“Get the antennae! Get the antennae!”
–Them (1954)
I’m a rather easily scared person. I have always been one that has enjoyed a bit of the macabre, but I have also never been without my numerous phobias. I have also always been a fan of monsters, beasts, and demons, but my recent fascination with horror media worries me slightly.
I recall in great detail one day a few months ago, in which I discovered the YouTube channel, CryptTV. On this channel, they upload a couple of short horror films every week by relatively unknown creators. The channel is actually fantastic, since it provides frequent, high-quality content to an audience while simultaneously giving people who have ideas a platform to reach that same wide audience. Bear in mind that I know that I don’t really like horror movies since they manage to stick with me more than I would like. Well, I wish I bore that in mind. The day I found the channel, I spent almost the entire day watching videos, and you know what happened? I got a very bad nights sleep. Mainly due to watching one that had a scene where a girl is in her dark bedroom at night with the only light coming from her phone screen. She sees a vaguely odd silhouette in the doorway and turns her phone screen towards it to reveal a horrible bipedal creature that had been standing there for god knows how long. Being on my phone at night before bed has never been the same.
The point I am trying to arrive at is this: I absolutely refused to watch any video on that channel that ran the risk of having an insect monster. I most certainly could not watch “Itsy Bitsy Spiders.” No no no. I actually did make a mistake in this regard by watching “The Mimic.” It’s short and simple, but still it haunts me as well because of the grotesque insect-like design of the little monster that can imitate voices. Yes, insects are one of the biggest fears that I have, particularly that of spiders. There is a reason I opted not to watch a film this week. Honestly, I’m very glad about that because I also got to read Ray Bradbury’s collection of essays titled, Zen in the Art of Writing. I got a lot of great writing advice out of that book, and I’ll get into the impact it had on me after I conclude my piece on creepy crawlies.
The first book I read on insects was H.P. Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness. It’s a really well-written piece that sent chills shooting up and down my spine. The tension built is palpable, and it evokes some real terror with the voices of the “Mi-go” aliens. The story is told from the perspective of Albert N. Wilmarth, a teacher at the commonly recurring Miskatonic University. One of the creepiest things about the novella is that the horror is never actually witnessed by Albert, as he dan merely infer the terrible events of the story. The story details a relationship between the professor and a man named Henry Akeley. They exchange letters sharing their theories about strange things that begin happening in town being linked to an extraterrestrial race. Eventually, Akeley begins to have scuffles with suspicious people, and suddenly he changes his tune and tells Albert that the extraterrestrials are actually friendly. He says they showed him amazing things, and that Albert should come and visit. Albert is hesitant but decides to visit anyways. When he arrives, Akeley is immobilized in a chair and shrouded in darkness. Akeley begins to tell Albert about the amazing things the aliens told him, including the fact that they have successfully managed to extract a brain, and preserve it indefinitely. He says that he agreed to undergo the procedure, and points to a jar bearing his name. Albert is highly uncomfortable with the situation and is especially turned off by the fact that Akeley’s voice is just a low, buzzing whisper. That night, Albert can’t sleep, and he hears several more buzzing voices through the walls talking about terrible things. He sneaks downstairs to find only a robe and Akeley’s face and hands where he once sat. Albert infers that they were used by one of the aliens to disguise themselves as Akeley, and he is deeply shaken by this.
And who wouldn’t be? The concept of having a conversation with an extraterrestrial bug wearing a friend’s face and hands is dreadful enough to shake anyone to their core. The aliens in this story are known as the “Mi-go,” and they appear in several of Lovecraft’s other novels. They are large, fungoid crustaceans from space that are incredibly insect-like in appearance, with large wings, multiple appendages, and claws. Not only that, their capacity for speech is equally upsetting in my opinion.
Next, I read a true classic: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. It’s a story about a young man named Gregor Samsa that is working to support his family: his mother, his father, and his 17-year-old sister. Unfortunately for Gregor, he wakes up one morning having turned into a giant insect. The story details what the family ends up doing with Gregor, and frankly it’s a rather depressing story. Everyone else gets a job, they treat Gregor poorly and lock him in his room because they are scared of him, and eventually they are incredibly happy when he dies. The whole story is told from Gregor’s perspective, so when he dies of neglect and pain from an open wound, it’s highly tragic. Towards the end, the sister tries to convince the parents that the insect isn’t even Gregor, since the real Gregor wouldn’t want to burden them with his presence as a nasty giant beetle. The story ends with the family moving out of town, and the parents thinking what a fine and attractive woman their daughter has become. Interestingly, I think that this is the true metamorphosis in the novel. Poor Gregor may literally become a huge bug, but his sister starts as a sweet naïve young girl, and ultimately, she goes through her “metamorphosis” by enduring financial struggle and being cruel to Gregor in his insectoid form.
I appreciated reading these classic stories, because I think that even though I know that I’m scared of bugs it was good to ponder why exactly. I was able to catch a glimpse through these stories of what it is exactly that upsets us. What I can ultimately gather is that insects are vastly different from us. They don’t blink, they lay eggs, they move fast, they bite. Hell, they might as well just be aliens. They have too many legs, too many eyes, they’re slimy sometimes, and their movements seem highly unnatural to us. These facts, at least to me, make us afraid to come into contact with them. They’re unpredictable and seemingly emotionless. That’s why the implication that they are intelligent and malevolent enough to remove a human brain upsets us. That’s why Gregor Samsa’s family was no long able to empathize with or show compassion for him. Certainly, to buckle under pressure in the face of a giant insect is not an unreasonable reaction, and I am passionate in my personal distaste in them.
For that reason, I have been thinking about writing a short story about them. Ray Bradbury says that one must write with “zest” and “gusto.” We must write about that which is truly close to our heart and lodged in our minds. We have to write about the things that we love and the things that we cannot stand (i.e. insects in my case).
That is what I derived most from Bradbury’s collection of essays. Though the essays were written over a series of decades, the narrative when putting them together remains coherent: Write because you must, not for any other reason. He says not to write for money, not to write for acceptance into literary cliques, not to write because someone told you to; he says to write because it fills you with joy. In the last essay (entitled Zen in the Art of Writing), he introduces to concept of three signs: WORK, RELAXATION, and DON’T THINK. At this collection’s core, all of these essays are about his experiences trying to make work not exist by not thinking so much or trying to learn how to relax better. That can be taken and discredited by someone that believes he is speaking from a place of privilege, but I denounce that whole-heartedly. He is talking about writing only. He is talking about writing as a job, and the core of his message is: If you find yourself as a writer because you loved writing so much that you wrote 1,000 words every single day, then you must learn to avoid entirely the trappings of writing for any other reason than because you chose to do it. As someone that draws great enjoyment from the creation of short stories, tall tales, and songs, this is a creed that I can stand by with all my heart and soul.