GhoulieJoe

Real Fear Part Three: Evil Children

*Author’s note: In the process of analyzing films, I let loose major spoilers.*

The horror genre is loaded with movies about evil children. From a sociological standpoint, you can interpret this as reflecting worries about the next generation (those dad-ratted millennials and their trophy-hunting, nostalgia-obsessing, avocado-toast-making!) or just a gimmick to make something that’s supposed to be harmless creepy instead, like that urban legend about John Denver being a sniper in the Vietnam war. The children are evil for varying reasons, be it supernatural, genetic, environmental, or sometimes even for no reason, but a prevailing theme is either guilt on the part of the childrens’ guardians for their misdeeds or fear of losing control over them.

Supernatural corrupt youngsters abound in films like Pet Sematary (a zombie), ‘Salem’s Lot (a vampire), The Ring (an angry ghost), and The Omen (the antichrist). They’re often born to mortal people who are horrified by their behavior. From a real-world perspective, there is some scientific study regarding body chemistry as a cause of psychopathy–though obviously the real-life issues don’t stem from curses, possession, or coming back from the dead; they involve deficiencies in serotonin and an overage of dopamine (Fallon, 82-84). Some theorists even posit that for some people, being a psychopath is natural: “As far as ‘will’ is concerned, I want someone to say with a straight face that Oprah, with her constant losing battles against obesity, lacks will. That woman had more will than 99.9 percent of people. But it is not the ‘will’ that society, her friends, her family want. They want her to be wonderful and to do great works, and be famous, and be thin. Well, folks, unless she gives up everything else and stays focused solely on her weight for the rest of her life, she is going to keep coming back home. All behaviors can be modified in the face of a genetic and epigenetic makeup that says otherwise. But to stay changed in the face of those genetic imperatives usually means you have to give up nearly everything else you hold most dear. Our genes and how their effects are modified by stressful experiences early in life don’t necessarily predict categorically who we are and what our deep character is about, but they create constant pressures to be and act a certain way. Psychopathic tendencies are particularly hard to fight, and attempted cures may make only small differences. Drugs that influence the monoamine neurotransmitter systems can partially reduce impulsivity and aggression, and early interventions involving diet and meditation can decrease behavioral problems, but the core neuropsychological deficits leading to lack of empathy and remorse remain. There are no magic bullets” (Fallon, 206) (unless it’s a werewolf movie). This reflects an underlying fear for parents that we have no control over our children: can we influence our kids enough to polish them into moral, upstanding citizens? Or will we fail?

In Children of the Corn, the juveniles of a small Nebraska town are being influenced by tween Isaac, who educates them about the awesomeness of He Who Walks Behind the Rows, a corn-based god.

Clearly there’s not much to do in this town

As Job, a good Christian boy, narrates, “They were acting real creepy.” He and his sister Sarah are the only children in Gatlin who don’t suddenly embark on a killing spree, murdering every adult around. The others are driven by religious fervor, and seem to really enjoy poisoning, maiming, and dismembering people. Later they graduate to crucifying their victims.

They’ve completely lost their fear and respect for authority, at least the secular kind. Isaac claims that adults are “unbelievers and profaners of the holy,” and once a corn child turns nineteen, off they go to be sacrificed. The children of the corn are the penultimate two-year-olds who won’t listen or behave. “Children, particularly young children, control precious little in their lives. Parents control everything. This lopsided power dynamic doesn’t sit well with those on the losing end. Kids sometimes challenge parents just because they can” (Pearlman, 15). The film asks the question of what would happen if children (who often outnumber their parents) realized that their elders are only humans, with a limited amount of real power.

Just look at how powerful this low-angle shot makes them look!

It’s easy to get wrapped up in guilt and anxiety about how heredity will affect our children. My husband’s family has a sizable amount of alcoholism, dementia, and cancer, while mine has depression, OCD, and heart problems. My daughter Layla, even when she was a preteen, was strikingly like me as a teen; we share the same traits of low self-esteem, shyness, and gender dysphoria. My son Orion, at age nine, is also a mini-me at that age: sensitive and quick to tears, but kind. According to some reasearchers, genetics are exceedingly important influencing factors in a child’s life, possibly more so than environment: “Parents matter, but they don’t make a difference. Parents obviously matter tremendously in their children’s lives. They provide the essential physical and psychological ingredients for children’s development. But if genetics provides most of the systematic variance and environmental events are unsystematic and unstable, this implies that parents don’t make much of a difference in their children’s outcomes beyond the genes they provide at conception […] shared environmental influence hardly affects personality, mental health or cognitive abilities after adolescence. This even includes personality traits that seem especially susceptible to parental influence such as altruism, kindness and conscientiousness” (Plomin, 107.) Once again, parents are left worrying about things we can’t control. How much influence do we really have, and what’s predestined in our genes?

The Bad Seed (I went with the 1985 remake that’s much less wishy-washy¹) regards Christine, the daughter of serial killer Bessie Denker. Bessie’s murderous ways have skipped a generation and been passed on to Christine’s young daughter Rachel. Bessie, in pursuit of an inheritance, killed 13 members of her own family, starting with the attempted murder of her brother as a child. She was caught while hunting down toddler Christine, who was taken in by Richard, the reporter covering the case. In the movie, sociopathy is regarded as almost wholly a genetic condition. Christine’s neighbor, Emory, is a true crime writer who states: “I’m not saying that environment is irrelevant, but your hardcore murderer has to have something very basic missing in his genetic makeup.” Christine responds, “So what you’re saying is that a lack of morality can be inherited.” Rachel, though possessing a shallow charm and cutesiness, has no sense of empathy, only acquisitiveness.

