I adore a good horror film. I love these flicks because within 90 minutes I have the satisfaction of seeing the heroine prevail, and the delight of watching the monster meet a grisly death. Real life, sadly, is not like this. Heroes don’t win all the time, and after they are done tormenting you, monsters often go on to create more suffering—usually between book deals, awards banquets, and underwear modeling contracts.
Ironically, the other thing I love is this: reality programming. Because it looks nothing like my life, so I must be doing something right. Thank heavens I don’t have to live in a monsoon shelter with a TGIFriday’s bartender, a promiscuous childcare worker, and an estate lawyer. Oh, but what wicked fun to watch!
We’re about three years into the trend of reality shows, and they’ve started to evolve into sub-genres. We have reality/dating, where we can see lathered-up strangers scrub each other in a “hidden cam” shower stall one minute, then publicly scorn each other the next. Reality/family programs show us that even bat-chomping Satan worshippers put their spandex pants on one leg at a time. On the Discovery channel, we can see real live neighbors duking it out: Berber or shag?
So why not have reality/horror? I’m not suggesting for one minute that anybody gets hurt. We could just watch the news, or Jerry Springer if that were the point. What I am suggesting is that by giving small, everyday horrors some quality screen time, we might experience the same release as watching Mr. Hockey Mask fire up the ol’ boomstick and chainsaw.
Screen is black, ominous music reverberates as camera pans to furrowed brow. Beads of sweat spring forth at the hairline, eyes that have seen too much begin to bug out. The sound of a heart beating, layered beneath the rasp of a woman’s shallow, jagged breathing. She moves quickly down a narrow staircase. Her white knuckled hand shoots out to steady herself against the flimsy guardrail. A furry spider scurries over her wrist; she recoils, stumbling down the last two steps, landing at the base of the stairs, on her hip. The deep, resonating tones of KQRS’s Tom Barnard boom forth in voice-over.
Barnard: “This October, don’t go into the basement…”
Woman (Lifting her head to wail in panic—to hear a voice other than her own in the darkness): “Honey? Kids?!”
Barnard: “Some things are better left until morning…”
The heartbeat thunders over the sound of her breathing. In an instant sharp-focus lurch, we see a hollow-core door at the end of a short hallway. We know the door is thin because the hammering racket we hear is just on the other side of it, and it’s making the door vibrate. The sound grows louder as the woman drags herself nearer destiny. Her terror feeds on itself now, a feeble plea edges forth through her dry lips in a croaking whisper
Woman: “Anyone…please?”
As she grips the doorknob, the thumping gives way to an earsplitting screech. Too late!
Barnard: “Colleen Kruse in… Load Imbalance Signal!” On the shrill bleat of the buzzer, a quick succession of images flashes over the screen. A child’s hand sticking up from a mountain of unfolded laundry, a stack of unpaid bills, fruit flies dancing over last night’s casserole pan…
Barnard: “There’re only 24 hours in a day…”
The images click faster: a dog scratching at the door to get out, coffee spilling in slo-mo, splashing onto a freshly ironed white shirt…obligatory shot of a sexy, scantily clad teenage girl lolling on an unmade bed singing, “I’ll never te-hell!”…a cat squatting in a houseplant…the buzzer is fading into the distance, but the images keep coming…a toothbrush knocked into the toilet bowl…
Barnard: “And what’s left undone will wait for you tomorrow…”
Shot of a telephone ringing. Colleen grabs the receiver, brushing the sweaty hair out of her eyes. It is deathly quiet. A tumbleweed of dog hair puffs by.
Woman: “Hello! What do you want?! Who is this?!!”
Barnard (on the telephone): “Colleen, get out of the house! We’ve traced the call. It’s coming from TCF!”
She screams. Fade to black.
Writer, performer, and femme fatale Colleen Kruse is at mscolleenkruse@ hotmail.com.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply