I wrote a post a couple of months ago bemoaning the fact that I'll never be able to write horror novels that have ghosts, witches, spells or any of that sort of nonsense in them. They don't exist, so poof! They're disqualified and I can't write about them. That's how it works for me. Only real (or conceivably possible) elements can worm their way into my stories.
But there's one eerie sort of tale that I may yet work into my bag of tricks. I'm talking about stories where the characters are really dead but it takes them the whole book (or movie) to realize it. "Hmm," you say. "But wouldn't that constitute a nonsensical story, Keith?"
Not especially. Humans experience flashbacks. We say, "his life flashed before his eyes," and everyone understands what we mean. It seems to me a significant story can be packed into a flash. All you have to do is play it back at a much slower speed. Voila: an eerie tale that doesn't break my self-imposed "reality rule".
At some point I'm going to try one of these. It won't be the usual, boring (i.e., SyFy Channel-like) story where there's a car crash at the beginning, and at the end they all see themselves dead in the wreck. I think I can do a lot better than that.
Am I tipping off my audience by saying this? Sure. But I'll bet you won't even recognize the gambit when you read the story. Betcha!