Christine aptly recognizes that “She just seems so greedy.” To which her neighbor Monica replies, “Everybody’s greedy, children just don’t hide it as well, sweetie.” People are constantly giving Rachel presents, but she’s still prone to theft, stealing from her classmates and Monica’s purse. The opening shows Rachel pushing Mrs. Post, a sweet lady trying to feed a cat, down the stairs, because the woman promised her a Christmas ornament when she died. When classmate Mark wins a penmanship medal instead of her, she beats him to death with her shoes and steals it. Then she comes home and goes roller skating. The only person to immediately see through her facade is the maintenance worker Leroy (look, it’s David Carradine!).

Leroy: “Pretty smart, ain’t ya? You’re almost as smart as me.” Rachel: “I’m smarter than you.”

Rachel strikes fear into the hearts of her enemies. She has to chase Mark down; he runs away from her. She even scares Leroy, after he figures out that she killed Mark. He insinuates that he took her shoes out of the incinerator, and she threatens, “I want those shoes back. You give them back to me, or you’ll be sorry […] I want them back as soon as I get home from school. Do you hear me?” Leroy, panicking, tries to find the shoes (which actually had burned) and hides from her when he can’t find them. Not to be deterred, Rachel merrily burns him alive. Meanwhile, Christine has also figured out that Rachel is a bit murder-y, and Rachel is happy to use Christine’s guilt over Rachel’s dead father to her advantage: “Ever since Daddy got killed, I’ve been scared. I miss him so much, Mommy!” She also exploits Christine’s motherly love when she admits to killing Mark: “Please, Mommy. It wasn’t my fault. You’re not gonna tell on me, are you?” Christine replies, “No, Rachel. No, darling, I’m not gonna tell on you, no. It isn’t your fault, sweetheart, you’re right. It’s my fault.” Christine, after telling Rachel to burn her shoes and throwing Mark’s medal out to sea, snaps after Leroy’s death. She gives Rachel a massive dose of sleeping pills, saying, “Sleep well, darling. Sweet dreams. Oh God forgive me! I love you so much.” Before waiting to make sure Rachel actually dies, she shoots herself. In the end, Rachel survives and goes to live with Richard. But she asks, “Can I come back and visit Aunt Monica sometimes?” A recurring motif in this subgenre is the child who is not a child–they have adult tendencies and at the very least instincts towards–if not outright expertise for–manipulation and harmful behavior.

Christine, asking about the death of Mrs. Post, trying to believe Rachel’s story that she fell down the stairs on her own: “Is that really all that happened?” Rachel: “Except that she was screaming all the way down.”

Young children and babies are, obviously, not born knowing how to behave like reasonable people (or the facsimile that most of us manage eventually), and have a disconcerting resemblance to an adult with antisocial personality disorder—a condition that involves “a pervasive disregard for the rights of others […] failure to conform with social norms and standards of lawful behavior, deceit, impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead, irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of oneself and others, consistent irresponsibility, and lack of remorse” (Black, 52-53). Any parent can recognize their own offspring in that description, having seen them hit another over a toy or make a dangerous jump. I have to admit to feeling a twinge of nervousness about Layla as a baby, when she loved pulling my hair and slapping me. Orion had a biting problem and repeatedly tormented Layla by snatching her toys and throwing them either in the litter box or the toilet. (I won’t bore you with the lengthy description of conduct disorder, the under-age-eighteen version of ASP, but if you’re interested, I included the full list of criteria as a footnote.) The flip side of nature in child-rearing is nurture; of course we’ll make mistakes, but will our own flaws cause us to do things we can’t take back?

The Butcher Boy is not strictly a horror movie, but it does portray graphic and upsetting subject matter: Francie, a troubled preteen, acts out in cruel ways until finally he murders a woman.

Francie experiences multiple environmental causes for conduct disorder, mainly his sympathetic but deeply flawed parents: “Many children who become antisocial endure poverty, substandard housing, bad neighborhoods, parental abuse and neglect, and inadequate nutrition and medical care” (Black, 154). He grows up poor with his alcoholic, abusive father Benny and mentally ill mother Annie. In one scene, Benny chases Francie with a belt in an attempt to beat him, while Annie frantically takes a handful of pills. At one point, Francie gently stops her from hanging herself. Annie is then sent to a mental hospital, and Francie is left to clean and do the shopping when they run out of food. When Annie comes back, she’s no longer depressed but instead manic, obsessed with baking at all hours. When Francie runs away after his parents have a fight that culminates in Benny slapping Annie and calling her a bitch (also a criteria for conduct disorder: “Has run away from home overnight at least twice […] or once without returning for a lengthy period”), Annie throws herself in the ocean and drowns. Benny blames Francie, and soon succeeds in drinking himself to death, leaving his corpse to draw flies in the living room, while Francie does his best to deny that Benny is dead. Francie, true to form for conduct disorder, charms many of the adults in his life; he’s well-liked by the town priest and the ladies at the grocery store, who call him a “rare character.” As one of them says later, “What chance did he ever have, the poor creature.”

