Soulless Windows

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them what kind of writer I am. They don't think I look like a horror writer. Nor even upon making my acquaintance, or learning more about me, do they alter this opinion.

I could say that my previous experiences have shaped me as a writer and that might be partially true. But in reality, I always loved the horror genre. My favorite author growing up was Stephen King and R.L. Stine. I devoured other genres, of course, but I returned again and again to horror.

However, the way I started to view the world changed. It shaped me into the writer I am today. Everything I write has that darker aspect.

I remember as a kid, my mom loved to go to the pottery studio on base and paint different figurines. I still have a unicorn she painted for me and then fired. But there were a few things that she painted that creeped me out, even as an adult. She loved Native American art. Everywhere we moved would shape the way she styled our homes, but Native American art stayed prevalent.

One trip to the pottery studio on base produced a bust of a Native American woman with the feather upright in her black hair, a teal blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and the sun-burnished skin of her face. However, we moved from base before my mom could finish the bust. She finished everything but the eyes. Those were white, blank. Everything else looked lifelike. And no matter how much I tried to think otherwise, those blank eyes creeped me out. She thought it was hilarious, of course. I mean, why would a ceramic figure cause such revulsion?

With some self-searching, I've pinpointed what I think might be the cause. My whole life, I have been fascinated with eyes. They show the most expression and are said to be the windows to the soul. Even growing up, my mom, my brother, and I had eyes that would change color. It wasn't until I hit seventeen that my eyes changed to a green and never changed again. But that fascination with eyes, with believing they show the most expression and are windows to the soul are probably why that Native American woman creeped me out. And my mom never finished that piece.

Another one of my mom's projects always creeped me out. In New Mexico, it is the accepted custom to hang the skulls of bulls on your wall. My mom would paint them with different shades of gray in the cracks to accentuate their 'features'. After painting it, she would attach different colored feathers on them with colored leather strips and beads. The effect with the feathers was pretty and she had a lot of people who saw them ask her to make them one. That was how it was with a lot of her projects.

But even with their popularity, I couldn't get out of my head that it was a dead thing hanging on our wall. I remember seeing a cow skeleton out in the desert, the sun bleached bones blindingly white in the harsh New Mexico sun. As though the rib bones reached up to the sky. I could put flesh on them in my mind's eye, see what it must have looked like, and it seemed wrong to hang their bones on the wall. I thought, "How would we feel if we found bones in the desert of a human, decorated the skull, and then hung it on the wall? That's creepy. So why isn't this creepy?"

That was my thought process and not everyone believes the same way I do. Maybe it was that aspect of my developing personality where I could see the macabre in even the most beautiful scenery. An abandoned wooden shed in the middle of a field? That would be the perfect place to create a scene with a serial killer. A small, shadowed cave in the rock face above where we swim in crystal clear waters? A perfect place to hide a body. Swimming in the ocean with friends? What if one of those friends decided to drown you? That, or have a shark swim by and attack with blood staining the water.

Now I use all of my experience to create different stories, and I've found joy in other genres. And most of it is more Christian-based. I believe that God gives us gifts to further His kingdom, and my writing talent is no different. Are there still dark aspects even in these types of stories I write? Yes, but as I've told some of my Christian friends, not everything is light in struggling Christians' lives. Sometimes they need a bit of a darker aspect to connect with a story. It's just showing them how to find the light in the end that matters.