What's in a Phrase?

In a previous post, we considered how to use horror movie posters to generate plot ideas. In this post, we'll take a look at using commonplace phrases to do the same.

Let's stay with the “bug” them. By typing “bug” into the Internet search engine of my choice (Bing), several links appeared, including this one: Phrases, which lists these commonplace phrases that include the word “bug” and the meaning associated with each:

• bug off
• bug out
• bug in her bonnet
• bug someone
• bug storm
• cute as a bug's ear
• snug as a bug in a rug

At first, not many of the phrases may seem to inspire ideas for horror plots (or even scenes), but, of course, the phrases are raw material; we have to work with them a bit. Let's take “snug as a bug in a rug,” for example. Let's jettison the “snug as” portion of the phrase, paring it down to “a bug in a rug.” instead of the denotative, or dictionary, meaning of “rug,” let's go with a figurative use. Toupees are sometimes referred to, usually derogatorily, as “rugs.”

Could a toupee-manufacturing company plant a bug inside its hairpieces? Sure—but why? Maybe the bugs aren't really insects. Maybe they're miniature microphones that someone plants in the toupees of certain men ho wear “rugs.”

Okay—but why? The bald men are spies or suspected terrorists or masters of organized crime. Maybe the toupee company is a CIA front that makes “special” toupees for only a select few clients.

Sounds good, maybe, but why go through all the trouble of making toupees instead of using more traditional ways to bug persons of interest?

No one, least of all a spy, a suspected terrorist, or a master of organized crime, is likely to suspect there's a listening device in his toupee. It's the perfect hiding place—as long as the wig stays on the suspect's head, which I likely to be most of the time that he's in public.

There's another possibility, too. If the “rug' isn't a toupee, but a merkin, the story takes on a whole different tone. It could take a satirical or even an erotic twist. A merkin, after all, is a pubic wig, a toupee worn down under (mostly by women).

Now the client is likely to be a female spy, a female terrorist suspect, or a female head of organized crime. The possibilities aren't endless, but they're sure different than those that are likely to be inspired by a male character's wearing of a toupee.

Maybe you don't like either possibility, that of the toupee or that of the merkin. Besides, we might wonder, where's the fear in such a conceit? There could be one, if the bug is set to self-destruct, Mission Impossible style, after so many hours or days, killing its wearer out at the same time. Some suspense, or even terror, could flow from the thought that the presence of the bug, over time, scrambles the brains of the surveilled suspect—and those around him or her. Perhaps the government agency that sells the implanted toupee or merkin knows that this effect will occur; maybe they discover it as the “bugs” are put into use. Alternatively, maybe the “bugs” have this effect only on some suspects, and the government agency must discover why and how to prevent the effect from occurring.

The possibilities are many, and they have all resulted from brainstorming about a phrase that includes the word “bug.”

Of course, if you don't like the results of using “bug” phrases, you can always substitute a word associated with another horror trope or theme and brainstorm about phrases containing this (or these) term(s).

To find such tropes, check out images of horror movie posters. You'll find that many of them contain the same types of images, such as dolls (Abandoned, Dolls, Worry Dolls, The Doll, Finders Keepers, Doll in the Dark, Child's Play, Annabelle, The Devil Doll); heads (Pumpkinhead, Hatchet, Shrunken Heads, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Hostel); eyes (The Eye, Would You Rather?, The Crawling Eye, Candyman 3, The Theater Bizarre, The Return, Cat's Eye).

Just a few of the many phrases that contain the word “eye” or closely related words include:

• up to your (my) eyeballs
• your (my) eyes are bigger than your (my) stomach
• a bird's-eye view
• a feast for the eyes
• a jaundiced eye
• a roving eye
• a worm's-eye view
• all eyes are on someone (something)
• an eagle eye
• an eye for an eye
• as far as the eye can see
• bat one's eye
• bawl one's eyes out
• easy on the eyes
• bedroom eyes
• eye opener
• eye to eye
• eyes in the back of your head
• eye popper
• eyes only
• get some shuteye
• give your eyeteeth for
• stars in your eyes
• in the wink of an eye
• keep a weather eye on

Possibilities are endless.