Francie meets the criteria for conduct disorder: “A repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated.” He “Often bullies, threatens, or intimidates others,” taking a special interest in his peer Phillip and Phillip’s mother Mrs. Nugent. He “has stolen while confronting a victim.” In fact, Francie himself acknowledges that stealing apples from the Nugents’ tree is his first bad deed, which he quickly follows up with by stealing Phillip’s comic books. He has “deliberately destroyed others’ property.” He has “broken into someone’s house, building, or car”–he breaks into the Nugents’ house, vandalizes it, and then takes a dump on the floor.

Mrs. Nugent is so scared of Francie that twice in the movie she sends her brothers to rough him up; the second time it happens, Francie gets the better of them and hits them with a rock. Francie sees the Nugent family as the source of all of his problems: “If she hadn’t poked her nose in between me and Joe, everything would have been all right.” Francie’s friend Joe is the most stable influence in Francie’s life. At first, he joins Francie in taunting Phillip, but then he has a crisis of conscience, convincing Francie to leave him alone and then disowning Francie as a friend completely. Despite getting psychiatric care, Francie escapes, begins drinking, and in a poorly timed series of events, finds out his parents’ sweet honeymoon story was a lie and is turned away for a final time by Joe. Francie attacks Mrs. Nugent, dehumanizing her by calling her an alien. He murders her, dismembers her, buries her, then tries to burn down his house.

Here’s grown-up Francie after years and years of therapy, greeting his old pal the Virgin Mary, played by Sinéad O’Connor

In some cases, psychopathy seems to be something almost inevitable, not preventable. Dr. Kent A. Kiehl, a leader in the field, describes the multiple letters he receives from worried parents: “One of the most telling aspects of the letters is that none of the children are described as normal from birth. Parents say they noticed something different, odd, or abnormal about the child from the very beginning. The letters never describe a normal child, followed by a sharp transition in behavior precipitated by something like a head injury or stressful event (i.e., divorce or death of a parent or sibling). They never describe a period of time where the child went from a normal state into a slow decline. Such a pattern is seen in a number of mental illnesses and is commonly referred to as a prodromal period–a slow, progressive change in normal functioning until a real mental break occurs. These children’s histories are presented as qualitatively different from other siblings or children from a very early age; if anything, the behavior has been disappointingly consistent, if not worsening, since birth” (127). What can we do with a child we can’t change?

In We Need to Talk About Kevin, a sixteen-year-old boy massacres a group of his classmates by locking them in the school gym and picking them off with a crossbow. The movie is from the point of view of his mother Eva, who is baffled by his lifelong cruel behavior. From the time he’s a baby, Kevin hates her, crying nonstop unless his father Franklin is holding him. (In one scene, Eva is so desperate for an end to the squalling that she stands with his stroller by a construction worker using a jackhammer.) As a toddler, Kevin mocks Eva and purposely goads her. He refuses to talk and glares at her. He throws his food at the wall (prompting Eva to say, “Mommy was happy before widdle Kevin came along”).

As Kevin gets older he shows evidence of conduct disorder but without the kind of environmental predictors that Francie has. Like most of the parents in this subgenre, who love their horrible children unconditionally, Eva keeps trying to mother Kevin even though she’s not fooled by him. Eva is sometimes impatient but always loving, and we’re meant to empathize with her. It’s well established that she was reluctant to become a mother and misses her freedom as a travel writer to just pack up and leave when she wants. In one scene, pre-pregnancy, she and Franklin frolic in the rain. But even Franklin wants to tie her down, saying, “Promise you’ll never go away again.” In a flashback she’s juxtaposed with the happy pregnant women in her class, standing alone and unsmiling. While giving birth, the nurse has to chide her, “Stop resisting, Eva.” Afterwards, she stares dazedly into space while Franklin plays with the new baby. She also has to give up her busy New York life to move to the suburbs. When Kevin is a few years older, he shows an actively destructive side, in one scene purposely destroying Eva’s decoration of her study with maps of places she’s been. However, he convinces Franklin that he was only trying to make Eva’s room more special and that he is sorry, and Franklin, who continues to view him as a “sweet little boy,” buys it. Kevin also refuses to be potty-trained for years, taunting Eva with having to change his diapers. In her most flawed moment, she loses her temper with him, and he ends up breaking his arm. Unexpectedly, she wins a small amount of his respect, as he lies to the doctor and Franklin about how it happened. (He tells her later, “It was the most honest thing you ever did.”) That night, he finally uses the toilet and continues to do so. However, he does use the event as a way to manipulate Eva, as in a scene when he guilt-trips her into skipping the grocery store and going straight home instead.

As a teenager, Kevin amuses himself by torturing his younger sister Celie, who adores him nevertheless. He puts her guinea pig in the garbage disposal and tricks her into getting drain cleaner in her eye. In marked contrast to Kevin, Celie is kind and happy. When Eva cleans her wounded eye, which is clearly painful to Celie, she still thanks Eva afterwards. Meanwhile, Franklin is increasingly frustrated with what he still sees as Eva being hysterical, and the couple is planning to get divorced. This information is used to hide one of Kevin’s most horrific acts: shooting Franklin and Celie and leaving their bodies in the backyard. Kevin is immediately caught, which seems to be part of his plan; he tells Eva he “might be tied up” on his upcoming birthday and calmly lies down to get arrested. Eva is blamed for his behavior, with strangers yelling “You stole my baby! You’re so evil!” and “I hope you rot in hell, you fucking bitch!” One woman even slaps her in the face. Eva visits Kevin in jail, so regularly that she’s on a first-name basis with the correctional officer. At the end, Kevin admits to Eva that he’s not sure why he did it anymore. Scared about going to “big-boy jail” after he turns eighteen, he hugs her.

