Happy Halloween, Victims

After months of long stories, it has become my goal to give you shorter ones. Things you can read in 10 minutes in the middle of your day (or late at night). That seems appropriate for the internet. No one wants to read all 400 pages of Dracula on a screen — but “Hop-Frog,” sure. So your October story is short. As was September’s.

When I was 11, this blew me away. I picked it because I felt impatient and it was the shortest story in the anthology. Then I sat in disbelief as it ramped from morbid up through dread, into grand guignol insanity. I’d read plenty of Stephen King by then, but was not prepared for this.

There is something about a shorter story that ends up more unsettling, potentially. This is permitted, or even mandated, by the lack of room for fuller context. The lack of grounding. Spend a lot of time with anyone (whether a character or a person in real life), and you’ll find you start to understand that person. Doesn’t mean you like them, or trust them — but if you were to spend long enough even with Elizabeth Bathory. . .

“Well — what she does in that castle is horrible, killing those children, but. . . you know, she’s really very troubled herself. Her life isn’t easy. In some ways, I actually admire her determination.”

Of course, it might take 20,000 words to get you to only connect with Elizabeth Bathory. The point here is that a story of 2,000 words, or 10 minutes, is likely to set the opposite goal. Not to increase your understanding of what at first is so alien, but more simply to use it to pry you from established understanding and leave you alone out there. You believe you know what the world is? Meet the Blood Countess, as she is sometimes known — spend 10 quick minutes with her — and then see if you still feel the same certainty.

So today’s story is 2,000 words. I hope it works for you. And in honor of Halloween, why not a masked slasher? Like Jason or Leatherface. That 1970s-80s’ immortal addition to pop culture, and thanks to Michael Meyers, wed forever to the holiday — a holiday that has merrily overtaken its whole month with a thoroughness rivaled only by Christmas. Yeah, a slasher is the way to go for October. I’ll write us a Bathory story some future month.

Happy Halloween.