Clayton (“Blaze”) Blaisdell, Jr.: A Study in Characterization

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the flyleaf to Richard Bachman’s* novel Blaze (2007), the protagonist is “one of the most sympathetic criminals in all . . . literature.” This estimation may be equal parts hyperbole and objective assessment, but few would argue, it seems, that Blaze is, in fact, a compelling character. What makes him so? The novel is a study in characterization. Much of the effect is achieved by Bachman’s demonstration of Blaze’s perceptions of other characters and of situations. Mildly retarded and altogether psychotic (he hears voices that no one else hears), Blaze frequently accepts everyone and everything at face value, seldom analyzing, evaluating, or passing judgment on anyone or anything. His matter-of-factness, which is surely as much an effect of his retardation as it is of his pureness of heart, nevertheless creates an image of him as being, despite his criminality, one who is--or seems to be--unaffected, if not always altogether guileless. Nevertheless, he is a criminal. As such, Blaze is, on one hand, a sympathetic soul, while, on the other hand, despite his pathetic thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams, he is also revolting. To have created such a character is an accomplishment suggestive more of a Stephen King than of a Richard Bachman.

The first chapter opens with “George was somewhere in the dark. Blaze couldn’t see him, but the voice came in loud and clear, rough and a little hoarse. George always sounded as if he had a cold. He’d had an accident when he was a kid. He never said what, but there was a dilly of a scar on his adam’s apple.”  Although George is unseen, we are led to believe that he exists as more than a voice: “George was somewhere in the dark,” we are told. Moreover, the use of such adjectives as “loud” and “clear,” “rough” and “hoarse,” to modify the sound of George’s voice helps to establish the thought that the character is as real as the young man, Blaze, who hears him speaking. Finally, the reference to George’s past accident provides a speck of back story that helps to present George as a real person, like Blaze.

George also reacts to Blaze’s actions. When Blaze seeks the wrong automobile--to steal, as it turns out--George corrects him: “Not that one, dummy, its got bumper stickers all over it. Get a Chevy or a Ford. Dark blue or green. Two years old, No ore, no less. Nobody remembers them. And no stickers.” Again, the details also help to sustain the notion that George is more than merely a memory and that his voice is more than simply a hallucination. The voice advises George about specific details concerning the automobile: it should not have bumper stickers on it, it should be either “a Chevy or a Ford,” it should be no older than two years, .and it should be “dark blue or green.” George even calls Blaze a name, “dummy,” which is, although insulting, characteristic of Blaze’s condition and not one that he is likely to have applied to himself, for retarded people seldom know of their own accord, without being told so by others, that they are retarded. These techniques make George seem as real a character as Blaze. As George continues to direct, counsel, and insult Blaze, the illusion that he is real continues: “That’s your left. . . . Your right, dummy. The hand you pick your nose with.” George keeps Blaze on track when Glaze’s thought begin to stray and even tells Blaze how to hotwire the car.

It comes as something of a shock, then, when the cat is let out of the bag, and we learn that “George is dead.”

Blaze remembers, for a time, that his former partner in crime is deceased, but, “the next morning,” George is back--in Blaze’s head, at least--reminding Blaze to tuck in both of his shirttails and telling him to wipe out the tire tracks in the snow outside the shed in which Blaze has hidden the stolen car. One minute, Blaze remembers that George is dead (“George had been dead since that crap game in the warehouse”), but the next minute he seems to forget, thinking that George is alive (“George was inside drinking coffee by the stove”). By his alternating between these conflicting ideas, Blaze indicates his own confusion, indicating to us his madness, and this strange disoriented state of mind is compelling: we are intrigued at what it is like to perceive as Blaze perceives, to think as Blaze thinks, and to experience the world as Blaze experiences it, partly real and partly illusory at the same time or in quick, alternating sequences. Although Blaze has committed a crime, stealing the automobile--and, we suspect, will almost certainly commit far worse ones, if he has not already done so, before we met him, as it were--we are both repelled by his behavior and sympathetic toward his plight. In short, Blaze is a fascinating character.

Bachman presents his world as it seems to be to Blaze, and, in doing so, allows us, from the safety of our homes, sane and sound of mind ourselves, to see--or, at least imagine--what it would be like to be out of our minds. Who could resist such a character as Blaze? Bachman is counting on our not being able to do so. (The movie Ed Gein [2000], starring Steve Railsback, offers a good motion picture example of the same technique.)


*Yes, I know that Stephen King is Richard Bachman (unless Bachman is King). The question is whether King (or Bachman) knows this. Maybe King’s own schizophrenia, in supposing himself to be two people (even if he knew and knows he really is only one) helped him to create the psychotic and somewhat schizophrenic Clayton (“Blaze”) Blaisdell, Jr. Ever think of that?