Parenting is scary. But take heart. According to neuroscientist James Fallon (not the comedian), parents are putting too much emphasis on the overall impact they have on their children: “I don’t want to overplay the role of environment in development. Kids learn to do a lot of things on their own without explicit instruction–laughing, walking, speaking. And even more complex adaptive behaviors like personality development happen on their own. Kids are malleable, but mostly at the extremes. In the absence of bad abuse or extreme genetics, kids will turn out okay […] Every parent of a grown child knows that no kid turns out how they’d originally thought, and we have very little control over what type of adults our children will grow up to be. Pediatric neurologists I work with have told me this, too. That kid is going to turn out the way he’s going to turn out, unless you mess him up royally” (104-105).

Works Cited

Black, Donald W. Bad Boys, Bad Men: Confronting Antisocial Personality Disorder (Sociopathy). NY: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Fallon, James. The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. NY: Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.

Kiehl, Kent A. The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience. NY: Broadway Books, 2014.

Pearlman, Catherine. Ignore It! How Selectively Looking the Other Way Can Decrease Behavioral Problems and Increase Parenting Satisfaction. NY: TarcherPerigee, 2017.

Plomin, Robert. Blueprint: How DNA Makes us Who We Are. UK: Allen Lane, 2018.

¹Though there is something to be said about Patty McCormack’s performance as the itty bitty psychopath.

²A. A repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated, as manifested by the presence of three (or more) of the following criteria in the past 12 months, with at least one criterion present in the past 6 months.

Aggression to People and Animals

Often bullies, threatens, or intimidates others
Often initiates physical fights
Has used a weapon that can cause serious physical harm to others (e.g., a bat, brick, broken bottle, knife, gun)
Has been physically cruel to people
Has been physically cruel to animals
Has stolen while confronting a victim (e.g., mugging, purse snatching, extortion, armed robbery)
Has forced someone into sexual activity

Destruction of Property

8. Has deliberately engaged in fire setting with the intention of causing serious damage

9. Has deliberately destroyed others’ property (other than by fire setting)

Deceitfulness or Theft

10. Has broken into someone else’s house, building, or car

11. Often lies to obtain goods or favors or to avoid obligations (i.e., “cons” others)

12. Has stolen items of nontrivial value without confronting a victim (e.g., shoplifting, but without breaking and entering; forgery)

Serious Violations of Rules

13. Often stays out at night despite parental prohibitions, beginning before age 13 years

14. Has run away from home overnight at least twice while living in parental or parental surrogate home (or once without returning for a lengthy period)

15. Often truant from school, beginning before age 13 years

B. The disturbance in behavior causes clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.

C. If the individual is age 18 years or older, criteria are not met for antisocial personality disorder (Black, p. 45-46)

The Horrors of Adulting: Five Less than Ideal Ways I’ve Resorted to Making Money

I have a Bachelors degree in English. Which means I can teach English if I get a Masters in English, maybe. That is all. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Thankfully I’m now gainfully employed full-time, but in the past I’ve had to scramble. *Now, to be clear, I’m about to do some griping about tasks that kept me financially afloat, so do keep in mind I’m still grateful I was able to get by.*

5. CalWorks Recipient

When I became pregnant with my daughter Layla, I was working as a writing tutor at a community college. This was 2009, and the recession hit, slashing the payroll budget. When I went on maternity leave, my boss assured me I’d still have a position, but that was not the case. I ended up turning to welfare. In exchange for money, I entered a full-time program centered on getting a job. There were classes on personal hygiene and wellness, and I attended lectures by Erin, who taught about writing resumes, dressing formally, and interviewing techniques. The shitty part was mostly my own personal circumstances. Layla was three months old at the time and not quite adjusted to sleeping through the night, and I had tremendous difficulty staying awake. I was also nursing, so periodically I had to find a room to express milk–inexplicably, I didn’t lock the door, and once someone walked in on me. When I wasn’t in lectures or classes, I was required to apply for jobs online, often for eight hours straight. Happily, after a couple of months my writing tutor boss found me some hours, and I went back to work. Years later I ended up at the library, and Erin was a regular patron, which was only mildly awkward.

4. Uber Driver

I didn’t get my drivers license until I was in my thirties, and I learned to drive in California. The roads are flat, pretty wide, and set far away from the curb, with sidewalks aplenty. I was also pretty familiar with the area, having been born and raised there. Which is not to say I never got lost. My sense of direction is rubbish, as is my ability to remember street names, freeways, or even landmarks, and I frequently get confused by Google Maps. It’s a wonder I can get anywhere. I was between jobs after moving to Kentucky, and Uber seemed like a sure way to pay the bills temporarily. A word about the road conditions in Kentucky, a state that, at the time, I had been living in for four months. Maybe four months is enough time for you to get accustomed to new surroundings, but alas, not me. The streets in Kentucky are narrow, and wedged against someone’s lawn, which more often than not features a large dip at the front to curtail flooding. The back roads, while beautiful, are like forests with bigass cliffs you can drive right off of. Not to mention that the highways are as curvy as Adele in 2011. Also, all drivers are in a goddamn hurry and they’re not shy about tailgating. In California, I staunchly drove the speed limit, but that shit doesn’t fly in Kentucky. I’m sure I drove my passengers nuts with my conservative pace. (A year and a half later, I’ve learned to compromise by not driving more than 15 miles over the speed limit, which by state law is a ticketable offense.) I’m also prone to social anxiety and am not a sparkling conversationalist at the best of times, so needless to say I made a pretty shitty Uber driver. I lasted for ten rides, and only one passenger tipped me.

