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| Credit: Pixabay |
What does a writer
of dark fiction like myself write for a Holiday blog post? I’m not
really a fan of black Christmas fiction, but I do love the comical
holiday fairy tale flick, The Nightmare Before Christmas, as
well as other weird Holiday films such as the cheesy Santa Claus
Conquers the Martians. But since this is more of a literary
fiction blog, I thought I would do something in the line of that.
I decided
to do terrifying toys in speculative fiction that doesn’t
necessarily take place during Christmas. So below is a list of mostly
horror stories about terrible toys. And I don’t mean “terrible”
as in cheap or defected like the Misfit Toys in Rankin/Bass’s
“Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer”. I’m talking about terrible
toys that the Krampus might bring to naughty boys and girls. Some of
them are so terrible that even Krampus may be too nice to bring.
Instead he might bring those to evil grownups. The list is in no
particular order.
1. “Don’t Ask
Jack”, by Neil Gaiman; from his collection, Smoke and Mirrors:
In this dark tale, the kids are afraid of the Jack-In-the-Box buried
at the bottom of the toy box in their play room. That’s because the
Jack in this story holds a horrifying secret.
2. Coraline,
again, by Neil Gaiman: In this chilling children’s/YA novel, the
title character encounters living toys and people with doll-buttons
for eyes.
3. “A Toy for
Juliette”, Robert Bloch, from the anthology, Dangerous Visions
(edited by Harlan Ellison): This
story, set in a dark future, is
about a
girl whose
toys are torture devices
from the different time periods her grandfather travels to. This
time, Grandpapa
brings her back one from the Victorian era: an
infamous
serial
killer.
4.
“The Monkey”, Stephen King, from his collection, Skeleton
Crew: A boy’s toy cymbal-banging monkey has a deadly curse.
5.
“Chattery Teeth”, Again, Stephen King, from his Nightmares &
Dreamscapes: Wind-up clockwork teeth with feet “talk”, walk
and bite. . . big time.
6.
“The Doll”, Joyce Carol Oates, from her Haunted: Tales of the
Grotesque: A woman visits a stranger’s house that contains a
doll house and, in a sense, a man-size doll that no little girl (or
big girl for that matter) should want to ever play with.
So
here’s some winter reading for you to sit back and relax over on a
dark, stormy night after the Holiday festivities have ended for the
year! And if you can’t wait to gather all these, then check out my
terror toy story, “The Puppet Show”, for free! If
you like that, consider buying the collection it’s from, The Fool’sIllusion. It will make a great nightmare before (and
after) Christmas gift!
Next
week’s post will be looking back on my writing projects of 2017 and
what I learned from them. Maybe it will also cover the 2017 works of
other science fiction/fantasy writers.
Happy
Hallowdays!
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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
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