Monday, October 18, 2010

Like a Hell Broth Boil and Bubble.

It’s October! This means that leaves are turning brilliant, vibrant colours and then falling off the trees and into my car. It means that one day it will be warm like a summer breeze, and the next day we will watch the skies for snow. And the days in between? They’re the best. Cool, but not cold; just the right amount of wind; sunny but not bright; cloudy but not dismal. October is the best month of the year. This isn’t a sentimental “why I love this time of year” post. Though I did want to start off with a bit of sentiment. Just to balance it out.
What is this post about? Blood, rotting flesh, the shadows in the dark — all things supernatural, creepy, and (hopefully still) scary. That, ultimately is what makes October so amazing. Those leaves falling off the trees and blowing down the street? They sound like an army of zombies dragging their carcasses to your door. The mixture of sun and cloud creates shadows of devils and daemons stalking you on your walk. The fluctuating temperatures create a chill down your spine, putting you on edge and fearing for the worst. October is great for its beauty, but also its ability to create fear. Halloween is the celebration of all things spooky. So what if witches and ghosts and zombies don’t exist? Halloween is the opportunity for even the most rational person to let their imaginations run wild. So what is this post, then? It’s me, talking about my favourite creepy crawlies in their most stellar and spectacular of forms. And hopefully this time I’ll do what I’ve been trying to do since I made this site — create some discussion!
"Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills. The people it kills get up and kill."
-Dawn of the Dead
Zombies are an age-old classic when it comes to horror monsters. The Doctor has explained part of it in Dawn of the Dead as quoted above. It plays on the fear of contagions, life-threatening plagues with no cures. This is arguably the worst of such viral infections, as it is passed on through someone gnawing on your tender, warm, and juicy flesh. Combine this with the fact that Zombies smell nauseously awful, look worse, and are very determined to sink their teeth into warm flesh, and you have the “plot” of many horror movies for years to come.
Why not, though? The sight of a once dead loved one, their flesh grey and rotting, just starting to fall of the bones, is gruesome. Add to this the fact that they are slow, lumbering, mindless killing machines, and they can quite easily lull you into a false sense of security. What, with next to no sentient capacity, surely it would be easy to out-smart those undead buggers? But you’d be surprised how determined they are. They gang up and stalk you en masse. It really does become hard to outfight them when there are hundreds of them and one of you.
I think that is what is most terrifying about them. To think about zombies rationally (or as rationally as you can) it becomes apparent that it is highly, highly unlikely that you can survive indefinitely against their massive force.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche.
The abyss? The eternal darkness that gnaws at your insides tears you apart and turns you into a nihilistic existentialist. That gnawing pain the warps your core. It lives in the vampires. Not the modern day teen angst vampires, but those old school monsters that were painted with a romantic brush dipped in the blood of babies. The ones that would turn brutal, savage, bloody murder into a sensual and seductive act. They are purely evil, purely primal creatures with a surging sexuality and no redeeming qualities. I could go through the history and mythical evolution of the vampire, but these days that seems to be common(ish) knowledge, so let’s just leave it at that.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
-Voltaire
What is the scariest monster of them all? The one that is very real, with very real power and influence in this world. He also wears a rather peculiar hat that both frightens and amuses me. He is a man with the power to abolish an entire realm of religious existence, recreate it, and abolish it again*, without any of his millions of followers questioning a word of it. That’s millions of people willing to follow this man with his pointy hat (missile silo?) at his word — any of his words — without questioning it. Without even blinking at its absurdity. The last time something like this happened, more than six million people were slain. This very real power, and his very strict, conservative, outdated religious beliefs make Pope Benny the scariest Halloween monster out there. Bar none.
Of course the scales of scary are always shifting, and are relative between individuals and cultures. But that’s what is scary to me — determined, persistent, stinky, evil, undead, supernatural beings. What about you?
*He didn’t do that exactly. But he did abolish Limbo. What exactly happens now that Limbo is gone? Do unbaptised children go directly to hell, no passing go, no collecting two hundred dollars? Am I going to hell for being an unbaptised child AND an atheist?!