3. Cash Office Clerk

At fourteen dollars an hour, this is one of the highest-paying in the listicle. When I first started at the library in Kentucky, I was only part-time, so I did 20 hours there, and 24 hours at a grocery store cash office. I didn’t hate it (in fact I liked it and would have done it full-time if it paid a living wage). But it was intense. Training lasted for months, and when I quit I still didn’t know all there was to know about the job. I came in at the ass-crack of dawn to count, balance, and inventory the cash register drawers before opening. I filled the lottery ticket machines, ordered money (that’s a surreal experience–yes, hello, I’ll take 2,000 ones, 10,000 tens, and one hundred dollars in pennies, please), emptied the self-checkout machines of incoming cash and refilled the drawers for customer change, printed out reports, and prepared daily bank deposits. After a while, the thousands of dollars I handled started looking like Monopoly money. Except when it was visibly dirty. Money is disgusting, ya’ll. At the library while checking in books, I play the mystery stains game, but it’s worse while handling money. Once I got a bill that said “drugs”, and it did not come from the pharmacy.

Mystery stains, mystery stains, hope that’s chocolate…

Being responsible for that amount of cash is a lot of pressure. Not to mention that few people are trained to do the tasks (even the store’s second-in-command had issues filling in when my coworker was out), so missing work is highly frowned upon. Once I was experiencing a pain in my side, which turned out to be a kidney stone, the worst pain of my life actually, and vomiting too, and they were still reluctant to let me leave. When a less prestigious but full-time position at the library became available, I took it, but I kept the cash office job to make up for the lower hourly wage, working 44 hours a week at the library and another 8-24 hours at the store. That lasted for three months, after which time I was crying at the drop of a hat and struggling to stay awake any time I drove, or sometimes even while counting money or hunting the library shelves for requested items. Something had to give, despite my not having a backup plan.

2. Survey Taker

It’s hard to squeeze in more than 44 hours a week of work with three kids; the grocery store only worked because my shift was 4 am to noon-ish. So I tried some apps. Branded Surveys is exactly how it sounds: you take surveys. But you have to be part of the demographic the surveyors want, so you may find yourself answering a dozen questions and then being rejected. The app can also crap out after you actually get accepted for a survey; I once got to the end of a 20-minute survey only to have the app lose all my progress. You may have guessed this is also a less than lucrative venture. I spent about three hours taking surveys, and earned six bucks. Winwalk, an app that promises gift cards for meeting a steps-per-day goal, appealed to me because I’m obsessed with getting 10,000 steps a day in the first place. And guess how else you can earn rewards? Fucking surveys. Their surveys were slightly better, but still not a great experience. I gave up after the pedometer stopped clocking me at 4,000-some steps when my fitness watch told me I had 7,000 and was still continuing upward. That shit is rigged, I tells ya!

1. Plasma Donor

Sorry, this is no plasma donation center anywhere–nobody is this fucking happy to be there

I wish I could say I donate plasma because I’m a good person, but no. It’s $100 bucks a pop the first eight times you do it, and still fairly well-paying after. I’d never donated blood or any bodily fluid before, so I was unprepared for the barrage of personal questions (including whether I’d been to parts of Europe around 1980, which is before I was born), finger-stick to test for diseases (though seeing my blood get sucked into a capillary tube and go into a little centrifuge never gets old), physical to check me for needle marks and hidden tattoos and piercings, and six-hour wait time. The visits following the very first one (after you’ve gained their trust, bwa ha ha) are a bit more streamlined–there’s no physical, anyway. The procedure itself isn’t generally too bad, it’s just a quick poke; though the second time I went, I hadn’t drunk enough water and two staff members working in tandem couldn’t find a vein, even after digging around super hard with the needle, so they had to switch arms. Otherwise, I get to sit in a fairly comfortable, clean bed-type chair and read a book, and all I need do is pump my fist when the machine requires it until I fill a plastic 1,000-ml bottle (about four cups) with bubbly, brownish goo–it looks a bit like beer. The worst part of it for me was the air of desperation among those waiting to be seen–everyone is doing this for the money–in addition to the jaded attitude of the staff. The fellow who gave me the physical was the only nurse there at the moment, and he had to work through his lunch break, reciting to me a pages-long list of legal disclaimers and warnings about possible side effects from memory at a speed that would do Busta Rhymes proud. The phlebotomists (an underpaid bunch, ya’ll–our inner liquids are gross) are also overworked. They’re polite and professional, but it does make one feel like a bit of a bother when an employee leaves for the day by ceremoniously tossing her disposable lab coat in the trash and hollering that she’s going home.

All gripes aside, all of the aforementioned are still better than what I did upon first moving to Kentucky: hurriedly pack boxes for ten-hour shifts with mandatory overtime at the warehouse of a certain multinational online retailer. Whoo, I’m glad to be outta there!

Nostalgia Tiiiiiiime! “She’s Just Killing Me”

Ah, 1996. I was thirteen and entirely too young to be watching From Dusk till Dawn. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a bloody vampire movie with anti-gay slurs, racism, and many, many uses of the word pussy. In one scene, the protagonists are filling condoms with holy water, and I thought they were water balloons.

