BiblioAddict

On killer clowns from outer space, the top ten scariest characters in literature, big brother, and zombies from the neighborhood:

Once upon a time, when I was a young girl whose only fears were of being enclosed in a completely dark room and, oddly enough, my old dolls whose blinking eyes reminded me of the homicidal doll from “Child’s Play” I sat down to watch another little horror movie called “Killer Clowns from Outer Space.”

Honestly, I didn’t think it would be that scary. In fact, I thought it was going to be more of a comedy than anything else. That’s what my older cousins had told me. They’d watched it months ago and said they’d found it hilarious. No matter that my youngest cousin was eight years older than me. I had just turned eight, so I was two years from the double digits, and was old enough, I decided, to watch some silly movie about killer clowns.

I wasn’t. In fact, I’m still not. I avoid clowns like the plague. Killer or not. I just don’t trust those painted on smiles. What kind of homicidal, sadistic urges are they hiding behind all that red and white makeup, I wonder? And why the painted on smiles in the first place? Is it to hide their razor sharp teeth? And what’s with all the cheery colors? Is it to snare the unwary by luring them in with candy and balloons? Oh, no. Not me. Clowns and I work best when I can pretend they don’t exist.

So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I consider Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s It to be the scariest character in literature. At least in literature I’ve read. According to the readers at Abebooks, Pennywise isn’t the scariest character in literature, but he is scary enough to rank no. 3. Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984 takes the no. 1 spot. I wish I could say I agree with this ranking but it’s hard to agree with a judgment on a book you’ve never read. (Yes, it’s true. Somehow I made it all the way through high school and college as an English major having never read 1984. Don’t tell anyone. It’s one of my deep, dark readerly secrets.) Now, of course, I must.

As to something I’ve read more recently (I read It when I was a freshman in high school), I would have to say the zombies in Max Brooks’ World War Z would also be somewhere on my personal top ten list of scary characters. I never found the idea of zombies all that frightening before reading World War Z. Now, however, any monster that relentless, that unfeeling, that bloodthirsty, that numerous, and so contagious that the same neighbors you waved to yesterday could be the same ones trying to gnaw off your arm the next… well, that freaks me out.

Since we’re on the subject of horror, happy Friday the 13th folks.