#31DaysofHorror

This October, a friend on Twitter invited me to participate in #31DaysofHorror, in which you strive to watch one horror movie each day. Initially, I thought I would participate here and there, as I could. I should have known better. Once I started, I became obsessive as I always do. After the Nightmare on Elm Street in theater marathon added 7 movies to my total in one night, I decided to go for 50 movies in the month of October.

And I got to 51.

Honestly, it was a blast. It was a lot of horror. Daunting at times, mind eroding at others. Yet ultimately, it was fun to indulge in so much of the holiday horror spirit and be able to share it with plenty of awesome people online. My poor, little mind may never recover, but I will definitely be doing it again next year. Probably even harder, if I know myself at all.

So I give you my 51 movies of horror in October. Happy Halloween!

 

	Wyrmwood A bunch of interesting ideas that lacked the execution to really make them work. I wanted to like it, but it needed more development and polishing.
	Cabin in the Woods One of my favorite horror movies. A refreshing spin on horror lore, archetypes, and the genre in general.
	We are Still Here Simplistic, well executed horror. A well balanced and creepy haunting story.
	28 Days Later A movie that changed the zombie genre. Always amazing.
	28 Weeks Later The overproduced and Americanized sequel that pales in comparison to its predecessor. Fine movie, disappointing sequel.
	Ghosts of Mars Bad, just so very bad. But I do love John Carpenter. And Ice Cube.
	Headless We found this movie on a list of most disturbing horror. It was definitely graphic and gross and depraved–but all with purpose. I really enjoyed it.
	Human Centipede 2 More graphic,  more twisted, and more disturbing than its predecessor. Who knew it was possible? Yet still well done.
	Human Centipede 3 What. The. Fuck. The franchise completely went off the rails into ridiculous and just awful.
	What We Do in the Shadows Interview with the Vampire meets The Real World. Just hysterical and wonderful.
	You’re Next One of my favorite newer horror movies. So well done and all about the survivor.
	The Purge: Election Year Perfect watch for this election year. Chock full of social commentary and blood.
	Let Me In Potentially my favorite remake. I adore Let the Right One In, and this one manages to live up to it.
	The Fog Creepy and classic.
	V/H/S A very clever horror anthology that made me nauseous. With the shaky cam filming rather than the content.
	The Final Girls A horror comedy I have loved since first seeing it at The Stanley Film Festival.
	Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters I was very skeptical of this selection but found it gory and very fun.
	A Nightmare on Elm Street Just as brilliant as it is classic. This one may contain my favorite death scene in ALL of horror.
	A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge The homoerotic sequel that does not make a whole lot of sense.
	A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors The second best in the franchise; the sequel that should have followed the first.
	A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master Eh. An acceptable chapter.
	A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child Terrible. Just TERRIBLE. I only watched it because it was in the theater in the middle of the marathon. I would have napped through if I didn’t have so many Monsters.
	Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare The humor is on point, and Freddy is awesome, but the rest of the movie was just crap.
	New Nightmare I am utterly torn on this one. I love when horror makes fun of itself, and the premise is clever. Plus a great cast reunion! Yet I hate what they did to Freddy when he leaves the screen.
	Freddy vs Jason A great Freddy movie. Just fun.
	Feast Funny and creepy and gross but enjoyable.
	In the Mouth of Madness Amazing. Required for both horror fans and writers (like myself).
	The Guest Unnerving and well balanced. A perfect blend of suspense.
	V/H/S 2 The entries in this anthology might be inferior to the first collection, but the filming did not make me sick, which made it easier for me to participate and enjoy.
	Evil Dead 2 When the franchise really embraced itself.
	Army of Darkness A little bit of ridiculous fun with the undead.
	Drag Me to Hell Campy and gross. Very fun.
	American Mary Sexy horror and depraved fetish. Basically, me in a nutshell. One of my very favorite movies.
	Otis Funny and twisted. When revenge becomes a family affair.
	Tales of Halloween Not the best Halloween anthology I have seen (clue: it’s Trick r Treat) but still a festive watch.
	Dead Snow Nazi zombies. Nazi. Zombies! So good.
	V/H/S Viral I hated the final chapter in the franchise. It’s like the filmmakers got financing and did not know what to do with it.
	Halloween The Halloween classic that started it all.
	Halloween II A direct continuation of the first.
	Halloween H20 The third and only other entry I recognize in the Halloween franchise. I love watching Laurie decide to face her demons.
	Candyman Clever twists on the haunting convention.
	Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon Absolutely brilliant horror comedy that comes after every horror convention and archetype.
	The Conjuring As my husband always says, creepy as balls. And balls can be pretty creepy.
	The Re-Animator The B-rated Lovecraftian classic.
	Scream My VERY first horror movie!
	Scream 2 I am still accepting that they killed Randy.
	Scream 3 I do like the jabs at horror and Hollywood, but really? What?
	Scream 4 My favorite of the sequels. I like the critique of nouveau horror and reboots.
	Saw Another genre changer. Gritty and raw and original.
	The Silence of the Lambs One of my favorite movies (not just horror). Hannibal Lecter is the best serial killer.
	Trick r Treat THE Halloween movie. This film embodies everything I love about the holiday in one anthology. Our post trick-or-treating tradition.

What horror movies did you watch in October? Any Halloween traditions? What’s your favorite scary movie?

 

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
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Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

Trick-or-Treat

As the sun retreated from the sky and the last rays of light died in the air, Marla’s small body began to materialize on top of the cracked asphalt. Her hips appeared first, the round bulbs of her pelvis spiraling out of obscurity as spinal vertebrae sprouted to climb up to her shoulders and bare skull. The tiny skeleton curled on the street in the fetal position, with her eye socket rooted to ground.

