In honor of Halloween. I’ve worked up some more little stories along the same lines as my other “Reasonable Tales.” This round is all based off of some common horror movie situations. Here you go. I hope you enjoy them.

 

Self Preservation

“The call is coming from inside the house” the voice on the phone said. Hearing this, Denise immediately hung up and left the house. Sure the baby was still asleep upstairs, but no one would be that sadistic to kill a baby. Besides whoever this creepo was, he’d apparently just been chilling out in this house the whole time without her knowing it, so if he wanted to kill the baby he’d have done it by now.

 

Remember your training

Their story seemed incredible. Like literally, a story with no credibility… But something had really freaked these kids out and they did appear to be in pretty bad shape from something, so Blaine wanted to help. Besides, there was nothing else going on in the sleepy little town and his job was “to Serve and Protect.”

His first instinct was to rush off to the secluded farmhouse to investigate, but then he remembered his training and decided to wait for back-up. There was no real rush to investigate immediately. If the kids could be believed, all their friends were already dead, and there was no one in any real danger any more.

When backup arrived they took a few minutes to formulate a plan and put on their flak jackets. They agreed that one of them would hang back with a gun drawn while the other asked questions. When they arrived on the scene they determined that there were far too many opportunities to be ambushed at the front door and it wasn’t worth the risk. They waited till daylight to question the reclusive family that no one knew anything about.

When Blaine finally spoke to the patriarch of the family, he seemed pleasant enough, and even offered to show them around the property, but Blaine knew better. He could tell with his naked eye that the place was littered with rickety buildings and other hazards that were obvious fire code violations, if nothing else. Just as Blaine was about to leave, he heard some shuffling and then a gun shot as he turned just in time to see a large man in a leather mask falling to the ground. The once kindly old man then made a movie at Blaine with a bowie knife but was quickly dropped by Blaine’s partner who’d been watching them through the scope of his sniper rifle.

As they investigated the property further it didn’t take long to discover the atrocities it had hosted. Hours later, as the forensic team filed in to preserve and analyze the scene, Blaine and his partner waxed poetic:

 “Man, this was crazy…”

“Yeah…”

“It’s a good thing we didn’t rush in here last night like idiots.”

“Yeah, there’s no way we would have survived.”

“Yeah, can you believe those kids were telling the truth?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty crazy… I guess that’s why we’re trained to take every report seriously.”

 

Dad worked for Jiffy Lube

                “Don’t forget to check your oil before you leave. You know how that car stalls if it doesn’t have enough oil. You wouldn’t want to get stranded out at that cabin all weekend.” Those words echoed in Franks mind as he drove away from the secluded cabin where he and his friends had just been attacked. His dad could be so annoying, reminding him to check his oil all the time, but if it weren’t for that steady reminder, they’d all be dead right now.

 

Praise for General Motors

                The maniac was hot on her heels, but she was in really good shape. After all she ran 3 miles every morning. As she reached the car she hit the keyless entry button and got into the car from the passenger side, since it was closer to her. Once inside she immediately locked all the doors behind her. As she looked up, she noticed the maniac was still half a block away, so she took a deep breath and carefully climbed into the driver’s seat. She turned the key slowly… it didn’t start. Then she remembered it was a standard transmission and so she had to push in the clutch. The car started right up, but the maniac was right next to the car now. He began pounding on the window trying to break it, but Allison kept her wits, knowing that there was no way he could break the window that easily, so rather than speeding off, she carefully put the car into gear and drove away, as she used her on star system to call the cops. Once she got on the highway, she was home free. What a rush.

 

Nosy Neighbors

                “What’s that sound?…. There it is again…. Someone needs to go investigate that… John? Could you go see what that is?”  Tina was always freaking out about stuff like that, but John knew better than to ignore her. He carefully crept up to the window that the scratching seemed to be coming from. He didn’t see anything but a gnarly shrub. It seemed rather innocuous, but just to be on the safe side; he got a gun and some limb loppers and went out to take care of the problem.

                15 minutes later the noise came back. This time, not wanting to waste any time John called the cops. He knew they wouldn’t respond to s simple “there’s a weird sound outside of my house complaint” so he told them he lived next door and saw someone prowling around at his actual address. He peppered the story with speculation and inflated conjecture.

                20 minutes later the cops knocked on their door and introduced John and Tina to a man wearing a trench coat and a gerbil mask, and informed them that “If you’re neighbor hadn’t called when they did this guy would have hacked you to bits with a machete.”

 

The names were changed to protect the innocent

Those damn kids were at it again, but this time it was too much. Glenda was used to hearing disturbances from next door like loud music, parties or even someone getting a little too upset over failing their mission on the gamebox, but all that screaming had to stop.

She always tried to mind her own business and didn’t pry into her neighbors’ private lives, but whatever sort of sick S&M role playing game they were engaged in over there was disturbing her sleep. She called the cops and described what she’d been hearing: “I hear a lot of screaming, then some heavy breathing and then one of them runs through the house, then there’s a thud and it sounds like someone trying to break through a door…”

“We’ll be right over maam” Lt. Brickman assures her.

“Mrs. Kravitz again?” his partner inquired, as Lt. Brickman hung up the phone.

“Yeah, apparently her neighbors are having some kind of rough sex party. We better go investigate. You remember what happened the last time we ignored a call like that…”

“Yeah… I still think Steve Buschemi should have at least got an MTV movie award for his portrayal of you….”

“Larry!! We’ve been over this a dozen times, that character is NOT based on me… I was the Channing Tatum character.”

“Ok, but didn’t he die in the movie?”

“ARTISTIC LICENSE LARRY!! Artistic License… they change those things a little to protect the real people”

“Oh yeah… but you don’t look anything like Channing Tatum…

“Shut up Larry”

“… Now your old partner who died in that incident looked like Channing Tatum….

“Larry!”

“You definitely look more like Steve Buschemi…”

“Larry! seriously, I keep telling you. It was a writer’s decision to flip our characters around; they thought it was more compelling to have the attractive star die like that. Sure they were both a mish-mash of both of us, but Tatum’s character was obviously me… he’s from Oregon, I’m from Oregon. It’s an open and shut case…”

“If you say so”

                When the cops finally arrived on the scene they could hear the ruckus from outside as they cautiously approached the row home and knocked on the door. Immediately, the screaming and commotion got worse, so they burst down the door just in time to see a man in coveralls lifting a set of hedge trimmers above his head preparing to plunge them into the nubile young woman at his feet. Lt. Brickman fired with no hesitation this time… In the movie depiction of this incident maybe he could be played by Jake Gylenhaal.

 

Happy Halloween everyone,