Dead Toads and the Horror Writer

I always read my stories to my wife first. My typical pattern is: write a chapter or short story, revise, read out loud. This habit has served me well - I'm fortunate because my wife is an honest reviewer. This wouldn't work if she just told me what I wanted to hear.

She's great at judging whether what I just wrote 'worked', and I respect her judgement. She's got a great ear. But, just because it 'works' doesn't mean she would want to curl up with it on a cold winter night.

Some of the things I write frighten her. One of my projects I hope to release later this winter is a book about witches that absolutely terrifies her. She can't listen to it because it gives her nightmares. And, for a horror writer, that's a good thing. It means I'm doing my job.

This summer, I wrote a dark little short story called Night Train (most of my short fiction is very dark, not sure why). After reading it aloud, my wife just gave me 'the look'.

"What'd you think?"

"It was... good."

I look at her over the top of my glasses. In my mind, I think that makes me look cool. "What's wrong with it?"

Long sigh, "It's very good, but where do you come up with this stuff?"

There it is, the question. It's her way of saying, "You know I love you, but you have a mind like a bag of rats sometimes." She'd never say that, of course. That's more my speed.

My beautiful, long suffering wife has been subjected to quite a few gruesome stories over the last fourteen years. From steam locomotives that eat people to necrophiliac morgue attendants, she's heard it all. And, when you don't have a brain like a bag full of wiggling rodents, the question of where these crazy ideas come from is perfectly valid.

So, where do they come from? They come from experiences, of course. No, I've never fed a go-go dancer to a demonic steam engine, or brought a corpse back to life by giving it mouth to mouth. Horror junkies just look at common experiences from a slightly different angle.

Here's a case in point. Back in the 80s, I was a young engineering student at the University of Virginia. I was disenchanted with engineering: it was hard and there was math involved. I had this wonderful, nearly eidetic, memory that had enabled me to sleep through high school with a 4.0. The problem with math is it requires actual problem solving. Memory was of little help. It was a drag, man.

One semester, I needed a science elective. Physics was out, too much math. Chemistry might as well have been math - there were equations involved. My last option was Biology.

Now, I love Biology - very little math involved, lots of memorization. I could feel the B, man. Maybe a B-, but definitely north of C+.

I neglected to notice it was Pre-Med Biology until the first day of class, but what the heck?

The class had a lab, and one day near the end of the semester we were scheduled to dissect Cane Toads.

In high school Biology, I was the 'specimen guy'. That means, I was the guy who retrieved the specimens from the jars of formaldehyde. Yep, not Formalin, formaldehyde in all its carcinogenic glory. The jars were variety packs - pickle jars packed to the brim with frogs, starfish, and earthworms.

Tongs didn't work to pull them out. Little suckers were slippery, you had to get your fingers in that cold formaldehyde and dig. Rubber gloves? Don't be silly, a little formaldehyde never hurt anybody.

So, when I walked into the college Biology lab that afternoon to go all Leatherface on Mr. Toad, I was far from a dissection virgin. As Madge used to say, I had been soaking in it.

Turns out in Pre-Med Biology, you didn't dissect toads - you vivisected toads. The giant toads were still alive, hearts beating, blood pumping.

The lab assistant, a blonde grad student who was always wearing a white lab coat over blue scrubs, rolled a cart of the doomed amphibians through the aisles. She always had this serious look about her. Science was serious business, you could see it in her eyes.

We worked in teams of five. There were three girls and another guy in my group.

All the pre-meds I've ever known had the same general personality: they have a laser like focus on their studies, and an unhealthy obsession with their GPA. I knew one who figured his current GPA hourly. He kept a calculator in his pocket for just that purpose.

In labs, however, some of them turn into comedians. I think it's stress relief.

The other guy in my group was a comedian. He never stopped joking, never stopped laughing the entire time. He was the kind of guy who liked to pick up the severed fish head after dissection and make it move its lips to David Lee Roth tunes.

Blonde lab assistant gave him a job that day. Laughing boy was in charge of the adrenalin syringe. The idea was at some point during the vivisection, the 'patient' would die on the table. When the heart stopped, laughing boy was to shoot him up with go juice and hopefully bring him back from the land of the dead.

