Silence in the Night (A Chuck Wendig Challenge)

This week’s challenge: 1000 words on the thing that scares you the most. It’s strange, but maybe I was braver when I was younger, or maybe not smart enough to be afraid. As I get older, I find myself fearing things more. Afraid of not being able to pay the bills. Afraid of my children getting hurt. Afraid of something happening to my parents. Afraid of my own aging body. Afraid of my government. So yeah, the trick isn’t to not be afraid, but to let the fear be the emotion that solely drives you. Because a healthy sense of fear is a good thing. It keeps you alive. It keeps you from doing really stupid shit.

But fear that paralyzes? Fear that makes you hurt someone else simply because your fear turns to anger? That’s the dangerous stuff we all need to be on the look out for.

As always, comments are welcome and appreciated. (And yes, this is quite a bit under the 1k limit, but I like how it came out regardless)

On Horror

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”- Stephen King

What defines the horror genre? What sets it apart from the rest of speculative fiction?