Well, you’re never too young for badass chicks taking out vampires with a crossbow

Then there’s the famous segment when Salma Hayek’s character, a vampire burlesque dancer, performs, and naturally, her foot ends up in Quentin Tarantino’s face. My husband Andrew and I were discussing that scene the other day; he was telling me about a skit that amused him regarding the foot-licking: “The director’s like, ‘Take 37’, like he’s really enjoying sucking her toes.” Me: “Who wouldn’t? [He looks at me quizzically.] If 28-years-ago Salma Hayek wanted to stick her foot in your mouth, you’d let her. Well, not when you were eight. [Continues to give me a funny look.] Okay, if you could go back in time to 1996…” Andrew: “You’re just making it worse, dear.”

The song “She’s Just Killing Me” by ZZ Top was used prominently in the movie’s soundtrack. If you’ve never seen the music video (I hadn’t until now, but this song was aaaaaall over the radio–it was the ’90s, we listened to the radio), concert footage and movie clips are crosscut with George Clooney riding a motorcycle to a fancy house, playing a piano, seeing Salma Hayek menacingly pop up in the window and looking unrealistically indifferent, playing basketball, and finally encountering Hayek, who puts on lipstick just to bite him. After being reminded what a jackass Clooney’s character is in the movie, it’s a pretty satisfying ending.

Nostalgia Tiiiiime! “Loved By the Sun”

If you’ve never seen the 1985 fantasy-but-occasionally-horrifying movie Legend, here’s a music video of the theme song by Tangerine Dream. It’s the ’80s in a nutshell.

‘Talk to Me’: A Thanksgiving Gratitude

Not too long ago, I was fortunate to see the film Talk to Me. Because I’m as self-centered as I am full of appreciation, I’m tying Thanksgiving, an emotionally charged celebration rooted in colonization by whites, to a movie depicting the consequences of exploiting a little-understood people–but also, me and my feelings. In Talk to Me, a troop of teenagers comes into possession (pun definitely intended) of a hand statue that allows them to communicate with ghosts and invite them into their bodies. Naturally, they make it all a big party and put that shit on YouTube. As Joss, co-caretaker of the hand, scoffs, “Apparently it was the hand of someone who could connect with the dead, right, so everyone around him thought, let’s just cut his hand off. White people shit, man.”

A large plot point in the film is Mia, the main character, losing her mother Rhea to an overdose of sleeping pills. As someone who struggled with suicidal ideation when I was younger, I empathize with Rhea; she leaves a suicide note stating her belief that she finally feels hope and that the family would be better off without her. Luckily for me, I have two amazing sisters whom I knew would be sad if I died. Many years of happy pills and therapy and growth later, I have come to a better place. I still falter sometimes, no longer thinking of ending things, but I’m sometimes prone to bouts of self-hatred and intrusive thoughts of cutting myself. It’s nothing I would actually act on, but a couple weeks ago I had a wake-up call (literally) during a phone appointment with my counselor. I was hysterically crying and so distraught that even after asking me multiple times if I was going to be safe when we hung up, she called the police to come check on me.

On to the gratitude part. A big contributor to depression is suffering in silence. I hid my issues for years before finally saying something and seeking treatment. My family has always been very supportive, but a year and a half ago I moved to Kentucky from California, so it’s hard to keep in touch. The three-hour time difference doesn’t help. I haven’t made many friends here, but I’ve become close to a handful of coworkers. I’m fortunate to work with lots of amazing people. (Seriously, ya’ll, I love these folks!) It was with three of them that I saw Talk to Me. From left to right, Jaclyn, Hillary, Terra, and me:

We had dinner (Hillary’s an amazing cook!), chatted, and played a card game called Hella Awkward, the point of which is to disclose extremely personal things to the other players. I was blabbing all kinds of stuff to them, and they listened. It’s so validating to have a circle of friends to confide in and laugh with (and most importantly, watch horror movies with!). Even at work, I’m able to goof around and joke with everyone. I’ve been so repressed for so long, it’s all coming out.

Continuing with more thankfulness, I’m big time in love with Talk to Me. It was shocking and creepy and funny and thought-provoking. The performances are great, especially by Sophie Wilde as Mia. And if you’ve made it this far, pal, a big thank you to you! Thanks for letting me talk to you.

Ooh, that’s a good scene! If you haven’t watched this yet, I’ll wait.

5 Unnecessarily Horrifying Childrens’ Books

I’m a clerk at the library, and a large part of my job is to check in, check out, and search for library books. As such, I have seen some doozies when it comes to absolutely nightmarish books. (Plug for my Instagram, which mainly features creepy book covers, goes here.) These are my most recent top five.

5.) Creepy Pair of Underwear! by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown

Jasper the rabbit buys a pair of underwear that turns out to be both sentient and not amenable to the idea of being disposed of for being scary. Underwear should not have a face.

After Jasper takes the hideous creature off, it reappears on him in the morning.

When he throws it away, it materializes in his drawer. He sends it to China, and it comes back with stereotypical mementos from the trip.

This time, Jasper has had it. He destroys the disconcerting but very much alive being and uses its remains as confetti.

Once he’s finally rid of it, Jasper decides that he doesn’t like the dark and buys a shitload of the creepy underwear. The underwears are happy, “because they had finally found somebody who wasn’t scared.” Gee, why would anyone be afraid of immortal underclothes that pursue you relentlessly?

