City of Intrusive Thoughts
Turn and face the strange changes . . .
Watching movies by myself used to give me so much solace and joy. Now, I much prefer watching them with friends. It may seem obvious to some of you, but it’s taken me 40-plus years to figure out that there’s little point in consuming art unless it helps you connect with others. I can very rarely watch movies by myself anymore, and if I do, it’s something I end up writing about on Substack (i.e. Terrifier 2), so even that is a means of connection.
This is a very different mode than the one I was in as a teenager and in my twenties. I had a few casual horror fans as friends, but no one in my circle was as into the genre as I was. Cooped up in my room watching Fulci’s Zombie, Phantasm, Suspiria, Reanimator, one or several entries in the big three slasher franchises, George Romero’s original Dead movies, or In the Mouth of Madness may seem like an isolated, sad existence from the outside perspective, but for me, it truly was my happy place—a safe space, if you will.
Alchemical Transformation and Terrifier 2
I. I can hardly believe it’s been three years since Terrifier 2 took the horror world by storm. With viral marketing that claimed moviegoers were hospitalized after witnessing the on-screen graphic violence and an all-out performance by David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown, Damien Leone’s little franchise that could was suddenly a massive phenomenon. I…
Listen: you will change. I will change. The world will change. No change is permanent.
If you’re not careful, your safe space can become a place where you rot in isolation.
As I wrote in Saint Sadist, “No safe space can protect you from yourself.”
The other side of that is if you invite too many people in, you may forget you’re you.
My oldest kid described his brain as a city, in which every thought is a denizen. Cities are busy places, loud. Every voice demands to be heard at the same time. He is changing, developing into a being with fully formed ways to articulate himself. I’m grateful he has the words to describe them and the ability to use those words in a creative way. I cannot stop thinking about that: a city of intrusive thoughts.
My youngest told me death isn’t real. My oldest tried to correct her, but my response was a bit more ambiguous. I said, “It depends on what you mean by ‘real’ and what you mean by ‘death.’”
Death is a shedding of skin. A change.
My oldest growing beyond the age of pure abandon and innocence is a change—akin to a death, if you will—but it is also a growth, an evolution. Alchemy.
I took him and his cousin to their first concert back on 10/19. We saw The Living Tombstone. For the uninitiated, The Living Tombstone is an electronic duo who went from appealing to an extremely online niche (composed mostly of “bronies” and fans of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise) to a full band on a world tour.
It was a great show. The audience was into it, dancing and singing along to every verse. A good percentage of them were in costume. Although it was several days before, the whole thing felt appropriately Halloween-themed. The band even launched into a rendition of “Spooky Scary Skeletons.” Although a part of me would have preferred to take them to see one of my favorite bands, it was a much better experience seeing an artist who they both love.
It’s easy as an older guy to dismiss something like Five Nights at Freddy’s as something that’s strictly for the kids, but after attending that concert, I absolutely see its appeal. For one, there is a strong visual component: horror fans love cosplay. Indeed, they would have Halloween every month if they could. Creating visually striking characters has long been a key part of horror, going back to the old Universal Monsters—most likely long before that.
Secondly, the lore behind the games and film is tragic. The animatronics, though frightening, are not the true monsters. They contain the souls of children and were put there by the franchise’s real villain—the very human William Afton. Pure evil characters do have their place in the horror pantheon (see Freddy Krueger, Art the Clown, and Chucky), but the yin to that yang is the plethora of sympathetic monsters. Frankenstein’s creature, Jason Voorhees (with a little imagination), Louis from Interview with the Vampire, and several werewolf characters fit this description.
Lastly, the franchise isn’t afraid to let fans own a piece of it. The Living Tombstone has built their musical career off of songs inspired by the games. And it paid off—the song, “FNAF,” showed up in the end credits of that film.
Say what you will about game creator Scott Cawthon (and I could write a whole, less-than-flattering essay about that guy), but he managed to create something truly special that’s crossed over into many demographics. It all fell into place for me just how special these games and its associated media are with an extremely diverse fanbase while I was at this show. Folks my age, teens, LGBTQ, men, women, and POCs filled the venue, all of them excited for every song The Living Tombstone played, and many of them dressed as characters from FNAF. It was a truly inspiring, eye-opening experience.
Change is always feared but why? It’s not like we haven’t changed before.
I always fear my next moment of self-doubt will be my last, meaning that it will be so severe, I’ll finally stop doing the things I love because I’ve temporarily forgotten why I love them. But the truth is this: these moments are part of the process, and I always come back as a better writer, better father, and better husband than before.
I’m Lucas Mangum. I’m a Splatterpunk Award-winning author and weirdo. This is Fiction for the Cosmically Disturbed. Sometimes, I will post stories here. Sometimes, you’ll get personal essays. Other times, it will be like whatever I wrote in the above paragraphs. This space is always changing. If that’s not your thing, that’s fine. You can move on, no hard feelings.
If that is your thing, hello and welcome. I’m glad you’re here.
Last week of October was all about Halloween. The Texas heat finally broke, and we started getting days that were less than 90 degrees. It was even cold on some mornings and evenings. On that night of nights, it was perfect trick or treating weather. As is tradition, we went out with a bunch of neighbors and their kids. Even Shane McKenzie drove to our development so he and his son could join us. He’s got a new book out, and you’re gonna want it. Just saying!
The costumes and houses were a balanced mix of the cute and the monstrous. I want to give a special shoutout to the couple who had a baby possum with them on their porch. The creature was curled up on one of their laps, getting doted on by kids and adults alike.
October and Halloween came and went too fast. As I suspected, I didn’t watch anywhere near 31 horror movies in 31 days. I did get some reading in, though. I dug the audiobooks of You Like It Darker by Stephen King and Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheung. The latter almost reminded me of Suspiria but set in the world of an academy that prepares girls for K-Pop stardom. It’s YA, but don’t let that deter you: the book goes hard.
I had to get up early the next day to drive with my pal Ryan Bradley to Books and Boos, an event in Nacogdoches held at the Fredonia Brewery. The whole thing was organized by Grim’s Fiction, an indie bookstore focused on genre fiction and gaming. It was an overall positive experience. These types of things usually are. Although the writing itself is my favorite thing about what I do, I’ve got to say that meeting readers and fellow writers is a close second.
Perhaps some things never change.
In closing, here’s a passage from Digital Darkness II that I wrote last week with change and evolution on the brain. Let me know what you think and be sure to pick up the first book if you haven’t already.
Long before Tanya followed up on a lead about a video game with a dark history, she was like anyone else: a composite of instincts searching for ways to express themselves and receptors seeking input. In other words: a child. On those occasions where she meditated on her younger days, it sometimes disturbed her that she couldn’t tell where the input ended and the more primordial version of her began. When it was all stripped away, was she merely a blank slate? Was she merely the sum of impressions left upon her by others?
She wanted to believe there was something—her true self, her essence—beyond the assembled identity, beyond the masks she wore, including the one she donned to record her videos. But when she had those rare moments of silence, those fragments of a day where she allowed herself to be bored, to simply be, she heard no inner child crying out for recognition, no true or higher self that spoke without sounding like so many others who had spoken to her before. There was only a blankness, an atonal humming beyond interpretation, the vastness of the restless void. Now, broken down and remanufactured for the coming war, she felt a similar break from all previous versions of herself.
That’s it for now, fam. I’ve also un-paywalled the entirety of my archive here, so if you’re new and want to see what I get up to, take a peek!