Knowledge, Ignorance, Surprises, and Suspense "Under the Dome"

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Earlier in the story, flowers that one of Linda and Rusty Everett’s daughters, Judy and Janelle, picked for their mother were dying, and now “the twin oaks in their front yard” apparently are dying as well, their “leaves hanging limp and moveless [sic], their bright colors fading to drab brown” (691). Like the fauna (and the human population, some members of which have had seizures and hallucinations and others of which appear to be going insane), even the flora under the dome is being adversely affected by the pollution-gathering barrier. The suggestion is that, if the dome remains in place much longer, cutting off the town from the rest of both nature and civilization, the consequences will be dire, indeed, for plants, animals, and human beings alike.

The evil spread by Big Jim Rennie and his cohorts is also having dire effects upon the people of Chester’s Mill. Two citizens, Angie McCain and Dodee Sanders, have been killed by Junior Rennie, and two others, the Reverend Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins, have been killed by Big Jim himself. Several townspeople were injured, some seriously, during the riot at, and looting of, Food Town. Samantha Bushey, beaten and raped by Special Deputies Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, and Carter Thibodeau, while Special Deputy Georgia Roux assists by holding the victim down and urging her colleagues on, shoots two of them (Frank and Georgia) before killing herself with the same handgun and leaving her eighteen-month-old son Little Walter a virtual orphan, given the indifference and madness of his methamphetamine-addicted father, Phil (“The Chef”). The descent of the dome has killed several animals and human beings as well, including Claudette Sanders, the late wife of First Selectman Andy Sanders and the father of the late Dodee. Rory Dinsmoore’s ill-advised attempt to shoot his way through the dome with a high-powered rifle cost him first an eye and then his life.

Adding to the horror of these deaths is the townspeople’s ignorance as to the cause of the dome and its descent and of the cause of the madness that grips some of the townspeople (The Chef, Junior, and Big Jim himself, among others). One cannot fight what one does not understand, and the inability to protect and defend oneself and others increases one’s sense of helplessness and desperation.

So far, the protagonist, Colonel Dale (“Barbie”) Barbara (jailed since page 533), and his supporters have discovered little of the truth behind the bizarre events that have transpired and continue to transpire in their town. Joe McClatchey and his friends Norrie Calvert and Benny Drake, using a Geiger counter supplied to them by Barbie before Barbara was jailed, have located what they believe may be the generator that created and sustains the dome. Physician’s assistant Rusty Everett, in having examined the bodies of the Reverend Lester Coggins and Brenda Perkins, surmises that the former was struck by a baseball and that the latter’s neck was broken. The former chief of police and Brenda’s late husband, Howard (“Duke”) Perkins, an early victim of the dome, has compiled a file of incriminating evidence concerning Big Jim’s theft of public funds and manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. The townspeople also know that neither the direct hit of a pair of Cruise missiles nor the dousing of the dome with an experimental acid capable of melting solid rock had any effect on the barrier. In addition, they have a few fairly strong suspicions about some of the strange incidents that have happened since the dome’s descent. They suspect that Big Jim organized the Food Town riot as an excuse seize more power for himself and to further bolster the ranks of Chester’s Mill’s finest. They suspect that he is behind the arson that resulted in the burning down of newspaper owner and editor Julia Shumway’s business and residence. They suspect that Big Jim has framed Barbie for the murders of his and Junior’s victims. Samantha Bushey identified Frank DeLesseps, Melvin Searles, Carter Thibodeau, and Georgia Roux as her attackers, although they denied her allegations and have never been charged, arrested, or tried.

That’s what, to date, the townspeople know or suspect. They don’t know the origin or the nature of the dome, although there are plenty of theories as to how it came to be and who may be responsible for its descent. Some believe it is the work of extraterrestrials. Others think it is the result of a terrorist attack by a rogue nation. Still others suspect that the United States put the dome in place, using its own citizens as subjects of a sinister experiment. Perhaps the dome is the invention of a criminal genius, some suppose, or a living entity, others imagine.

Once again, the characters’ partial knowledge and total ignorance, coupled with rumors and suspicions (some founded, some not) increase their fear and sense of helplessness while, at the same time, heightening the story’s suspense.

But King also arouses the reader’s suspense by extending the population of the town in an unusual manner. In an earlier scene, King surprises the reader by including the dead among the living in his catalogue of the townspeople of Chester’s Mill who did not witness the phenomenon of the falling pink stars, as if he were suddenly writing a sequel to Our Town or Spoon River Anthology. The effect is startling, and shows that, even after all these years, King can surprise his readers.

