Atomic Nerds

So today at Popehat, Patrick has a 25-item list of lessons learned from a lifetime of American horror.

I can only wildly approve of his list, though I would also wish to add to it, or simply generate my own. I’ve been glued to horror since Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (whose stories were not particularly menacing but whose illustrations made even the innocuous, more-a-joke-than-scary ones into memory-searing nightmare fuel), and I like to think I’ve picked up something from it other than paranoia.

1. Do not, under any circumstances, piss off, reject, abandon, or even annoy a Japanese woman. The most dangerous thing in the world is a Japanese woman- or worse, young girl- who died with any sort of grievance whatsoever. Being dead, she has absolutely nothing better to do with her time than to gruesomely torment and destroy the object of her pique. In fact, it’s probably safest to avoid the nation of Japan altogether.

2. Cats are like mine canaries. If you’re feeling tense and a cat jumps suddenly out in front of you from somewhere it had no business being, vacate the area. Take the cat with you if you like it and don’t want to find it nailed to a tree.

3. Obey the inverse law of death and population density. If your likeliest potential adversary is alive, move to a densely populated city and acquire several roommates, preferably well-armed ones. If undeath is a problem, move to rural Wyoming. One good rifle and about thirty rounds will take care of any zombie that can possibly find you before it falls apart.

4. Have your own light source, with verified power source, on your person at all times.

5. Whoever and whatever they are, they’re not really asleep.

6. Do anything a decrepit old woman tells you to do. Angering her is probably extremely dangerous and helping her may have a high payoff.

7. Anybody smiling inappropriately should be shot immediately.

8. Childlike adults are best avoided. Either they’re harmless and sweetly innocent in contrast to you, which means you’ll be killed first, or they never learned not to pet the bunny until its neck breaks.

9. If you are on an outing of any kind and find one of your group has been brutally killed and their body displayed before you had any awareness there was a danger, bear in mind that whatever was responsible has probably already found your vehicle. Start planning alternate means of departure now, don’t try the truck and the main road because they LOOK okay.

10. If you don’t know who left the food there, don’t eat it.

11. Hitchhiking never ever ever ends well.

12. If you are in a house in a remote location having a party (you idiot), and somebody finds one of the group horribly mutilated, the best action you can take next is to immediately round up the group, grab any weapons that are in the room you are in right now, and then move as a pack to burn down all the outbuildings. As per rule nine, all vehicles are already a loss. Eliminate all positions that can be hidden in until you’ve either found and dispatched the killer as a group or narrowed it down to the last defensible one, and fortified it.

13. Never use a mirror for anything more esoteric than shaving or applying makeup.

14. Quaintly regional small towns, in any country or culture, are extremely dangerous. Globalization is your friend.

15. Circuses are NOT good clean fun.

16. Contrary to government advice, make sure any doll you give your children is readily flammable.

17. Turning up on strangers’ doorsteps asking to be let in for any pretext save bleeding out from the jugular is rude. Defend the boundaries of etiquette, and your threshold, with a shotgun if necessary.

18. Nothing good is ever kept in an attic.

19. Rule nine, if in a large building, also applies to elevators. Take the stairs or prepare to defend your position.

20. Any person who, in life, made time to torment you will certainly have unlimited time to do so after death. Take the precaution of destroying all their possessions when they die. Break the bank at the estate sale if you have to. This may not work but it beats trying to figure out which of some several hundred objects with sentimental significance their malevolent spirit is anchored to while it’s throwing you down the stairs and making the walls bleed.

21. If you are traveling and must stay in a strange place, if a Holiday Inn is not available, just sleep in the car.

22. If a loved one is possessed and an exorcism is your only recourse, quintuple-book your priests. You’re going to go through at least one in the process and probably more.

23. If one of your friends has been cursed by gypsies, it’s probably best to just stake the poor bastard out in the desert and flee to another continent. It may seem heartless but it will beat what happens when you try to help.

24. If you hear a nursery song and you are not in an actual nursery, vacate the area immediately.

25. If your travels must take you through a rural area in which agriculture is done, try to make sure you stick with the towns that grow ground crops. No one has ever been chased through a field of peanuts by an eldritch abomination or cult. Avoid cornfields and apple orchards at all costs.

Posted Arms races, japery |