MY JOURNEY INTO THE WORLD OF WRITING – XII

Psst…a personal secret. Do not reveal it to anyone. Okay?

Horror stories and movies frighten me, even at this age.

The stories I read and the movies I saw during my youth (sigh…sigh…sooo looong ago…) were ineffective (most of them I did not understand, anyway).

Even “Rose Mary’s Baby”, Roman Polanski’s all-time classic that was considered the best ever horror movie, had no effect on me, for I did not understand it, then. I was not much into reading English novels or watching English movies those days.

Then, I came across two of the best movies in the genre, William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” and David Seltzer’s “The Omen”. Many more came and went, many more will come and go, but they will all remain but puny pathetic patches on these two. Even the sequels paled in comparison to these two.

While I regard “The Omen” to be in the genre of frightening supernatural stories, I place “The Exorcist” in the genre of pure, unadulterated horror. It frightens the daylights out of me, even today. This being the case, when I myself took to writing, how can I not be inspired by it? Tell me.

***

With this backdrop, I continued my journey towards my next station. I longed to pay tributes to William Peter Blatty through the medium of a horror story. Thus came into being my “OUIJA ADVENTURE”.

There isn’t much of suspense in it but an attempt at horror. Pazuzu, a daemon in Assyrian and Babylonian mythology, became my prop, as it did with William Peter Blatty. Remember, this was the daemon, which possessed and tormented the little American girl, Regan Teresa MacNeil. However, my story does not enter the realm of possession or exorcism. It is much simpler than that.

A group of four school friends with a grossly misplaced sense of adventure decides to experiment with an Ouija board and invoke the daemon Pazuzu. The experiment goes horribly out of control and the four friends meet with terrible consequences.

I kept the narration simple without going overboard with the supernatural and horror stuff. This narrative style of mine may be the reason why many readers feel my writings to be anaemic :( . You tell me.

I gave the story an open-ended denouement. Does it mean that there could be a sequel, say OUIJA ADVENTURE-II? Who knows, there could be. In fact, there was, a year later. However, that is food for later thought. Let us, at present, enjoy the first Ouija Adventure; be spooked would be a better of expression.

Well, see you later, friends, boo… ;-)

***