Category Archives: Horror

To quote the newspaper industry, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Our Children are Aliens; their teachers said so

Horror, Non-Fiction, ,
A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
The Offutt kids are after me.

Parent-teacher conferences are terrifying. Not that I’m worried our children are failing at life. That’s my job. I’m simply concerned one day a teacher will tell us the kids are smarter than me.

What all parents really want is to know more than our children. This is not as awful as everyone I’ve told seems to think. Look, if our kids can survive on their own, they’ll never come home to visit, so I plan on teaching them nothing. If they never learn to drive, they can’t get away. This fits perfectly into my wife’s plan to keep our children in our house until they’re 40, probably in the same room on bunk beds so she can watch them while they sleep.

Not creepy at all. Nope.

However, I probably shouldn’t have told this to our children’s teachers. My wife and I are now banned from all school activities and legally can’t get within 100 feet of our own kids. It makes family vacations a bit awkward.

One of the biggest fears I have at parent-teacher conferences is that the teachers aren’t confused and are actually talking about the pubescent sass machines who live in our house instead of someone else’s kids.

Teacher: “Oh, your child is a blessing to have in class. So thoughtful, so caring and hasn’t set fire to the building once.”

Me: “Really? That doesn’t sound like an Offutt.”

Teacher: “I wish more students were like him.”

My wife: “But he took laxative brownies to the church potluck dinner, tied his grandmother’s shoelaces together and lit fireworks in his sister’s hair.”

 Me: “That’s right. Do you have the county jail on speed-dial, because we do.”

It’s like once our offspring leave the house, they turn into someone else. I’ve seen that movie and it doesn’t end well. People start behaving differently; they’re more polite, happier, punctual. Then the heroes discover too late that sentient alien plants have grown duplicate townspeople in big green pods and taken over the city.

What I want to know is why can’t our real children go to school while the alien pod children stay home and clean their rooms? This would make vacuuming so much easier and I could go to a parent-teacher conference without feeling like one of those TV sit-com dads who’s in no way as smart as his kids.

But it’s not like this. Teachers, administrators, parents of friends, strangers in dark alleys, the FBI special agent who sits outside our house in an unmarked car all think our children are nice and don’t act like the hooligans we know them to be.

Someday I want to hear a teacher tell us once, just once, “Offutt, your kids are out of control. They’re psychotic monsters.”

It would make me feel like we’ve accomplished something as parents – we’ve raised normal kids.

The Offutts have locked us in the dungeon again. Send help.

Teeth

Horror

This story was the result of a writing prompt exercise and I kind of liked it.

By Jason Offutt

When I lie, I lie for a reason. Now was a good reason.

Red and blue flashing lights topped the hill behind me. I saw the cop on a highway access road about a mile back, but it was too late to slow down. He hit me with a radar gun, and the lights came on. It’s my fault. I can’t blame the cop for doing his job. It’s just that, damn. Bad timing, dude. I was excited, and when I get excited, I get sloppy. Totally my fault.

I slowed the 1982 Cadillac Eldorado to a stop on the shoulder. I could have driven a newer car, sure, but I liked the Caddy. Lots of memories, lots of room in the trunk. The trunk. Geez, I hoped he didn’t look in the trunk. That would be unfortunate.

A ring tapped my driver’s side window. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye, but it was big and gold. Maybe an Aggie ring. Right state for it. The window moaned as the old motor lowered it into the door, my index finger on the switch steady. No nerves here. Everything was under control. 

A warm breeze blew in as a state trooper leaned over the open window. His scent flooded my senses, musky with a hint of sweat and cologne. Easy to follow. The man was about six-foot-two, and more than 200 pounds of muscle. 

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asked.

A slight grin tugged at my face. “Yes, sir.” The words were smooth, no seams. There never were. “I was about four or five miles over the speed limit. Sorry about that.”

It was more like ten or twelve, but I lied. It’s what I do.

The trooper shined his heavy police flashlight in my face. I didn’t blink. Those lights were designed for two things, to temporarily blind a suspect, and to crack a skull if things went south. Good luck with mine, buddy. My smile widened, but I never showed teeth, not this early. He stepped back anyway.

“Out of the car, please,” he said, his words softer now.

I didn’t have time for this, but one of my rules, hard and fast, was to never argue with the police. 

“Sure, officer.” 

The man in a dark blue shirt, and shiny black leather belt, watched me pull myself out of the Caddy. His hand gripped the handle of the Glock 22 still in its holster. I noticed that, sure. I notice a lot of things. So would he. I kept my right hand resting casually over my upper thigh as I faced him. The trooper probably wouldn’t see the splattered blood in the dark, but you never know. 

