Do you like Vampires? Demons? Werewolves?
I do. Well, I like the stories, not the monsters. I don't think I'd want to ever encounter a real vampire, or get bitten by a werewolf.
Kinda not my thing, the whole blood and pain deal.
Writing about it? Sure.
There is plenty of blood and gore in my books, my heroes get stabbed, shot, tortured… even killed. (Yes, I have been known to kill off the hero about 1/4 into the story…)
But it isn't always a bad guy doing the stabbing and shooting, it's not always a monster doing it, either. Sometimes it's an average Joe, who feels threatened enough to defend himself by any means possible.
When we speak of monsters, we inevitably picture Nosferatu, Frankenstein, or something like Predator. We never think of the man next door, who may be perfectly nice when we meet him in the street — but who secretly buries people alive in his back yard.
Sometimes human monsters are worse than supernatural ones.
Take Elizabeth Bathory for example.
Born in 1560 in Hungary, she managed to kill over six hundred girls in about thirty years. No one stopped her, until she made the mistake of killing noblewomen, rather than peasants.
People knew about this, but because the girls were peasants, no one did anything.
It wouldn't surprise me if those (of her own standing) who met her saw a very different woman to the murderous monster the peasant girls got to meet.
The human race definitely has its own monsters, and sometimes they are scarier than anything we can make up.
So next time you find yourself stuck for something to write, and reach for the werewolf or the vampire — consider turning that innocent looking elderly man next door into a monster.
Then ask yourself… What if?
