Do You Like to Look at Monsters?
By Scott Nicolay
(2014, Fedogan & Bremer)
Is it bad taste to write horror fiction which takes place during and concerns the U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam?
Yes! But the good guys won and routed the U.S.-backed puppet regime and military, so I'm taking a look at the Vietnam-era story "Do You Like to Look at Monsters?" by Scott Nicolay. It was recommended to me by a participant in the Alone with the Horrors Facebook Group during a discussion of wartime tales and centipede horror.
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The story takes place in the summer of 1969.
The narrator, a monster-obsessed little boy whose worldview is shaped by apocalyptic scenes from his Viewmaster (dinosaurs, volcanoes, et cetera) and morning cartoons, meets his Uncle Conrad for the first time.
....Uncle Conrad is sitting in Grandpa's chair by the front door. He's still wearing his army uniform. I thought this was supposed to be his party but no one is talking to him. Grandma is in the kitchen. I can hear her crying. Aunt Marlene and Aunt Katrina are with her. They're crying too. Grandpa and Uncle John are in the dining room, drinking whiskey. My dad runs right off to join them. Uncle John is married to Aunt Marlene. Aunt Katrina isn't married yet. She's the only one of my aunts and uncles who still lives with my grandparents. She is blonde and pretty. I think she looks like Lily on The Munsters . I like that show. It's about monsters....
Uncle Conrad is not "all there." He lives with his parents, the narrator's "Grandma and Grandpa." He sits in the living room in his uniform and does nothing until the end of the story, when he makes his own wheel of Viewmaster images from photos he took in Vietnam. Then he hangs himself in the attic.
The narrator and his cousin Stacy find Uncle Conrad's Viewmaster wheel.
....I don't want to play with the dinosaurs or the spacemen and Stacy doesn't want to play with the dolls so we get out the Viewmaster and the box of reels.
Right away she tells me Look at this and holds up a reel from the box. There's something wrong with it. All the writing on one side is crossed out with a pencil but there are new letters on the other side. Also the little slides are taped on with pieces of Scotch tape. We look at each other because we both know this has to be the reel Uncle Conrad was making in the darkroom.
What's it say? I ask her. She says CONRIT. Conrad? I ask, but she says No. ConRIT. It's different. That's all that's there. Just one word.
Look at it I say and she puts it in the Viewmaster and presses the switch because the first slide is always upside down. I ask her what she sees.
21
She says There's a big pointy rock sticking out of the water by a beach. And some army men are standing around it.
What are they doing?
They're standing in the water with their guns out. They look scared. Some more army men are next to the rock and they're holding four people in black clothes. One of them is a lady.
Stacy presses down the switch on the Viewmaster to see the next slide. Now the army men are tying the people in black clothes to the rock. There are chains like handcuffs connected to the rock. Everyone looks scared. I think the tied up people are Chinese but it's hard to tell.
The people in black clothes must be the Cong. Does it look like Lake Hopatcong?
I don't think so. I can see palm trees behind them. There aren't any palm trees at Lake Hopatcong. I think it's the ocean somewhere. She presses the switch again.
Now the army men are running out of the water. The Chinese people are all chained up. She presses the switch.
Something is coming out of the water.
What? What's coming out?
It looks like a monster.
I try to grab the Viewmaster but Stacy pushes my arm away. Wait your turn!
She says it real loud. I don't want her to make Grandma or Grandpa come. Grandpa might take the reel away before I can see the monster. I sit back. My mom taught me to wait my turn.
Stacy presses the switch.
It is a monster! I start to reach for the Viewmaster again but I stop.
What's it look like? Tell me!
It's real long and it's got way lots of short flat legs.
Is it green?
No, it's kind of brown and shiny. It's wrapping all around the rock and the people on it.
She presses the switch.
I can't wait. What's the monster doing now? She doesn't answer. She just keeps looking in the Viewmaster. Come on, tell me!
She still doesn't say anything. Doesn't move. Now she's just being mean. That's not like her. She knows how much I like monsters and she's teasing me.
Give it! I look around but Grandma and Grandpa are both out of sight. Maybe they're working outside in their garden. I reach over and grab the Viewmaster. Stacy doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything either. She just sits there. Her hands are still up like she's holding something. She is teasing really bad now, pretending to ignore me.
You're mean I say. She keeps on pretending.
I point the Viewmaster at the front window so I can get the most sunlight behind it. There's a small open patch above the cactuses there. I want to see this monster good. I look inside.
The monster is wrapped all around the rock, all around the Cong. It is looking right at me now. It has such green eyes. Green like metal. Green like the green spaceman. Green green green…
Uncle Conrad has bequeathed his Vietnam experience to the children, who are as incapable of handling it as he was.
***
The ebook of Do You Like to Look at Monsters? contains a manifesto, "Dogme 2011 for Weird Fiction." It harks back to Dogme 95, whose signers sought to rid their work of a century of shibboleths, gimmicks, easy shorthand, and bad faith.
"Dogme 2011 for Weird Fiction" is certainly worth signing up for, and I'm sure would provide a salutary starting point for horror fiction to begin again:
Dogme 2011 for Weird Fiction
I swear to submit to the following set of rules:
The tale must contain no stock anthropomorphic monsters: no vampires, no zombies, no werewolves, no mummies, no ghouls.
Although the tale may contain noir elements, it must not contain stock figures from crime fiction such as serial killers or hard-boiled detectives.
The tale must not involve a post-apocalyptic scenario, zombie or otherwise.
The tale must not contain any buzzwords from Robert Chambers, Lovecraft, Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long or any other earlier authors of weird fiction. This means no Cthulhu, Arkham, Miskatonic, Necronomicon, Tsathoggua, Carcosa, King in Yellow, Hounds of Tindalos, etc. Distinctive vocabulary associated with the Lovecraft circle, such as cyclopean, eldritch, etc., is also forbidden.
The tale must not contain elements of Judeo-Christian mythology as operational tropes, e.g. a crucifix warding off evil, conventional demons and/or demonic possession, Satan, angels, etc. It is acceptable, however, for characters in the tale to embrace these concepts as part of their own belief systems.
Steampunk and all its tropes are forbidden.
Place is essential. Setting must be as well-developed as any other element of the tale. Scout and employ real locations whenever possible.
Atmosphere must be as well-developed as any other element of the tale.
Leave bright lighting and CGI to the cinema: the tale must suggest more than it describes.
The tale must follow Caitlin R. Kiernan's dictum: "dark fiction dealing with the inexplicable should, itself, present to the reader a certain inexplicability."
Furthermore I swear as a writer that my supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings; out of the universe itself. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations. Thus I make my VOW OF CHASTITY.
Originally published 21.Nov.2011
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Jay
8 June 2020
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