The skeletal fingertips twitched and jerked against the rough blacktop as the skull softly swayed side to side. As the bones began to animate, muscle and flesh blossomed along their edges like moss, overtaking the form as veins and arteries snaked up through the tissue. Hair budded from the fresh scalp until the wily mass of strands draped over Marla’s little shoulders.

Within seconds of dusk, the entire child body returned to the street, complete with the torn clothes. She lifted her head slowly from the pavement, her ejected eye clinging to the ground before popping up to dangle along her shredded cheek. Her right hand flopped half detached as it dropped from her bloody forearm. She stood on crooked legs with flaps of flesh shaved down and hanging over her knees.

Marla stood straight in her broken body, eye wagging with each movement, under the growing moonlight. The headlights of a large truck blazed up over her. She turned the eye still in her head to the vehicle before it drove through her in a swirling puff of steam. The edges of her form wavered before snapping back into shape.

Marla turned unaffected by the truck driving through her, or the staggered series of cars that followed. She moved instinctively to the southwest corner just as she did every year. She stepped onto the curb, with one shoe on and one bare, scraped foot, as the contorted figure of her mother shambled toward her through the streetlight.

Abigail’s head cocked at an extreme angle, and her spine warped in sympathy. Blood had poured from her gaping headwound, drenching her face and clothes in a waterfall of red. Her feet splayed out in divergent directions, causing her to hobble even slower than the twisted corpse of her daughter.

“Hello, my beautiful girl,” Abigail whispered in a rasp as she wrapped her arms around her shattered child. “Welcome to our night.”

“I missed you, Mommy,” Marla said as she cuddled into her mother’s blood-soaked sweater.

“I missed you, beautiful.”

Abigail took Marla’s destroyed face in her hands, allowing the suspended eyeball to roll along her palm. Marla smiled sweetly with the facial muscles she had left.

“Don’t look at me like that, Mommy.”

“I’m sorry, baby. If I had known you hadn’t buckled your seatbelt, I would have never left the parking lot.”

“You don’t have to say that every year, Mommy.”

“You just had to get a new costume that night.”

“The one I had looked stupid.”

“No, it didn’t, but I wanted you to have a good Halloween.”

“It’s OK, Mommy. We can have another good Halloween tonight.”

“What should we do tonight?”

“I want to go see Daddy and Jakey.”

“No, baby. We don’t go see them.”

“Why not?”

“The same as every year. We don’t know how long it has been. It would make me sad to go and see Jake all grown up or your daddy as a grandpa.”

“It hasn’t been that long. Jakey will still be little. Just like when we left.”

“We don’t know that, Marla. We don’t go see them. Now, come now. Let’s do something fun.”

“Can we borrow bodies?” Marla perked up, and the tear in her cheek deepened as she grinned.

“Oh, that sounds like fun. What do you want to do with them?”

“I want to go trick-or-treating! But, this year, I want to be the momma and you be the kid.”

“Are you sure? It’s way more fun to be the kid.”

“No. It’s better to be the grown up.”

“That’s what all kids think. Until they become grown ups. But I suppose you never have to worry about that.”

“I still want to be the momma.”

“OK, baby, you can be the momma. You can even pick the bodies.”

“Yay!”

Marla leaped in excitement then took her mother’s hand in her attached arm, her other hand waggling loosely on threads of traumatized flesh. The two mangled forms moved unseen through the darkness as scurrying trick-or-treaters began to flood the streets.

Marla let her eye move over each group of figures in the night. The child body would have to be young to still have an adult escort. She watched a parade of tiny princesses march down the sidewalk, mothers snapping pictures with their phones like paparazzi. She looked over a group of unchaperoned tweens running by giggling under their masks.

Finally, she caught sight of a young boy marching down the street. He smiled euphorically under his pirate’s eyepatch, swinging a hefty bucket of candy at his side. Behind him, his mother weaved absentmindedly as her eyes fixated down on the glowing screen of her phone. She gripped a large travel coffee mug tightly with the other hand, taking compulsive sips every couple steps.

“Them,” Marla said, pointing confidently, knowing the living could not see her.

“The pirate and his mom?”

Marla nodded enthusiastically, her hanging eye bouncing up and down.

“Well, I’ve never been a pirate before,” Abigail laughed. “OK, darling, you know what to do.”

Marla stepped in the path of the distracted mother and placed her palms together out in front of her. As the woman turned Marla’s fingertips into mist, Marla swung her arms, as if swimming in the water, and dove right into the mother’s chest. Somewhere behind her, Abigail did the same to the young pirate.

“This feels weird, Mommy…I mean, son,” Marla said moving her arms in the strange new skin.

The living flesh felt awkward, heavy, confining. Marla and Abigail took a moment to shift and fidget, finding their bearings locked back under the bars of the bones. Marla took an awkward step forward and nearly toppled over. She realigned herself over her feet and brought the hefty cup to her lips. The acidic taste of the liquid bit her tongue, and she immediately spat it out.

“Eeww! What is this?” Marla held the cup out to her mother in the pirate costume.

Abigail reached the young boys hand’s forward and took a sip.

“Oh,” Abigail said, knowingly. “That is not coffee at all. That’s wine.”

“Wine? Why would she have wine in a coffee mug?”

“Because being the kid is more fun, dear,” Abigail laughed.