Our toad was a rotund specimen about as big around as a dinner plate. He had been soaking in an anaesthetic bath for three days. Mr. Toad was mellow. He was feeling no pain. I like to think of him as kicking back in dreamland with Brian Wilson and Ozzy Osborne, maybe adding some of that rich toad bass to Crazy Train or Wouldn't It Be Nice.

We transferred Mr. Toad to the dissection pan. We wore rubber gloves, of course - wouldn't want the students slipping off to dreamland along with the amphibians.

The lab assistant then told us to make no cuts until she 'pithed' the toad. Pithing involves inserting a rather long needle into the base of the brain, pushing it up into the grey matter, and scrambling the brain like a Cuisinart.

She was an old pro at it, and she talked us through the entire operation. She turned the toad on its stomach, tilted its head forward, and slid a pin at the end of a wooden dowel into its brain. Then she swizzled.

That sweet jam session with Ozzy in Mr. Toad's brain came to an end. He had shuffled off the mortal coil. His body just hadn't figured it out yet.

There's something about watching someone competent at their job. Even if that job is violent and a bit terrifying. I have no doubt she went on to become a surgeon. Or, maybe a contract killer - either way, she had the skills.

We put Mr. Toad on his back, then pinned his arms and legs to the wax in the bottom of the pan. The team voted I should make the first cut - being the only redneck in attendance, I had the steadiest hand when it came to cutting a critter. I must admit, I was pretty good at getting the depth right. I could cut through the first layers of skin without damaging the organs beneath.

After that first Y incision, I stepped back into the role of observer.

The real pre-meds went to work, and we spent the afternoon observing and taking notes on the living organs.

I've probably lost the PETA crowd at this point, and I completely understand. It wasn't my favorite activity for a spring day, but look at it this way. For many of these would be surgeons, this was the first time they were cutting something alive. I don't know about you, but I don't want to think about going under the knife and hearing the surgeon say, "Gee, should there be that much blood?"

For the most part, we all took it seriously.

For the most part. Laughing boy? Not so much.

He was very upset that the female pre-meds had not managed to kill the toad after about an hour. He desperately wanted to use that syringe. This was years before Uma Thurman would take that adrenalin spike in the chest in Pulp Fiction, but that look Rosanna Arquette had just before it was delivered? You know, all crazy eyed and grinning like a Cheshire Cat? Laughing boy had it.

Eventually, Mr. Toad went into cardiac arrest. The old ticker gave out.

"Stand back!" Laughing boy yelled.

And, believe me, we did. Nobody wanted their hand anywhere near that syringe. He was a man possessed.

The needle slipped in, the plunger went down, and Mr. Toad's heart started pumping away.

Lab assistant gave us a thumbs up, and laughing boy finally calmed down.

A few minutes later, somebody accidentally nicked Mr. Toad's aorta. It was all over.

Our vivisection became a dissection, and we began removing his organs.

We were starting on the stomach when it happened. 'Mr. Toad's Revenge' I came to think of it in later years.

All of us were leaning over the cadaver when Mr. Toad sat bolt upright, body straining against the pins in his hands. He opened his mouth and let out a long slow moan.

Now, I've been around enough dead things to know they aren't always quiet and still. They move and contort - sometimes they even moan or belch.

However, my colleagues were unprepared for horrors such as this.

Laughing boy screamed - very high pitched with not a hint of masculinity. He jumped over the lab bench, landing feet first on the other side. I'm convinced the guy must have been a hurdler in track and field. It was impressive.

The others screamed, and one of them had to be excused. She had a very embarrassing stain on the crotch of her Bobbie Brooks.

So, back to the original question. Where do my ideas come from? You write what you know.

The blonde haired lab assistant with the mad pithing skills? She became Janey Smith in Vales Hollow, sliding the stiletto into a deputy's back and severing his spinal chord before stabbing him in the eye and twisting.

Laughing boy? He became a cowardly husband in my first unpublished book who jumps a fence, abandoning his wife to fend for herself against something terrible.

The girl in the damp Bobbie Brooks? She became Angela in Nine Fingers urinating on herself when she sees her fiancee attacked by werewolves.

And, Mr. Toad? Oh, he's out there. He sings Ozzy tunes sometimes, and, just when you think he's down, he sits up on the slab and moans.