It’s the most wonderful time of the year: SPOOKY SEASON! I’ve always loved Halloween and horror, so this week, I’m celebrating the season by blogging about the scary stories I have written. Most of my stories are scary in a “I hope this never happens in real life” kind of way, but the ones in this blog are full-on horrifying. Here are my five favorite horror fics!
5. Watch Me As I Bleed
I’ve been watching horror movies and reading horror fiction since I was a kid, but I hadn’t really tried my hand at writing a true horror story until 2008, when I participated in a writing challenge on Absolute Chaos. The way the challenge was set up was that participants would challenge each other to write a one-shot that followed a specific set of guidelines the challenger came up with. My friend Rose challenged me to write “a very violent horror story” in which three out of five of the Boys died. The killer was supposed to be a celebrity but couldn’t be a Backstreet Boy. There had to be at least one graphic death scene, and it couldn’t be a dream.
With those guidelines in mind, I came up with Watch Me as I Bleed, a very violent horror story in which AJ watches three of his bandmates die at the hands of a murderous, ax-wielding woman in an Abraham Lincoln mask. Why Abraham Lincoln? I honestly don’t remember, but it probably had something to do with the fact that she was using an ax, like good ol’ Honest Abe, the railsplitter. I do remember wanting to avoid making the “celebrity” killer an NSYNC member or something like that, which felt too cheesy and predictable. Been there, done that. I actually never revealed who was under the mask, so it could have been a female celebrity. I probably would have picked Paris Hilton back then, but, these days, my money’s on Melissa Schuman, if you can even call her a “celebrity.” She’s been trying to cut Nick’s head off through the legal system for years now.
I deliberately left the masked killer’s motives somewhat ambiguous, although AJ and the detective who investigates the case speculate that she was trying to create some kind of Frankenstein-style ultimate boyband singer by combining different body parts she’d cut off each of the boys: Nick’s head, Howie’s torso, AJ’s arms, Kevin’s legs, and Brian’s neck/voice box (because Brian in his prime had the best voice). Unsurprisingly, Nick, Howie, and Brian are the three characters who die, while AJ and Kevin survive but are both left double amputees. Yeah… it’s a very dark, gruesome, torture porn type of story.
Since the challenge I wrote it for had a three thousand word limit, and I tend to be long-winded, I purposely left it off on a cliffhanger at exactly three thousand words and later finished the story in a sequel called In Pieces.
Watch Me as I Bleed was my first foray into horror fanfic… but there would be plenty more where that came from!
4. Revenge of the Slaughtered
In 2011, during a discussion on why Nick tends to be tortured the most in fanfiction, my friend Rose came up with the idea for 1000 Ways to Kill Nick Carter, a series of one-shots in which Nick is killed in various random, usually funny ways, like Kenny in South Park. This led to a companion series called Revenge of the Slaughtered: Nick Strikes Back, in which Nick seeks his revenge by murdering the fanfic writers who hurt or killed him in their stories. While these stories are humorous in tone and not meant to be taken seriously, they are also pretty horrific – especially the ones in Revenge of the Slaughtered, which show Nick straight-up murdering people.
I must admit, I had way too much fun portraying Nick as a serial killer. Writing for RotS gave me an opportunity to incorporate a couple of my other real-life interests – true crime and horror movies – into my fanfiction. In one of my entries, “Nick the Ripper,” Nick goes full Jack the Ripper on a fan while working in London. Another one of my entries, “Recipe for Revenge,” includes cannibalism, as Nick dismembers a different fan, bakes part of her body into a batch of muffins, and eats one. But the darkest stories I wrote for RotS are the “Kitt Fit Kill” trilogy, in which Nick “helps” three fans “lose weight” by removing their internal organs, cutting off their limbs, or lighting them on fire to “burn” calories. Those entries came close to crossing a line, even for me. Sometimes I manage to disturb myself by what my mind comes up with. More on that later.
But, first…
3. Hybrid
My short story Hybrid was written for an April Fools challenge at Absolute Chaos. The challenge was to take a silly idea off a list the challenge creator, Mare, came up with and turn it into a serious story. The idea I picked was “The boys battle killer monkeys from outer space.” I enjoy killers, monkeys, and outer space, so it sounded like a fun idea to bring to life. The backstory I came up with is that these killer space monkeys were descended from one of the chimpanzees NASA sent into space during the Space Race back in the early 1960s. (I know chimps are technically considered apes, not monkeys, but close enough.) In my version of history, one of the chimps was lost in space and later found alive by aliens, who mated with it and created a hybrid. The descendants of this hybrid are the killer monkeys from outer space that eventually come to Earth and attack the boys.
One thing I like about this story is that each of its three parts are written in a different format. Part I, which serves as a prologue, is an excerpt from an online conspiracy blog, which includes a “formerly classified” NASA mission summary. Part II, which is the heart of the story, is written like a found footage video. Part III, which serves as an epilogue, is a pair of news articles. Each part is a piece of evidence that, when put together, tells a terrifying tale.
While filming one of his “Nick’s Corner” videos on the tour bus late one night, Nick spots a UFO and begs the driver to stop the bus so he can get a better look at it. The other boys reluctantly follow him as he gets off the bus and goes looking for a good spot to observe the UFO. The boys watch in amazement as the UFO gets closer and eventually lands right in front of them. That’s when all hell breaks loose, as the alien apes emerge from their spacecraft and attack. I have to admit, I had fun making this part as graphic and gory as possible. One of my complaints about The Blair Witch Project, the movie that started the whole “found footage” trend in horror, is that, while it creates plenty of suspense, it never actually shows you anything. I wanted to do the opposite in this story. Sorry, boys, but I like my horror with a side of blood and gore.
