Stephen King & True Horror Epiphany
Dec. 8th, 2013 04:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
docbriteA thing I wrote on Facebook that people seemed to like, so I'm putting it here to give it extended shelf life:
I was rereading "Gramma," which I think is one of Stephen King's best short stories, and this occurred to me: True horror is not the evil zombie grandmother. True horror is the vast gulf *between* the evil zombie grandmother and the cheerful cartoon grandmother on the telephone notepad. True horror is in the lightyears of distance between the way your heart knows things ought to be, or wants them to be, and the way your eye sees they are.
I was rereading "Gramma," which I think is one of Stephen King's best short stories, and this occurred to me: True horror is not the evil zombie grandmother. True horror is the vast gulf *between* the evil zombie grandmother and the cheerful cartoon grandmother on the telephone notepad. True horror is in the lightyears of distance between the way your heart knows things ought to be, or wants them to be, and the way your eye sees they are.