4.) Pinkalicious and the Cupcake Calamity, written and illustrated by Victoria Kann

I first came across this book when I saw it on a first grade reading list and got it for my daughter to practice reading. You may consider this one a bit of a cheat, since it’s not technically horrifying, but I was shocked by the unpunished bratty behavior of the protagonist.

Pinkalicious is strolling along looking for a treat and notices a crowd gathered around Mr. Swizzle’s Cupcake-Create-O-Matic, which will make a personalized cupcake for a dollar. Never mind the line of kids who were there first, this little asshole shoves her way to the front, shouting “Me first!”

The kid puts in her money and pushes the button, but nothing happens. She immediately gets impatient. ” ‘Bake!’ I said, pressing again.” The entire crowd is getting upset, but none is so important as Pinkalicious, who declares, “I couldn’t wait that long. I wanted a pink cupcake!” She goes around to the back of the ‘matic and climbs inside. She sticks her gross kid hands into the batter to taste it, and then she touches all the cupcake wrappers because she wants them to be polka dotted.

Realizing that the issue is that the batter is not being poured, she pulls a random switch. The whole machine implodes, but at least she gets her bloody pink cupcake–a giant one, and despite it being full of gears and Pinkalicious germs, the other kids shove their unwashed kid mitts in, too.

Stay tuned for the sequel: *Pinkalicious and the Heinous Health Code Violation*

After destroying his new business venture, Pinkalicious gives a half-assed apology: ” ‘Sorry about your machine,’ I told Mr. Swizzle. ‘That’s okay, Pinkalicious,’ he said. ‘From now on, I’ll stick to ice cream and leave the cupcakes to you!’ ” That’s it, the end. She faces no repercussions whatsoever. She’s not learning a lesson about acting like an entitled jerk–the central conflict of the book is that she wants a cupcake and can’t have it instantly.

3.) Mr. Nogginbody Gets a Hammer, written and illustrated by David Shannon

Okay, first of all, as his name suggests, his stomach is also his face, which is home to his mouth and beady, soulless eyes. And his tie is his nose.

Mr. Nogginbody stumbles across a nail sticking out of his floor, and his TV instructs him to go to the hardware store. Once there, the man from the TV, whose eyes are buttons, like an evil character in Coraline, helpfully gives him a hammer. After pounding his thumb, Noggy manages to flatten the nail into the floor.

In his joy at fixing the problem, he whacks all sorts of things with his tool. Spying a bent-up nail, Mr. N observes, “Hmm…that doesn’t look like a nail. [Upon seeing a flower] But this does!” he screams, shadily hiding the weapon behind his back before pouncing. He then goes on a smashing spree, destroying things and declaring them fixed.

Gah, look at him lumber! Makers of horror movies, take notes!

Mr. N remarks about a hole-dwelling rodent, “Wow, these nails are too fast to fix!”

After a head injury, he realizes that not everything is a nail, and decides that “Maybe I can’t fix everything with a hammer.” Serial murders narrowly avoided.

2.) If You Cry Like a Fountain, written and illustrated by Noemi Vola

The author goes into explicit detail on how crying is essential, but only if done correctly: “Hey! We can’t start the book like this, with that sad face. You need to smile, at least at the beginning. Otherwise, everyone will think that you’re sad, and they’ll worry.”

Your emotions make people uncomfortable, so repress them! The worm in the picture proceeds to cry so vehemently that the narrator warns, “If you don’t stop, you’ll drown!”

Backtracking, the narrator asserts, “What I meant is that there are so many reasons for crying, but you have to cry better.” The narrator then offers absolutely disgusting platitudes about the usefulness of tears: “If you feel sad around lunchtime, turn on the stove and cry until the pot is filled. When the tears start to boil, stir in the pasta. You won’t even need to add salt!” There’s an unsettling amount of uses that involve ingesting or becoming completely immersed in tears.

There are also nonsequiturs like “Without crying, frogs would explode”, or “Crying helps pears grow.” Unfortunately, those pears, which had been living creatures, have been mashed up and made into jam and are now dead. Hopefully, they’re dead?

The narrator supplies a fact that in this case I am very thankful for: “Books always end, just like everything else.” However, there’s this ellipsed (ellipsisied?) addendum, which I think is meant to be comforting: “But there’s never an end to tears…”

You will cry forever and ever. Unless you’re a pear. Isn’t that wonderful?

1.) Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner, illustrated by Marcia Sewall.

This is a book I grew up with as a child. The trauma. The trauma. Rereading it as an adult, it’s even worse than I remembered. It concerns little Willy, a ten-year-old boy living on a Wyoming farm with his grandfather and steadfast dog Searchlight in the somewhat-distant-past. All of a sudden, little Willy’s grandfather experiences debilitating depression: “One day Grandfather wouldn’t get out of bed. He just lay there and stared at the ceiling and looked sad. At first little Willy thought he was playing […] Like the time Grandfather dressed up as the scarecrow out in the garden. It took little Willy an hour to catch on. Boy, did they laugh. Grandfather laughed so hard he cried. And when he cried his beard filled up with tears”. (Just…what? Even descriptions of their happy times makes my skin crawl.) The town doctor is useless: “Doc Smith took a deep breath. And then she began, ‘It happens when a person gives up. Gives up on life. For whatever reason. Starts up here in the mind first; then it spreads to the body. It’s a real sickness, all right. And there’s no cure, except in the person’s own mind. I’m sorry, child, but it appears that your grandfather just doesn’t want to live anymore”.