Now, in a scene out of The Sixth Sense, one of his characters--and a canine one, at that--Horace, Julia Shumway’s Corgi, hears a voice as he eats popcorn spilled by Andrea Grinnell, with whom Horace and Julia are staying, following the loss of Julia’s home and business to the Molotov cocktails tossed by Big Jim’s henchmen. As the dog is eating the spilled popcorn he has found under an end table, he encounters the file of incriminating evidence against Big Jim Rennie that the late Police Chief Perkins had gathered. His widow, Brenda, at Barbie’s behest, had taken it to the third selectman for safekeeping. Andrea, in seeking to kick her addiction to pain pills cold turkey, had promptly forgotten her visitor’s visit. Apparently, both Andrea and Julia have also forgotten the file itself (since neither of them mentions it again or looks for it.) As Horace comes across the file, however, he hears the voice:

. . . Horace was actually standing on his mistress’ name (printed in the late Brenda Perkins’s neat hand) and hoovering up the first bits of a surprisingly rich treasure trove, when Andrea and Julia walked back into the living room.

A woman said, Take that to her.

Horace looked up, his ears pricking. That was not Julia or the other woman [Andrea]; it was a deadvoice [sic]. Horace, like all dogs, heard dead voices [sic] quite often, and
sometimes saw their owners. The dead were all around, but living people saw them
no more than they could smell most of the ten thousand aromas that surrounded
them every minute of every day.

Take that to Julia, she needs it, it’s hers (694).

Unfortunately, Horace is confused, thinking (yes, King’s mutts are quite good at cognitive activity, in their own doggy way, much as are the canines that frequent rival writer Dean Koontz’s cloyingly sentimental fiction), and the Corgi, able to distinguish between “peoplefood” [sic] and “floorfood” [sic], thinks that it is “ridiculous” to imagine that Julia would. . . eat anything that had been in his mouth,” and, in his confusion, the misplaced file remains undiscovered--at least, by the human characters--and Horace himself forgets “all about the dead voice [sic]” (695).

Why does King include this scene? Is it simply to remind the reader of the file’s existence and that it is still available to the enemies of Big Jim Rennie? If so, there are other, simpler and more expedient ways to accomplish this end. In fact, King has reminded the reader of the file’s existence, if not its specific location, several times already, through characters’ dialogue concerning the file. Obviously, King does not want the file to be discovered yet, because Julia was about to do just this when she turned away from the end table under which it lies, concerned about Andrea as the selectman began to make gagging sounds, prior to regurgitating her morning’s “raisin bun”:

She bent to look into the gap between the couch and the wall.

Before she could, the other woman began to make a gagging
noise. . . (695).

If the purpose of the scene isn’t for Julia to find the file, why did King write it? Why did he bring forth the ghost of Brenda Perkins to tell Horace to take the file to Julia? In regard to the answers to such questions, the reader, at this point, is left hanging, so to speak, but King has certainly raised the question as to why he has deliberately emphasized, once again, as he had in including the dead among the living in his listing of the names of those residents of Chester’s Mill who had not seen the fall of pink stars, a link between the living and the dead. He deliberately introduces an element of the supernatural when such an intrusion is not necessary to the telling of his story and is, in fact, even a bit disconcerting, requiring, as it does, yet an additional suspension of disbelief, beyond that needed to accept the sudden dropping down of a mysterious, transparent “dome“ over an entire town. In doing so, he sets up the expectation that, sooner or later, this connection between the living and the dead of Chester’s Mill will have narrative (and, perhaps, thematic) significance. Of course, in setting up the reader’s expectation that he will deliver on his implied promise to account for this link between the quick and the dead, King also generates a ton of suspense.

Everyday Horrors: The Electric Chair

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Thomas Edison, who gave us the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the motion-picture projector, and a host of other technological goodies, also gave us the electric chair--or did he?

According to “Electric Chair Wars,” Edison is credited, incorrectly, with inventing the electric chair. The dubious honor of having invented this execution device actually goes to a dentist, Alfred P. Southwick, who witnessed an intoxicated man get electrocuted during a visit to a power plant in Buffalo, New York.