“Step away from the vehicle,” he ordered. There was a strain in his voice, a quiver. He knew something was off about me, but didn’t know what. I did. It was my eyes, emerald green with pupils too vertical for most people to look into for long.

I nodded, and slid away from the door, my feet moving silently like a cat’s. All this was on the cop’s dash cam, I knew, but didn’t care. I always showed up fuzzy on camera.

“I’m really sorry, officer.” 

I wasn’t. 

“I just lost track of my speed.” 

I didn’t.

“I’ll be more careful from now on. I’m pretty harmless, you know?” I lied again. That was almost convincing. I smiled wider, revealing three rows of sharp, serrated teeth.

The trooper lurched backward, and almost lost his footing. Boy, would that have been a mistake. If he’d dropped to the ground, I couldn’t have kept myself off him. But he didn’t fall, and I already had one dead man in the trunk, so I just nodded. 

 “I’ll be sure to see you later,” I called as he ran to his cruiser. He hit the accelerator and spun off the gravel shoulder, leaving dark streaks on the highway as he disappeared over the next hill, red and blue still flashing.

Yeah, I let him go. Like I said, he was just doing his job. Besides, I wasn’t really that hungry. Not yet.

Thanks, dead squirrel, you helped our marriage

Horror

My son ran up to me with the exact news I wanted to hear.

“Dad, there’s a dead squirrel in the yard.”

To be honest, there’s a lot of news I would have welcomed. “Dad, I just found a winning lottery ticket,” “Dad, rich alien ladies in bikinis have landed and asked me to take them to our leader. That’s you, right?” “Dad, a beer truck had a flat on our street and the driver said you could take what you want.” The list is endless.

But “dead squirrel” meant something better than all those, something specific. Offutt Parents Sitting on the Couch in Sweat Pants Night suddenly became Date Night (to clarify things, I felt badly for my deceased squirrel brother because in a world of pet snakes and Floridians, we mammals need to stick together).

My son took me to it; the poor orange poofy-tailed thing lay unmoving on the crabgrass. Don’t laugh. If it weren’t for crabgrass, we wouldn’t have a lawn.

I patted the Boy on the shoulder.

“Thanks, son,” I said. “You’ve made your mother and me so happy.”

There are plenty of life changes people go through when they become parents. Sleepless nights, stretch marks, loss of the ability to say words containing more than two syllables, and Cheerios. Cheerios everywhere.

But the biggest change is no longer getting 15 minutes to spend alone with the person who got you in this situation in the first place. Sometimes it takes a dead squirrel to bring the romance back into your life.

“Hey, honey,” I said walking into the living room while she attempted to pick up toys our toddler seemed to be erupting like a Lego volcano. “You got about 10, maybe 15 minutes?”

“Why?”

I smiled. “There’s a dead squirrel in the yard.”

It’s interesting, when given the proper motivation, how fast a parent can go from not trusting children who leave their homework at school to giving them total control of the house.

“Don’t worry,” my wife told the kids as we rushed toward our small truck, she tucking uncombed hair underneath a cap, me with a shovel full ofAmerican red squirrel. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Then we were off – alone.

There’s something freeing, yet frightening about leaving the children. When we left our son for the first time – a few months old and with Grandma – we called every 10 minutes to make sure he was OK. We were at a friend’s house two blocks away. That slowly graduated to going out for dinner, staying overnight out of town, to where we are today – using a stiff Tamiasciurus hudsonicusas an excuse to run away.

Don’t tell me you haven’t been there before.

The drive on the country road near our house took longer than it should. We were on a date, after all, and the squirrel was in no hurry.

The best part was we talked. My wife and I had a 15-minute adult conversation that had nothing to do with video games, pop music, or something gross a classmate did at lunch. And the words “hey, watch this,” weren’t uttered once.

I pulled over and dumped the squirrel in a ditch. My wife said a few words from the passenger window. It was over, our little date.

But it was nice, and we held hands on the drive home.

Jason’s newest book, “Chasing American Monsters,” is available for preorder at Barnes and Noble and  Amazon.

Chasing American Monsters

Horror


Intrigued by monsters? Jason Offutt’s next title, “Chasing American Monsters: Creatures, Cryptids, and Hairy Beasts,” seeks out the furry, scaly and feathered creatures that lurk in the hidden places of all fifty states. From the Slide Rock Bolter of Colorado to the Wampus Cat of the American South, “Chasing American Monsters” takes readers to tops of mountains and into the deep, dark depths of serpent-infested lakes. “Chasing American Monsters” is available March 8, 2019. Don’t miss out. Reserve your copy at Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

A Little Love from the Local Press

Horror, Some whimsical stuff, , , ,

New Offutt book proves fiction stranger than truth

Jason Offutt, Maryville’s best-known literary bogeyman, is at it again with more tales about the scary, spooky, supernatural and downright strange.