The two moved forward in staggering steps until walking became more familiar. With each passing house, they moved more naturally until they strode like all the other living people. They approached the next house with the porch light on and hesitated at the base of the driveway.

“What is it?” Marla asked, awkwardly juggling the coffee mug and oversized smartphone.

“I haven’t trick-or-treated in decades. Even in decades when I was alive. I’m nervous, I think.”

“That’s silly, Mommy. Son. Just go up there; ring the bell; and say, ‘Trick or treat!’”

“OK, I’m going.”

“What do I do?”

“While I trick-or-treat?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes. You follow me and stand here waiting for me. That’s it. Just don’t drink that cup. You’re having enough trouble walking in that body already.”

“Maybe the kid does have all the fun.”

“Told you.”

Marla watched her mother toddle up the concrete in the little pirate body and stood drumming her fingers on the cup she was not supposed to drink. When Abigail disappeared around the edge of the house, Marla took a deep sip on defiant principle then winced as it burned down her throat and pooled heat in her stomach.

Marla would never grow up to understand adults.

She turned the cup over and dumped the wine in the street. The red liquid looked just like all the blood that had poured out from her head when she went careening through the windshield so many Halloweens ago.

“That was weird,” Abigail laughed as she skipped back with a heavier bucket.

They moved house to house, repeating the same pattern around dark, curved blocks. With each stop, Marla grew more anxious. She tapped the mother’s toe on the hard ground. She crossed her arms and wished she knew how to operate the phone she shoved into her back pocket. Other children began to grow scarce on the street.

“I think that’s enough now, Mommy,” Marla said. “I mean, son.”

“Oh, come on. I can get this kid even more candy. Look at all the porch lights on that street.”

“No, I don’t want to anymore.”

“Not having any fun, beautiful?”

“Next year, I want to be the kid again.”

“I thought you might say that.”

Abigail smiled and took Marla’s hand, strange in the reversal of the angle.

“Well, let’s go put them back where we got them, and we’ll have a little time before our night is over,” Abigail said.

They walked the borrowed bodies back along their meandering trail to the driveway where they started. Marla drew her energy toward her center then thrust it upward. As she appeared wispy and disfigured again beside the mother, she felt herself expand into the freedom outside of the flesh. She watched the mother return to the surface disoriented, looking confused at the empty coffee mug in her hand.

Taking her mother’s ghostly hand once more, Marla followed her through the quieting streets. Jack o’lanterns flickered with dying candles on the porches. Music thumped out from lingering Halloween parties. The light air would have been crisp and the leaves would have crunched under their footsteps if they could feel either.

Abigail led Marla back to her spot in the middle of the intersection. She did not think of the way she could hear the front end of her car collapse or the way she saw the body of her child go flying past her head and through the windshield. She never saw Marla’s actual body on the street; she never left the driver seat.

“Are you ready to sleep, darling?” Abigail said.

“Yes, Mommy. It was a good Halloween.”

Marla crouched down on the pavement and lined herself up just as she had materialized, still clinging to her mother’s hand like an afterthought.

“Yes, it was, but next year, you can be the kid again.”

“Sounds good, Mommy. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, beautiful. I’ll see you next year.”

Abigail bent down and pressed her lips to her daughter’s cracked forehead, even as the cars continued to drive through and over them. Before Marla turned to plant her eye socket back on the pavement, she watched her mother hobble away into the night, back to her place. With each step, a layer disintegrated from Abigail’s form, as if she was melting into wisps in the air. Marla faded too. She felt herself shedding coherency until she dropped her head, and they both blew away before the sun pierced the sky.

 

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
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Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

Why Horror?

When you tell people that you are an author, the inevitable first question is always, “Well, what do you write?” To which I nonchalantly answer, “horror.” I love seeing the reactions. Usually, it is either shock with an awkward stumbling or fascination. In any case, the reaction generally provides a pretty solid gauge on how the remainder of our interaction on the subject will play out.

If the questioner remains interested, the follow up question is naturally, “Why horror?” Especially if we start discussing The Waning. Everyone seems to have a strong reaction to that book, one way or another. Most people can get behind zombies and the apocalypse like in Savages with how mainstream those themes have become. Not everyone can take captivity and seemingly endless (and some might say, pointless) torture, however. I have family members who could not even finish The Waning; it was too “dark.”

It is not an easy question to answer: why horror? With most things, you can get away with the canned response that you just like it. With horror, however, being so centered around darkness, pain, suffering, and all undesirable facets of life, people have a harder time understanding why someone would be drawn to it, would willing sign up to be disturbed. A common assumption is that you are damanged, broken in some way. Being not just a voyeur but a creator of such content makes you all the more suspect.

For multiple reasons, I have been ruminating on my own attraction to pain, damage, and even horror as well as introspecting on the patterns of my own mind. It is an easy assumption to correlate a comfort and enjoyment of negative things with damage or defect. Even just in my own personal instance, the preference seems innate rather than acquired. Cultivated, perhaps, yet it seems to have been a part of me as long as I can remember.

I have always felt the allure of horror. It resonated with my mind, spoke to something inside me. A darkness, maybe. Even in the youngest, happiest, most sheltered parts of my childhood, I found myself drawn to things like Halloween, fascinated by all the morbidity that surrounded them. Innocuous though the start, it grew into something else. A symptom of something deeper. I was always fixated and intrigued by pain, my own and that of others.

As a young child, I remember feeling so much. It was a perpetual and unmanageable swell of emotions, constant and unrelenting. I experienced the most intense happiness and infatuations, yet more than that, I had a well of pain and unhappiness. I felt such strong dark and negative feelings without seeming cause. And, in an attempt to figure myself out, I remember trying to find excuses for how I felt, trying to classify my emotions into the boxes I understood. Boxes, I would learn, that would never fit me.