Little Willy, ever optimistic, replies, ” ‘I’ll find out what’s wrong and make it better. You’ll see. I’ll make Grandfather want to live again’ ” (11). According to the narrator, “A ten-year-old boy cannot run a farm. But you can’t tell a ten-year-old boy that” (12). Therefore Willy is forced to run an entire farm with only the help of Searchlight. And since his grandfather is basically in a coma, I guess little Willy is bathing, feeding, and changing him too?

It’s harvest season, and Willy decides that his grandfather is upset that the harvest will fail, so he and Searchlight plow by themselves. “And the harvest was a big one–close to two hundred bushels per acre. And each bushel weighed around sixty pounds”. ” ‘We made it, Grandfather,’ little Willy said, as tears of happiness rolled down his cheeks. ‘See?’ Little Willy held up two handfuls of money. ‘You can stop worrying. You can get better now.’ Grandfather put his hand down on the bed. Palm down meant ‘no’ “. Now it’s winter, and Willy is chopping wood and stocking up on food. He has to ride a sled five miles to school and then run errands. Willy discovers that his grandfather owes a fuckton in back taxes, and realizes that’s what he’s so upset about when a city slicker waving a derringer shows up demanding $500. Apparently Grandfather has just been hucking the threatening letters from the government in a box for a decade. So Willy puts on a suit and goes to the bank to ask for a loan. The loan officer suggests he sell the farm, but instead Willy invests his college money to enter a sled race with the convenient prize of $500. Stone Fox, an indigenous guy who never loses, because he’s racing to raise money to get his relatives off the reservation they were forced onto, hits Willy in the face for trying to pet his dogs, so Willy is now competing one-eyed against Stone Fox and almost a dozen other dudes who are also very competent at racing. By the way, Searchlight is ten years old. And so is little Willy! This kid is fucking ten! So then this happens: “Searchlight gave it everything she had. She was a hundred feet from the finish line when her heart burst. She died instantly. There was no suffering […] The sled and little Willy tumbled over her, slid along the snow for a while, then came to a stop about ten feet from the finish line” (77-78). Stone Fox, bailing on the race after witnessing the first white person who’s having a shittier day than him, threatens to shoot anyone that passes Willy. “Stone Fox nodded to the boy. The town looked on in silence as little Willy, carrying Searchlight, walked the last ten feet and across the finish line” (81). Are you happy now, Grandfather? Are you happy? I hope so, but we don’t know for sure because the book (and this article) abruptly ends with little Willy mourning his dead dog!

Little Willy, if you cry hard enough, you can dig her a grave with your tears! Isn’t that wonderful?

Works Cited

Gardiner, John Reynolds. Stone Fox. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.

Kann, Victoria. Pinkalicious and the Cupcake Calamity. New York: HarperCollins, 2013.

Reynolds, Aaron. Creepy Pair of Underwear! New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017.

Shannon, David. Mr. Nogginbody Gets a Hammer. New York: Norton Young Readers, 2019.

Vola, Noemi. If You Cry Like a Fountain. Canada: Tundra Books, 2022.

Book Quote of the Day

“The limitations of language have been ruining my life for a long time. Once I told a guy I was a ‘bleeding-heart liberal’ for him. I meant I just couldn’t help loving him, but it came off as a political statement. For a while, I also thought heroine was just a fancier word for hero, so I told another guy he reminded me of a Victorian-era heroine. I guess the real problem is that I need to stop complimenting guys.

No matter how good you are with words, it’s inevitable that meaning is lost between your mind and someone else’s. Trying to communicate is like chucking a cup of water at a thirsty person’s face. It’s better than nothing, sure, and a teaspoon of water might hit their lips, but oh, God, there’s just so much water in the grass.”

Jacqueline Novak, How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows

Book Quote of the Day

“He had shot the man at point-blank range. Directly in the chest. Right next to the other bullet wound. Right through the heart.

The man did not fall.

His neck went stiff, cocked backward, chin thrust in the air. Then, with a crack of bone that stole a gasp from Nena’s chest, his neck bent further back. His neck split at the throat, sliced open from within by a long, clawed hand.

A monster clawed its way forth from within the man’s body, slick with viscera, wet as a birth, its long teeth bared. The crack of bones and snap of sinew echoed against the walls of the jacal as its head and shoulders emerged from the chest. Soon the monster would claw itself free from the body it had followed them in, shedding its cage with butchery, shattering a protective egg of bone and gore.”

–Isabel Cañas, Vampires of El Norte

Book Quote of the Day

“I’ll be honest with you. Writing this chapter made me feel insane. Sitting at my desk, cataloguing how I became the kind of human that obliterates their body with work, patches it back together with self-care, believes my specialness makes my behavior elevated, and logs all my psychotic acts on an expensive watch that tracks and reports my every move, is beyond dystopian. I get that.”

–Wendy Syfret, The Sunny Nihilist: A Declaration of the Pleasure of Pointlessness

Book Quote of the Day

[Alison’s mother appears to be possessed by a demon named Azha] “I tried to croak out, ‘Who’s there?’ but the words dried up in my throat.

Azha, she would hiss.

Azha who? I would ask, reciting a silly knock-knock joke, a riddle.

But what would the punch line be?

Az-ha-ungry and I’m going to open my mouth and swallow you whole.”

–Jennifer McMahon, My Darling Girl