Like many other serial killers, Southwick practiced on animals before trying his hand with people, convincing the city’s animal welfare organization that killing stray animals with electricity was more humane than drowning them. This attempt at persuasion having proved successful, the dentist and a legislator convinced the governor of the Empire State that electrocuting humans was a more humane way of destroying them than hanging.

The state had a new way of executing criminals, but it was yet to be decided whether alternating current (AC), championed by George Westinghouse, was deadlier that direct current (DC), endorsed by Thomas Edison. Southwick’s chair used the former, the brainstorm of Westinghouse employee Nicola Tesla. In 1890, the death sentence of William Kemmler offered the two rival inventors the opportunity to put their respective currents where their mouths were.

A showman of sorts, Edison staged the executions of domestic animals to convince the public that DC was a superior means of killing people (or domestic animals, at least) than AC. When Topsy, a circus elephant, objected to having been fed a lit cigarette and killed the drunkard who fed her this snack, she was labeled a “rogue elephant” and scheduled to be executed by hanging by her neck until she was dead, probably of strangulation. Edison saw his chance to offer what Ed Sullivan might have called “a really good show”: he would use AC to kill Topsy. Outfitted with copper-lined sandals and hooked to electrodes, she was given a lethal dose of the current and died a quick death, earning a belated memorial in 2003, in New York’s Coney Island Museum.

Edison was successful in getting the state’s Medico-Legal Society to urge the use of AC in New York’s electric chair. However, financed by Westinghouse, Kemmler’s attorney protested that the use of electricity to kill his client would be unconstitutional, representing, as it would, “cruel and unusual punishment.” Kemmler lost his appeal, and he was electrocuted, the chair employing AC. According to witnesses, a second jolt was required to kill the condemned man, and fire issued from his mouth.

According to “Both Sides of the Wall,” after receiving seventeen seconds’ worth of juice, “Kemmler's slumped body started to moan and wheeze,” prompting the attending physician to call for the second jolt, on the grounds that “This man is not dead!” Wanting to make sure they killed him this time around, the executioners let the current flow for 70 seconds (some claim 240 seconds), while smoke rose from his head and “the room was filled with the stench of human flesh.” In full, Kemmler spent eight minutes in the chair. In 1963, the use of the chair as a means of executing criminals was discontinued.

Legal challenges to the use of the electric chair have continued, intermittently, with a state judge ruling, on August 2, 1999, that “Old Sparky,” as the Sunshine State has nicknamed their chair, is not unconstitutional. There was some question as to whether it constituted cruel and unusual punishment after the “bloody execution of a 344-pound inmate,” Allan Lee (“Tiny”) Davis in July 1999, according to CNN. As the CNN article points out, citing the following instances, Allen’s case was “not the first time the mechanics of the chair raised questions”:

• In 1997, flames shot from the head of death row inmate Pedro Medina during his execution.
• In 1990, smoke poured from the hood of inmate Jessie Tafero as he was put to death.

According to the state’s website on the topic--yes, there really is one-- the executioner “is a private citizen who is paid $150 per execution.” The chair has three legs, rather than four, and was fashioned out of oak by prison inmates. Florida’s website offers trivia fun concerning its electrocutions, including these factoids:

• Frank Johnson was the first inmate executed in Florida's electric chair on October 7, 1924.
• On March 30, 1998, Judias "Judy" Buenoano became the first woman to die in Florida's electric chair.
• 12.19 years is the average length of stay on Death Row prior to execution.
• William Cruse, Jr. is the oldest death-row inmate in Florida, having been born in 1927, and Jerome Hunter, born in 1986, is the youngest.
• The oldest inmate to be executed, to date, is Charlie Grifford, who was 72 at the time.

The chair’s most infamous client was Ted Bundy, who was zapped on January 24, 1989.

The Sunshine State’s website also offers visitors a virtual tour of the state’s prisons, during which one may “visit a Death Row cell.”

Electric chairs appear in several horror movies and novels, including Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile and the movie, of the same title, based on it, in which a wrongly convicted healer meets a particularly nasty demise; The Gingerbread Man, in which a gingerbread man, possessed by the soul of an electrocuted killer, seeks revenge against the girl who fried him; Alive, in which an electric chair survivor is invited to participate in sadistic experiments that pit him against another prisoner and an extraterrestrial of sorts; The Horror Show, in which an electric chair survivor seeks revenge against the cop who arrested him; Shocker, in which an electrocuted killer returns from the dead, able to take charge of the force that killed him; and a host of others.

“Everyday Horrors: The Electric Chair” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.