Yet, as I grew older, it became more clear that the darkness was in me, not infecting from outside circumstance but inherent. The pain inflicted by external stimuli, though traumatic at times, never seemed to be as black or as consuming as the kind that blossomed from my center. Instead, I sought out excuses for how I felt; I manufactured circumstance to confirm what originated somewhere beneath and behind my consciousness. It took a lot of time and severing endless strings of denial to make peace with that part of me, to identify myself as the culprit under all the layers I created.

I lost my mind, dissolved into the darkness in my teenaged years. When I think back to the way the pain devoured and distorted my mind in those darkest days, I do not know how I made it to the other side. I do not know how I functioned. I do not know how I graduated high school early, how I held down jobs, how I kept my parents at bay, how I maintained any kind of interpersonal relationships, how I went to college. I cannot remember either. Every fragment and remnant of that period in my mind is a flicker in a blur of so many substances and unchecked moods.

I was a mess. Yet, in that mess, I was pure. I was honest. I was unrefined. And because of that, I am still irresitably drawn to that darkness. And anything that speaks to that caged and sedated part of me.

Like horror.

I am not saying one needs to be damaged and defective to enjoy horror. Nor am I saying that is the reason I respond to it on such an instinctual level. Horror, for me, is an outlet to part of myself. It confronts realities in our world and in our culture (and myself) that may not be pleasant but remain just as real. Personally, I enjoy the experience of that confrontation.

I can write a version of myself on the page who does not have her shit together, who relents to her broken mind, who is so inescapably damaged. I can empathize with a character on the screen in their worst and most tormented hour. I can toy with the darkness inside of me, letting my fingers play in the edge of the flame, without burning down my entire life.

I enjoy the flirtation with the dangerous part of me, my undesirable yet pervasive center. It is like having an affair behind the back of my sanity. Exciting and wild.

Horror speaks to me in the language my base self understands. I am attracted to the pain the same way I used to actively seek my own, whether through self-destructive behavior or abject self-mutilation. All that is still inside of me, and my indulgence of horror is my safe, neutered way to still interact with it.

Ultimately, despite all my therapy and self-examination and understanding, I do not know why the darkness comforts me, why the pain seems native. I do not like that I find a grotesque familiarity in suffering. Could it be the damage of deformed neurotransmitters? Could it be the absense of adequate neurochemicals? Is it some association forged in experience that tumbled out of my memory? Is it something wrong with me, or is it simply me?

I spend a disproportionate amount of my life in depression. Not because my life is unsatisfactory but because that is half of the symptomology of my brain. Perhaps my affinity for horror is merely an adaptation to this. It does substantially decrease the burden to feel at home in my own sadness; it does help to surrender and wrap myself up in the black rather than fight or resist it. Maybe it’s my survival mechanism that I never knew I would need until bipolar blossomed across the wrinkles of my mind.

Regardless of causality and circumstance, independant of reasoning, I accepted myself long ago. I have embraced and actively cultivate all of these tendancies and preferences bubbling inside my head. I find joy in the darkest places and experience the breadth of a full spectrum of emotions. I live in extremes, for the better and worse.

I am not sure if this post is ultimately about horror or bipolar or just some rambling about weird musings I have had lately. I know I’ve written about my attraction to horror before and our cultural attraction to it. To keep the answer simple, I write horror to get it out of my brain. For whatever reason, it breeds between my cells, and I express it. I feel better letting it out and indulging in it. It is just who I am.

 

 

 

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
pinterest.com/chrstnabergling

Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

Evil Dead… The Musical

Like any good horror fan, I have enjoyed the Evil Dead franchise. Most recently, I indulged in Ash vs Evil Dead on Starz. So when we saw that Evil Dead: The Musical was being performed by the Equinox Theater Company in Denver over the summer, my friends and I immediately bought tickets.

The six of us incorporated the show into a birthday celebration and trekked to the Bug Theater down the streets of downtown dressed all in white. We purchased splatter zone tickets, naturally, and wanted every drop of carnage to be visible.

The first act began a bit slow for me. It might have been the fallout of spending a day drinking mead in the sun. It might have been the impatience for blood and carnage. It might have been my fixation on thinking the actors for Ash and Scottie should have been reversed. The first act definitely was not poor quality at all, but it was not as engaging as I needed. Some of the expected corny parts struck an eye roll rather than a chuckle.

However, the second act made up for any inadequacies I found in the first. With mundane requirements like plot establishment and character development out of the way, the play dived into the meat. Literally.

As a whole, Evil Dead: The Musical was just fun for our entire party. The rendition remained very true to its inspiration, keeping a balance of gratuitous horror and campy comedy. Many jokes and puns hurt as much as they tickled.

I was impressed by the Equinox Theater Company, though I do think Ash may have been slightly intoxicated for how many times he stumbled on his lines. He definitely could sing and throw himself across the stage in physical comedy to make up for it. My favorite portrayal was definitely Ash’s sister, Cheryl. The actress did a superb job of making her both hysterical and unnerving. I enjoyed every time she popped up from the floorboards. We also did not miss how she took Ash accidentally really slamming her face into the stage like a champ.

I was, however, disappointed in the splatter zone. Here, I was, dressed in a pretty white lace dress. I do not wear pretty. Or white. Or lace. I wanted that dress to get absolutely destroyed. I wanted to look like a horror movie survivor or, at the least, like I used to look after a heavy metal belly dance show or horror photo shoot. I wanted fake blood like this picture of the Detroit show.

