Women in Horror: Part Seven
Good day to you all!
Today we have the delightful company of author Julianne Snow talking about the horrors that our female authors dream up…& she means business!
Women Write Horror? Damn Right They Do!
Ensconced in a community such as this, we’re often insulated from the disbelief some others hold that we (women) write horror.
But take us out of that bubble and things change. At times I don’t feel I have the luxury of discussing what it is I do for a living because the people who inhabit my everyday life simply don’t, and won’t, understand. It’s a duality I don’t really enjoy, but know that I must live—at least for the moment.
Why is that? It’s simple really, I write horror. Those dark moments many would care to forget, would love never to see; they’re fodder for my fiction. That’s not to say that I’m exploitative in any way, but true horror tends to work best when there’s an aspect of realism to it. That little grain of truth transforms it into something that will linger for quite some time and as a horror writer, that’s what I’m looking for.
Don’t get me wrong, I admit I write about things like Zombies, ghosts and other-worldly creatures, but it’s the spaces between them that are filled with plausibility. It’s a hard chord to strike and admittedly, I fall short sometimes, but when I hit that sweet spot of authenticity it’s magic. Okay, maybe in my own mind, but that’s all that counts for me. I’m a horror writer and as such, I know my reach is limited. Horror is not yet considered mainstream, though that’s changing a little bit each and every day.
It’s limited even more by the fact I’m a woman. At least at the moment it is. I’ve noticed a trend, one that’s shifting, but a trend none the less. Readers will pick up books written by men or assigned male pseudonyms when looking for their horror fix. Now that’s not true in all cases, but it’s true in many and I think it’s something that needs to be discussed. Is there a reason for it? Perhaps.
As the ubiquitous ‘weaker’ sex, there may be a presumption that the horror of women simply isn’t strong or dark enough to satisfy the male reader. To that I say – bullshit. I have been terrified (in a good way) by many a female author. Sure, some might say it’s because I’m also a woman, but conversely, some of the generally agreed upon scariest stuff out there written by men hasn’t even made me flinch. It’s all about perspective and until you give someone the chance to scare you, you’ll never know whether they’re capable or not.
So the next time you’re scrolling through the horror section on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Kobo, or if you happen to be in a brick and mortar establishment browsing the selection of paperbacks take a moment and make the choice to pick up something written by a woman. You may be surprised at what hits you in the face when you delve into the words.
So now that you’ve been properly challenged, the following is a piece of flash fiction from my collection of short fiction titled Glimpses of the Undead:
The Treehouse
It walked with a sickening limp. The accompanying noise was akin to the grinding of teeth, only louder. Much louder. It was a sound that reverberated inside your head, warning you of its imminent appearance.
A voice snaked out of the darkness at me. “It’s comin’ this way!”
It was Billy. Stupid Billy.
“Shhhh! It’s gonna hear you!”
The response was barely above a whisper. Too quiet for poor Billy to hear and likely too intelligent for him to understand.
The grinding noise seemed to get closer. Out of the corner of my eye I could see it. Everything about it was frightening. The slack, waxen face. The left eye drooping out of the socket and laying half eaten on the discoloured flesh of its cheek. The gore pocked clothing relaying the message that it had eaten – recently. The worst sight was its left leg; the skin had been flayed off of most of the lower half and one of the bones was broken. The sound that we were hearing was the scraping of the ends together as it limped awkwardly in our direction.
We didn’t have the best hiding spot but sometimes you have to make do with what is around when you’re on the move. Technically we were just on the opposite side of a large planked fence, but the fence was broken. It looked like a herd of elephants came through a section just a few feet down from us, but we knew what really happened.
We saw it all go down. About three days ago, a group of survivors were fleeing an onslaught of Zombies on the road. With the corpses so thick in front of them, they changed directions and drove straight through the fence.
In any other situation, the action would have been cool to watch but the fence was the only thing keeping the Zombies out of the yard and away from the tree that supported our sanctuary.
As we watched from our vantage point, high above the verdant ground, we saw the truck come through one length only to lose the speed needed to go completely through the length on the opposite side. Instead, it got hung up on the broken fence beneath it and stopped short.
The driver panicked and in their haste to free the floundering truck, managed only to hopelessly tangle it among the hewn boards.
Panic is a funny thing; it can give you superhero capabilities or it can paralyze you. Like a sick game of Russian roulette, it chose paralysis this time.
We listened in horror as the Zombies flooded the backyard and surrounded the car, our minds making movies of what was occurring below us. Each whisper soft sound of their decaying limbs brushing the shiny blue exterior of the truck. The dull pounding of their grimy hands on the glass, almost rhythmic in its intensity. The sharp cracking of the glass as it spider-webbed out from the point of impact. Screams assaulted our ears as the Zombies pulled the occupants through their access point. Not daring to look down lest we give away our position, we were forced to watch the translation of those sounds behind clamped eyelids.
It didn’t take long but the memories of what we heard reverberate in our minds even now. Everything that we’ve seen and heard have melded together to produce the most horrific montages that play across the black expanse each time we close our eyes.
We knew we had to leave our makeshift home. With the hole in the fence, the backyard became a draw for them. We’ve waited until this moment to climb carefully down the lowered rope ladder, hoping not to attract attention to ourselves. I was the last to descend, cautiously feeling for each woven rung as I watched the scarred and lonely landscape around me, hoping I wouldn’t attract any attention.
Over my left shoulder I saw it. The solitary corpse had spotted me and was now limping in our general direction. It was slow but it moved with purpose. Our only hope was to confuse it by waiting until it was in the enclosed backyard before sneaking out behind it.
Fate wanted to play a different game with us today. Not only had it stacked the deck against us with Zombies, it had also given us Billy.
Stupid Billy.
As the broken leg of the Zombie came into view around the smashed edge of the planked span of fence, Billy screamed. High pitched and girly.
He froze, his mouth forming a perfect, round hole as the scream choked in his throat. A face appeared around the damaged edge, almost comical in its surprise and hunger. Its eye locked on Billy, the milky cornea searching for something; recognition perhaps.
With another scream, matched by a strident noise of victory from the Zombie, the dance of death resumed.
The rest of us took the moment of inattention to scale back up the rope ladder, knowing that at some point, we would need to escape. The time will come; we just need to be patient.
Julianne Snow is the author of the Days with the Undead series and the founder of Zombieholics Anonymous. She writes within the realms of speculative fiction, has roots that go deep into horror and is a member of the Horror Writers Association. In addition to writing, she is the Publicist at Sirens Call Publications.
Julianne has pieces of short fiction in publications from Sirens Call Publications, Open Casket Press, 7DS Books, James Ward Kirk Publishing, Coffin Hop Press and Hazardous Press, and upcoming collections from May December Publications, 7DS Books, and Firbolg Publishing. The Carnival 13, a collaborative round-robin novella for charity which she contributed to and helped to spearhead was released in October 2013. Her collection of zombie short fiction, Glimpses of the Undead is available online at all major retailers.
You can find Julianne online on Twitter: @CdnZmbiRytr, on Facebook: Julianne Snow and Julianne Snow, Author, on her Amazon Author Page: Julianne Snow, or on either of her three sites: Days with the Undead, The FlipSide of Julianne & Zombieholics Anonymous.
I hope you all enjoyed our seventh installment! We’ll be back with Sephera Giron tomorrow…same time, same place!