Offutt, a former newspaper reporter who is now a senior instructor of journalism at Northwest Missouri State University and a columnist for this newspaper, has made something of a name for himself as the author of books and articles about the paranormal.

“Road Closed: Twelve bloody stories to brighten your day,” now available through Amazon.com, is his 12th book, and the fifth dealing with topics beyond the realm of what most people would call daily experience.

What makes “Road Closed” a little different from anything Offutt has produced previously is that it’s fiction in the classic sense, a collection of 11 short stories and one 23,000-word novella.

Of course, one could argue that all ghost stories and other paranormal tales are fiction. But much of Offutt’s earlier work has a distinctively journalistic cast and consists of reports and “eye-witness” accounts he’s collected from people who really believe they saw something — though just what is open to question.

The stories in “Road Closed,” however, are pure imagination and include, among other things, yarns about a family farm where trees come to life and a convicted man fleeing his victim’s family through what amounts to a dystopian nightmare.

As for the novella, “Matriarchal Nazi Cannibals,” Offutt said he’s not too worried about reviewers providing readers with spoilers because “the title pretty much does that anyway.”

Here’s a quick summary that offers a few hints: “A small Missouri town where a Nazi matriarchy lies silent, hidden, waiting — and they’re hungry.”

Offutt said the story revolves around a group of college film students who “find something hidden,” but he swears the plot isn’t based on his own experience with young people studying media at Northwest.

“It came to me in a dream,” he said. “My wife told me, ‘You’d better write that down. That’s good.’”

Another of the tales, “A Just Cause” was adapted by former Northwest student Harrison Sissel into a screenplay that won Best Science Fiction Script at the 2011 Los Angeles Film and Script Festival under the title “The Balance.”

Offutt said he thinks readers will find his latest offering to be more than just a collection of spooky stories. Some of the tales, he said, are closer to related genres like horror and science fiction.

As a boy, Offutt was a big fan of the “Twilight Zone” television show, and he said he hopes “Road Closed” offers something of the same flavor. Though, unlike the classic anthology series created by Rod Serling, Offutt said readers looking for moral insights and reflections on the state of society may be disappointed.

“I write a lot of things that are what I like to read, and I write for entertainment,” he said. “It’s not a social message, it’s just wanting to have fun.”

And Offutt has a word of warning for readers who may have squeamish stomachs.

“The book’s subtitle is ‘twelve bloody stories to brighten your day,’” he said. “I’m not necessarily trying to scare somebody’s pants off, but hopefully there’s a little bit of that in there.”

Offutt has published short stories before in magazines, and he said the form places demands on a writer that are very different from those associated with creating a novel or a work of non-fiction.

“With a novel you’ve got 300 pages,” he said. “These short stories are maybe 5,000 words. One is only 700. The shorter it is the more challenging it is to be able to tell the story.”

Follow Jason Offutt on a Trip Into Shadows

Horror, Some whimsical stuff, , ,


Sift through the dark memories of a family farm where trees come to life. Run with a frightened young woman through quiet streets after a sinister priest’s smile clings to her like a spider’s web. Meet a convicted man who must flee the family of his victim in a dystopian nightmare. And visit a small Missouri town where a Nazi matriarchy lies silent, hidden, waiting – and they’re hungry.

“Road Closed: Twelve bloody stories to brighten your day” is Jason Offutt’s first book of short horror fiction, which includes the tale “A Just Cause” that won Best Science Fiction Script at the Los Angeles Film and Script Festival in 2011 as a screenplay entitled “The Balance.”

Luke Rolfes, author of ‘Flyover Country,’ says of ‘Road Closed,’ “Readers should put this book down at their own risk. Once these twelve sink in their teeth, it’s all over but the screaming.”

Now available as an ebook, and print.

Get Your Facts Straight

Horror

Bill and Ted, learning all about time travel and beer.

As an author, one of the things you need to strive for is accuracy. I don’t care if you’re writing a science fiction humor novel about conscientious time traveling drunks who jump through the years consuming booze that once led to, but will now prevent historic tragedies* – physics has to work, or, if it doesn’t work, there has to be a scientifically plausible reason WHY it doesn’t work.

Everything has to make sense. And in order for things to make sense, the author has to research things he/she doesn’t know. Here’s an article from Scientific American that points out a few scientific terms people often misuse. Get it right, people, and your readers will respect you for it.

*Totally my idea. Dibs.