Unfortunately, we ended up in the last row of the splatter zone. We were shielded from much of the carnage by the patrons in front of us. The lucky bastards. Then, much of the blood was actually just kool-aid. My husband even tasted it to confirm. It produced this watered-down, pinkish, sticky blood that barely showed up even on our white apparel.

I have interacted with a lot of fake blood in my day. From the bottles at the Halloween store to an amazing chocolate recipe I learned from a brilliantly twisted photographer. I was hoping a theater performance would step up the quality. The blood thrown not from a super soaker (hilarious, by the way) or the fertilizer sprayer was more legit though.

From some online research, it looks like other cities stepped up their splattering a bit. Maybe it was venue restraints (been there); maybe it was director’s purview. I just wanted MORE. More blood.

I did end up with a bloody dusting that looked a bit like spaghetti gone wrong, but I will take it. I took one shot right in the eye. It was fun to be so interactively part of the experience. Splatter zone again definitely. Splatter zone every time.

All in all, my experience of Evil Dead: The Musical was awesome; I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would recommend it; I would go again. Of course, I had complaints and things I would change but not enough to detract from the overall fun.

After this, I wish I would have gone to see Silence! The Musical when it was running in April. More horror musicals!

 

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
pinterest.com/chrstnabergling

Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

Coding Horror

By night, I might be a twisted horror-loving author… but by day, I am a mild-mannered (haha, not really!) solutions architect and technical writer, slinging XSLT, HTML, and CSS code and cranking out user help documentation.

This very much makes me a person of multiple minds and multiple lives.

All in all, this also amounts to a severe amount of computer screen time every day. Somewhere in these glaring hours, I began to muse about what would happen if my two professions intersected. If horror became code, what would it look like?

So much as the XSLT I write translates XML for viewing in HTML, I translated a bit of my favorite horror movie killers into XSLT. This may not be the most well-formed or correct portion of a stylesheet I’ve ever written, but hopefully, it is the right amount of geeky horror humor. (Sorry, I had to post it as an image to avoid it being read as code.)

 

(If the code is unreadable as an image, here is a PDF.)

Oh the horror!

What would it be like if your job was blended with a horror movie?

 

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
pinterest.com/chrstnabergling

Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

2015 in (Horror) Review

I apologize for the break in the regular posting. My family and I went to England for the holidays; then I became slightly consumed by writing book #3. I have finally reached the point in the story that has me excited and engaged–murder.

2015 vanished in the blink of an eye. I am officially old, that specific age where time starts to disappear faster than I can register. I now understand what my parents were always saying about how the years fly by. The years are flying, and 2015 was the fastest yet.

Let us take this moment, though, to review the fruits of the horror genre we all experienced in 2015. Please feel free to comment with your own favorites.

Horror Movie

I did not see even a fraction of the horror movies released in 2015 that I wanted to, though I did watch a robust library of horror over the months. I reviewed 39 horror movies on MoviePilot over the year. This left me 13 shy of my goal, but there is always 2016.

If I limit my 2015 horror movie ingestion to only those films released in 2015, horror comedy ended up ruling the year. Historically, horror comedy has been perhaps my least favorite subgenre under the horror umbrella. However, all my favorite 2015 horror movies are horror comedies. Maybe I was feeling more lighthearted this year; maybe my compromising with my viewing partners brought me to the lighter side. Or maybe the subcategory is growing on me.

I even find myself currently penning a horror comedy novel. What has become of me?

My favorite horror movies released in 2015 are:

• Goosebumps
• Cooties
• The Final Girls
• Krampus

Nostalgia played a huge role in nominating Goosebumps and The Final Girls, particularly the former. Krampus secured my heart by infecting the joyous holiday of Christmas with fear. Yet all are clever and/or well executed; all manage to strike the crucial balance between horror and comedy, a balance of which I am particularly demanding.

I did also watch a fair amount of non comedy horror over the year, but much of that was horror education like Hellraiser and Re-animator, but since this list is restricted to those released in 2015, horror comedy wins!

Tell me what I missed, what movies I should add to my list for 2016.

Horror TV

The Walking Dead rules this category. Obviously. Always does. Mostly, I enjoyed the offerings of my regulars. The Walking Dead, Penny Dreadful, American Horror Story. However, the best new additions were Scream Queens (horror comedy again!) and Ash vs. Evil Dead (also pretty much horror comedy–what is happening to me?). If I had to select the series that got the most into my heart and my head during the year, I would declare Penny Dreadful the winner. The last season crawled inside my head, and I sit rigid on the edge of my seat for next installment.

Horror Book

I did not get to read in 2015. I planned to; I wanted to. Instead, I devoted any spare time I could scrape up to writing. I managed to sneak one book on the plane to England, but it was not horror. I went classic and finally read Venus in Furs. It was amazing! It is the BDSM book everyone should be reading instead of 50 Shades of Grey. The terms sadist and masochist actually come from the author’s name: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. I devoured it in a sitting.

Tell me what I should be reading when I reclaim some of my own spare time.

Horror Experience

The Stanley Film Festival was an amazing horror experience. We crammed in as many movies and parties as we could, yet I still do not feel like we even grazed the surface. I loved being able to see such a variety of films before the leaped into the market. I loved being able to see and hear from the actors and filmmakers. I loved feeling like an active member of the horror community. Then, there was, of course, staying in the Stanley Hotel itself. Potentially the best birthday present I have received to date.