That being said, I also appreciate unconventional horror stories, like the next entry on this list.
2. A Heart That Isn’t Mine
Most of the horror I’ve written has been in short story form, but I also have a couple of horror novels. A Heart That Isn’t Mine may not be labeled with the horror genre, but it absolutely is a horror story hiding under a mask of hurt/comfort. It may not be the most conventional approach, but I made a conscious effort to deliberately mislead my readers by luring them into what looks like just another one of my medical dramas with a side of romance… and then pulling the rug out from under their feet with a twist that turns it into a full-on horror story. I took a risk in doing that because I know many fanfic readers hate surprises and want to know exactly what they’re getting into before they start reading, but it paid off. Despite the bait-and-switch, AHTIM was well-received by my readers, which was both a pleasant surprise and a huge relief to me.
Of everything I’ve ever written, this is the story I find most disturbing, which is why it ranks so highly on this list. It doesn’t contain dismemberment, cannibalism, killer monkeys, or zombies, but it does include necrophilia, medical torture, body horror, and a character who is repeatedly brought back from the dead. And, unlike the previously-mentioned stories, AHTIM is not just a short story that I wrote for a challenge or joke, but a serious novel that haunted my mind for more than two years from conception to completion.
I have mixed feelings when it comes to this story. On one hand, I’m proud of it because it was a hard story to write, and I think I pulled it off pretty well – and in a timely manner, too! On the other hand, some of its content makes me cringe. I don’t think it would make me as uncomfortable if its main characters were one hundred percent fictional, but because it’s real person fanfic, it feels like crossing a line in a way that my little challenge/joke stories don’t. But there’s a quote by fanfic-turned-published-fiction author Rainbow Rowell that inspired me when I was writing this story: “If you have an idea, and you can’t stop thinking about it, but something about it scares you half to death—WRITE THAT.” Words to live by!
I have always written about things that scare me, but this story took that to the next level. If I had to rank my top five most frightening chapters, there’s no question which one would take the top spot. It’s Chapter 34, in which Dani lets her freak flag fly in front of Nick for the first time and rapes him while he’s unresponsive. Even after everything I wrote in the first three stories on this list, I still consider that chapter to be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever written. After that, it would be: 2) Chapter 30, in which Nick discovers Patrick defiling a dead body, 3) Chapter 31, in which Brian is assaulted by Elizabeth, 4) Chapter 21, in which Brian undergoes a tracheotomy without anesthesia, and 5) Chapter 40, in which Elizabeth tries to kill Nick on the operating table. I’ll write more on these villains in my next blog.
But, first, it’s time to talk about my favorite horror fic…
1. Song for the Undead
How could the top spot go to anything but my zombie apocalypse novel, Song for the Undead? It took seven years for my co-writer Rose and I to see this story through to completion, but we did it! It’s the only novel-length collaboration I’ve ever actually finished, and while some probably would say it’s too long, I’m proud of us for following through on our epic vision.
We started Song for the Undead in 2008, two years before The Walking Dead TV show premiered and zombies took over pop culture. At the time, neither of us had read a BSB fic that revolved around zombies. Vampires and ghosts had been done before, but not zombies. Yet, the idea to write a zombie story actually started as a joke, as many of our ideas do. The more we talked about it, the more we realized how fun it would be to write a zombie apocalypse fic. For me, it was something completely different from any other fic I had done, but, as a horror lover, I was up for the challenge.
As it turned out, Song for the Undead was a really fun fic to write! I’ve never been a huge fan of AU, but Rose and I enjoyed imagining the guys as everyday people in this alternate universe we created, in which the Backstreet Boys never existed as a band. It was a fun challenge to find new ways for the five guys to meet and form their found family, forging their brotherly bond from the ashes of society as they knew it. And, of course, we enjoyed creating original characters for them to interact with, too, as well as a few homages to characters from our favorite zombie films. And, boy, did we watch a lot of zombie films while writing this story! We called it “research.”
Song for the Undead is a scary story for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s full of zombies – animated corpses who have risen from the dead to roam the earth and feast upon the living. Secondly, it takes place in an alternate universe in which a deadly manmade virus has been unleashed upon the world, wiping out most of its population in a matter of days. Even in the pre-Covid era, that was a pretty scary scenario, with or without zombies. And while we didn’t go as far as The Walking Dead in showing the absolute worst of humanity with villains like Negan or The Governor, not everyone who survives the initial outbreak in our story is a good person.
I’d have a much harder time ranking my top five scariest chapters of this story, mostly because there are so many of them, and it’s been awhile since I’ve actually read them. But I think Part III: “The Day of Unholy Resurrection” is probably the scariest section of the story. That’s when the dead rise, and our living characters, still reeling from the sudden loss of family members and friends, find themselves face to face with their zombified corpses for the first time. I’ll have more to say about Chapter 31 in a future blog, but that is a standout chapter to me, one I’m really proud to have written. I have fond memories of writing Song for the Undead, and that’s why it’s number one on my list.
In sticking with the scary theme, I’ll be back next week to blog about my favorite fanfic villains!