understand it. Rather than the spirit of an identifiable dead person it is instead a formless nameless thing that prefigures the beings of Lovecraft as much as it fits in the traditional category of a ghost. My favorite of the three by far, and wow, that title! Easily the best title.
Blogs posts I've Liked:
The Middle Earth Hexcrawl:
On Rise Up Comus, Josh McCrowell, creator of His Majesty the Worm, continues to create hexes to go in a hexcrawl of Middle Earth
Of Shadows:
The Vintage RPG blog has been covering a collection of photo books and occult ephemera lately that have been fascinating - this one in particular I want to nab a copy of.
All Tomorrows and Medieval Welsh Lyrics:
False Machine's discussions of obscure books from off the beaten track have been one of the highlights of my RSS feed since I started using it, and both of these pieces rule.
Merry Hexmas:
Prismatic Wasteland has invited RPG bloggers to contribute a hex to a joint hexmap set in the Rankin & Bass christmas film universe. A delightful idea - I'm not by any measure an RPG blogger but will I participate anyway? Time will tell.