I would love to say that I would be returning to the festival this year, but it does not appear to be in the cards. I am certain, however, that I will find myself there another year in the future. Most likely, more than once.

What were your horror favorites in 2015?

Christina Bergling

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Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

Horror Influences

I have written about it before. I wrote a confession of my past, present, and future readings for Confessions of a Reviewer. I reviewed the Goosebumps movie on MoviePilot. Yet doing both those things has but the examination of my horror influences in my brain. My thoughts swirl and fixate on the horror writings that have made an impression on me.

The Goosebumps movie really unearthed these strings in my mind, resurrecting a menagerie of my childhood monsters onto the silver screen in front of me. I had been so anxious and so curious to see how Goosebumps would take the screen. I read at least 50 of the books in my youth and watched any of the TV adaptations I came across. I did not know how they could capture the series instead of just capturing one plotline.

I was pleasantly surprised by the cleverness of the plot. I will not regurgitate my review here again, but the amalgamation pleased me and permitted me to wallow in my own nostalgia. The same way I basked in flashbacks when I dug out all my paperback copies to show my daughter.

(I love her little ermahgerd face, btw.)

Goosebumps were definitely my first definitive horror influence. Something about them spoke to me. I devoured the books whole as soon as they showed up in the store. I found myself transfixed by the fear, attracted to the light shade of darkness. Reading the books felt like home.

My horror ingestion just grew and evolved from there, but Goosebumps and Halloween were the start, the seed in the perverse dirt of my mind.

Goosebumps taught me to put fear and horror in the every day, even my childhood life.

The next logical progression was Stephen King. I followed the well-trodden mainstream path of horror development. King, like R. L. Stine, provided an exhaustive library to choose from.  I dove in as deep as my adolescent eyes could take me.

Different Seasons taught me to infuse stories with deep, relateable emotion. Gerald’s Game taught me to fill subtly with fear and tension.

From there, I sampled far and wide. I read the classics. I began indulging horror movies and their various adaptations. I dabbled in other genres. I majored in English and took endless literary classes. Back before I had children, I read ravenously and rapidly. A couple other non-horror influences stick in my mind.

Chuck Palahniuk taught me how fascinating the ugliness of reality is. In 7 Types of Ambiguity, Eliot Perlman taught me about the power of perspective.

A little piece of everything I have read or watched is with me when I create, whether I loved it or hated it. I may emulate aspects of what I love, violently avoid reminders of what I hate. Regardless, I am affected; I am influenced.

I enjoy rekindling these influences. It feels like taking a stroll through my old mind. For brief seconds, I feel like I am that version of myself again, that child, that teenager. And I look forward to evolving through ingesting new, varied influences in the future who can teach me something about myself that I have not yet seen.

 

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
pinterest.com/chrstnabergling

Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

A Halloween Tale

My favorite holiday has always been Halloween. I have said it before; I have written about it before. Since I can remember, I always enjoyed and waited for Halloween above all others.

I love the fall weather and colors.

I love the crisp (or snowy) night.

I love the costumes.

I love the candy.

I love the fear and the horror.

I loved it in my earliest memories as I love it now, as I share the holiday with my children.

I also started writing when I was a child. I remember my passion truly being ignited during a writing unit in fourth grade, but I believe I was crafting miniature tales even younger than that. Even in my naive, sheltered, and happy youth, I found myself drawn to the darkness, attracted to the infancy of horror I was exposed to within my coveted holiday.

My young brain was stimulated by all the conventional Halloween imagery. Haunted houses. Jack-o-lanterns. Witches. Ghosts. Monsters like Frankenstein, vampires, and werewolves. Bats and spiders. Each year, as these images began to populate the stores, TV shows and movies, and my classrooms, my mind began to whir with spooky stories.

Each October, I remember I would start to write Halloween tales, complete with illustrations in black, green, orange, and purple. From construction and computer paper, I would self-publish my own childish horror books. I remember being filled with such joy and pride as I folder the paper into the book shape and showed my mother what I had created. A pride I would later revitalize in a mature evolution when I held my first published book in my hands.

This year, I remember that youthful tradition by teaching my daughter how to write and illustrate her own Halloween story and by taking the time to craft a short piece of festive fiction here. I could have crawled inside this one and made a home, which makes me wonder if I should not write something in the young horror fiction (a la Goosebumps) someday, but I forced myself to keep it short. Just a scary little glimpse.

Enjoy.

 

The Green Light

That house loomed over me as long as I remember, dark and slumped on a dismal plot of land along our walk to school, staring down at us with wide and lopsided windows like a drooping face. Everyone knew the house was haunted. The McAllister house. The murder house. That damn house. It had many names. If we walked alone, we quickened our step to a near jog until we had passed the edge of the property; if we passed it in a group, laughing conversations lulled, and all eyes cast sideways up towards the black house perched between gnarled and twisted trees.

The house haunted all of us. It was the torrid subject of village lore, its tales a crucial part of our own cultural indoctrination. We all knew how the rich father murdered his wife then stalked and killed his own children one by one inside the house. Dares to set soles of shoes on the wilted grass were defined rites of passage.

Yet it haunted Derrick most of all.

I grew up in his shadow, watching him both enamored and unnerved by the place. As if a splinter of the very structure was lodged in his brain tissue, swollen and infected under the skin where he could not reach to scratch it.

And when he disappeared, I knew where he had went. The police told our parents that he must have just run away. My mother wept, and my father turned his lips into his mouth and hung his head, and they both questioned what they had done to drive him away. But I knew he had not left us, not left me behind over any fight with our parents. I knew he had finally done it. He had finally walked through that door to see what was in the house.

With my older brother’s disappearance, his obsession became my own.

“Dude, come on!” Jacob hollered from the safety on the sidewalk beyond the dead yard. “You do this every goddamn day.”

I ignored Jacob’s irritated plea as I did every day as we walked home from school. Instead, I let my gaze stretch and lose focus, crawling up the dead leaves and grass matted down under the black trees that bent in a twisted dance, reaching until I could hear the creak of the wood on the porch and feel the cold metal of the knob on my palm.

“Dude, fuck you, Mikey,” Jacob said, his voice edging on quiver. “I’m going home.”

“He’s in there.”

“Not this shit again. No, he’s not.”

I ignored Jacob, as I always did in the shadow of this house. The mere sight of it had a captivating power over me. As if I could hear Derrick’s voice whisper wafting on the breeze from the dilapidated siding.

He was in that house. I could feel it the same way I knew he was sleeping in his room on the other side of my wall every night.

“Mikey, what are you doing?”

Jacob’s voice was farther behind me now. Growing more distant by the syllable. Startled from my trance, I turned to find him still on the sidewalk. I had wandered halfway up the dead lawn. The fear twisting his face matched the fear quivering his voice, but his features were growing more distant. I continued to walk, to mount the hill even as I looked back at his pleading. By the time I broke eye contact with him, the jagged trees had already passed over my head, and the porch boards creaked beneath my meager weight.

This close to the house, wrapped under its damp shade, I could almost feel it breathing. As if oxygen was being sucked in through the shingles and the siding, as if the house expanded and slumped, as if a gruesome thumping emanated from its dark center. I could feel its life vibrating up from my sneakers, creeping up along the tingling flesh of my legs, reaching into my very chest.

I felt home, the way I felt sitting in front of the fire with Derrick when the snow fell outside the windows of our house.
The door swung open wide suddenly, yet I was not even startled. I walked into the darkness without hesitation, the way I would walk into my own room.

The darkness swallowed me whole with a wide mouth, and I heard the door creak waning behind me. When the door slammed and extinguished all light, my comfort unnerved. I felt my fear begin to bristle along the edges of the fine hair on the back of my neck. The house grew deeper in the dark, an undulating shape formed by the rhythm of the strange breathing of the wind outside and the steady thumping below my feet.

Something heavy walked above me, footsteps shaking the air over my head. I did not dare move; I only clutched my arms tightly around myself and waited, eyes wide and reeling in the dark. Something scratched along the floorboards beside me, so close I could feel the vibrations in my feet. My heartbeat started to throb, and I think I stopped breathing as I waited on edge.

What was I doing here? I should have stayed on the cracked sidewalk with Jacob like I had every other day. I should have walked home to our empty house and watched my mother stare absently into a pot as she stirred dinner and sat with my father as he silently lost himself in the TV. Where the whole house was where Derrick was not.

No. I needed to be right here.

As I steeled myself, the loud whine of neglected hinges echoed through the darkness, silencing the other noises. The green light emanated from a door up the unforgiving staircase and sliced through the black, splitting my sight and casting hard shadows. The wider the door swung, the more light spilled down to me. It washed down the steps and got tangled in the black shape of the banister.

I followed the light. There was really no other choice. I stepped slowly and deliberately, outstretching my hand toward the banister. The wood was rough and scratched at my fingertips as I carefully began to ascend the stairs. Each board cried out under me. I just kept moving towards that light.

At the summit, I kept my eyes trained on the glowing shape of the open door as I side stepped in its direction. I allowed my hand to trail the banister, feeling the splinters steadily piercing my fingertips. As I grew closer to the opening, I became aware of something near me. The dark air changed, felt full and disrupted. I stopped moving, silencing the creaks under my feet, to hear the steady, wet sound of breathing.

The sound was right in front of me. I shielded the light to allow my pupils to dilate. As the darkness took on shape, a figure materialized against the wall, shadowed and obscure. I could only make out the reflection of the green light against the two large orbs of eyes staring at me intently.

The thing saw me see it, yet neither of us moved. Its breathing did not change though mine seemed to strangle in my throat. I waited. Waited for it to jump forward and attack me, waited for it to do anything. The two glowing spheres in front of me remained unmoved and unblinking, and the wet breathing panted in my face.

Keeping a peripheral awareness trained on the dark figure, I began to inch away. I dropped my hand to bathe in the green light and felt somewhat safer blinded by its glow. I walked until it overtook my sight. I walked until the doorframe disappeared behind me. I walked until I was temporarily lost in the green haze.

My eyes finally gauged the light and allowed the room to take shape before me. A bed slumped against one wall; a ravaged dresser leaned against another. A dead rug draped over the floorboards sprinkled in a menagerie of broken toys. A long and lanky figure folded on top of itself on the edge of that rug, pointing absently at a shattered doll with a spindly digit.

I took another step forward, permitting my hand to extend into the cold air toward the bony shoulder that seemed so familiar. Before my fingertip could make contact, it shifted, and I drew my arm back protectively.

“Michael,” it said. I knew the voice. From the very marrow vibrating in my bones, I knew the sound of it. “Michael, you finally came.”

The figure stood in front of me, growing to be a head taller than me, casting the shadow I had grown up underneath. The boy unfolded his limbs before turning to face me, the green light carving sharp shadows across the face that looked so similar to my own.

“Michael,” Derrick said, stepping towards me. “You’re here. You’re finally home with me.”

The skin on Derrick’s face stretched strangely as he smiled at me with wide eyes, reaching out his arms. I smiled back and dove into his cold chest, allowing him to wrap around me the way he would when I had hurt myself and no one was looking.

We froze in brotherly embrace. In the pit of my stomach, I felt truly home.

And the green light went out.

 

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
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Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

How Dating is Like a Horror Movie

(Originally published on MoviePilot.com)

Let’s face it: dating can be horrible. Some might even say that dating is a horror in itself. The endless parade of repeated failed relationships, the perpetually dashed hopes, the awful ways people hurt each other.

My dating life was thankfully brief, though still plenty traumatic. Now, as a spectator to several friends who are currently navigating the single and dating scene, I can say it is not unlike watching a horror movie. Disturbing yet I cannot turn away.

Here are 10 ways dating can be like a horror movie.

There will be at least one corny line. Probably more.

From “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” to “How’s this for a wet dream?”, whether in a horror movie or on your first date, someone is going to say something painful stupid. You might smile; you might roll your eyes. Either way, you cannot avoid the cheesy one-liners. And the worse the date or movie, the more corny lines you are going to endure.

Someone always turns into a monster; the suspense is finding out who that is.

In the beginning, it is all sunshine and roses. This person could be THE ONE. This camp on Crystal Lake could be a delightful summer pastime. My boyfriend isn’t possessive; he just really loves me (is that one horror movie or dating? or both?) Yet as the euphoria and infatuation wanes and reality creeps back in, the characters start to show their true colors. We all sit on the edge of our seats, waiting to see if that person turns out to be a douchebag or a serial killer.

The sequel is never good as the original; in most cases, no one even wants a sequel.

Nothing compares to the original. Everything else is a just a faded copy of the first love, the first date, the first movie in a franchise. Try as we might, we just cannot duplicate the magic of the first. Yet we just keep trying. And the more we push and claw to cling to the same characters, the more disappointing they become.

When it is bad, it goes on much longer than it should.

It might just be perception distortion, but whether it is awkward date or painful horror movie, it seems like when it is bad, it never ends. Suddenly, you are trapped in a time warp that drags out every excruciating detail. You are counting the seconds through every uncomfortable conversation or every poorly composed scene. Sure, you could get up from the table and leave the crappy dinner or pick up the remote and flip off that lackluster scene. In both cases, you probably just suffer to the bitter end, later telling your friends how awful it was.

There are times you do not want to look but you just cannot help yourself.

The messier things get, the less we seem to be able to turn away. We may date someone just for the thrill of the drama, or we may watch entire horror movie franchises just for the death scenes (*cough, cough!* Final Destination, what?). In both cases, we might be cringing and covering our eyes, but, just like when it is awful, we do not leave. Instead, we keep coming back.

There is always blood.

In the dating world, we can hope that there is not literal blood involved; however, there is always carnage. Whether it is the physical bleeding from being stabbed in the chest with a butcher knife or the emotional damage of having your metaphorical heart ripped out, there is always pain and “blood.” In the end, the thrill of that pain and that blood is probably what keeps us coming back for more.

The less you sin, the more likely you are to survive; if you sin big, it is over.

In old school horror, particularly the slasher variety, the more moral infractions you incurred, the more you guaranteed your own demise. Have sex, you die. Do drugs, you die. Commit enough dating sins, especially of the deal-breaker variety like infidelity, and you have ensured the untimely death of the relationship.

The slut always loses.

This vintage horror concept piggybacks on the sin convention. And by the same regard, while the slut may get laid with ease, in the old horror movie, she ends up dead. In the dating realm, she may be doomed to be uncommitted (especially in the era that parallels when this horror convention applied). In our modern times, we can hope for sexual liberation and equality, but that really just depends on who you are dating.

There is just something special about the virgin.

I do not understand it personally, but serial killers and men in general seem to have a unique attraction to virgins. There is just something special about a virgin, as if she has it tattooed on her untouched forehead. Maybe it is something about unexplored territory. I am not quite sure why sexual inexperience attracts more interest and makes you smart enough to be the final girl, yet there it is.

You have to go through a lot of victims to find the final survivor.

These poor serial killers just spend movie after movie, franchise after franchise cutting and carving their way through incompatible victims. None of them were “the one.” So the killing continues, frame after frame, until they meet their match, that clever survivor that just seems to complete them. So too do we date and date, on a quest to find that one worth of “’til death do us part.”

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
pinterest.com/chrstnabergling

Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com

Farewell to a Master

I do not usually post here or write about the happenings in Hollywood, even when particularly influential figures pass on. However, I am making an exception in the case of horror master Wes Craven.

Wes Craven made so many masterful horror movies and greatly shaped and influenced the genre. Everyone knows that. For me, it was all about Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street.

I have written about it before. Scream was my very first horror movie. At age 12, after my parents got divorced, this was my introduction to the genre. I loved it instantly, both the movie and the genre. Scream scared me and also made me laugh; it was fun to watch.

Nightmare on Elm Street blew my mind. I saw it much later than its release, well into my adulthood. It filled a hole in my horror heart that I did not know was there. Again, fear perfectly edged with humor. Again, just perfect entertainment for me. I watched with my jaw on the floor and had nightmares about it for nights afterward.

Of the many contributions Wes Craven made to the horror genre, these were the two that changed me. I will greatly miss his influence.

Christina Bergling

christinabergling.com
facebook.com/chrstnabergling
@ChrstnaBergling
chrstnaberglingfierypen.wordpress.com
pinterest.com/chrstnabergling

Savages

Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.

Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com

The Waning

Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?

Available now on Amazon!
thewaning.com