h.p. lovecraft Archives — Kyle A. Massa

Just like the name implies, flash fiction is short enough to read in an instant. But if you’re not reading it, here’s why you should be.

Opinions vary on what length qualifies as flash fiction. Some markets say 300 words max, some say 500, others say 1,000. Whatever the case may be, flash fiction has to be really short—which is not to say incomplete. Rather, many flash pieces still have the elements of traditional literature (character, plot, conflict, setting), only they’re condensed. Think of them like shorter short stories.

The form has existed for quite a while, though it wasn’t known as “flash fiction” until 1992, when James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka published their anthology Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories. Despite the its relative mainstream obscurity, many high-profile authors have written flash fiction, including Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oats, Ernest Hemingway, and H.P. Lovecraft.

In many ways, flash fiction bears a strong resemblance to poetry. Some of my favorite flash pieces create a mood or feeling instead of focusing on narrative, just as some poems do. Others feature complete stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. It’s a flexible form, and one I enjoy very much. In fact, I included three flash pieces in my short fiction collection, Monsters at Dusk.

Thanks to the internet, flash fiction’s popularity has only grown. There are numerous online magazines devoted solely to flash fiction, and quite a few popular markets that publish flash from time to time. Just to name a few: Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and NANO Fiction.

If you’d like to challenge yourself as a writer, flash is a great way to do it. It might sound easy to write 500 words, but when you sit down and think about all the components of a good story, it can be difficult to cram everything in.

Furthermore, with such limited space to work with, your language must be razor sharp. In general, readers are far more forgiving of bland language in long-form narratives. It’s easy to skip a poorly-written section of a novel. But when a piece only lasts about a page or two, that poor writing sticks out like a fly in your drink.

Flash fiction is a unique form which will, in my opinion, only grow in popularity in the future. Word counts are shrinking, attention spans are decreasing, and concision is becoming more and more essential. Try some flash fiction and see if you agree!

Kyle A. Massa is the author of the short fiction collection Monsters at Dusk and the novel Gerald Barkley Rocks. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. He lives somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats.

The Babadook is not your average horror film.

There’s no gratuitous violence. There aren’t any jump-out scares. No blood. And–thank god–there are no dumb teenagers.

The Babadook is the story of Amelia Vannick (played by Essie Davis), a widow who lives alone with her troubled son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Amelia’s husband died on the same day her son was born, and neither of them have been quite right since. One night, Amelia finds a creepy book in her son’s room called Mister Babadook. The horror begins when the creature from the book stalks the family.

It might not sound all that scary from my description, but, trust me, The Babadook will frighten even the most experienced horror junkies. So what does this film do so well?

In a word: juxtaposition.

The Babadook pairs reality with fantasy, depression with home invasion, and suppression with the supernatural. Despite the poster and the synopsis, this film is as much about loss as it is about a monster.

Take writer/director Jennifer Kent’s interpretation of her own film, for instance: “Now, I’m not saying we all want to go and kill our kids, but a lot of women struggle. And it is a very taboo subject, to say that motherhood is anything but a perfect experience for women.”

It certainly isn’t for our main character, Amelia. Her husband died, she works at a job where she’s surrounded by death (a nursing home), and her son Samuel builds homemade weapons in the basement like a troubled little MacGyver. We can tell right from the beginning that the stress wears on her–and that much of her frustration is directed at Samuel.

As the film progresses and the Babadook invades the home, we see Amelia’s aggression heighten. The Babadook, in this case, represents Amelia’s suppressed anger; it’s no coincidence that it chooses to possess her and not her son. You’ve probably seen the moment from the trailer when Samuel shouts over and over, “Don’t let it in!” But his mother lets the Babadook–her anger–take full control, and that’s when things get even worse.

That is the power of fantasy. The Babadook is the personification of Amelia’s negative emotion, and a good one at that; if suppressed anger had a corporeal form, I’d imagine it wouldn’t be too pretty. Amelia sees the Babadook everywhere–in her home, at the police station, in her neighbor’s home. Here, writer/director Jennifer Kent gives us an important clue through the use of fantasy: Amelia can’t escape her negative emotions, no matter where she goes.

One of the coolest parts of the film is the use of montage. Not the kind of montage you see in a romantic comedy–I’m talking Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of film montage. Basically, the idea is that if you constantly show two images together in sequence, you can give both images a new, greater meaning. For example, if you show an image of a crying baby followed by an image of the grim reaper, you’ve given greater meaning to both images: you’re indicating that that baby might die, or you’re showing the passage of life, from the cradle to the grave.

Montage is a type of juxtaposition, and Kent uses it extensively with the Babadook and Amelia’s depression. We often see images of Amelia and the Babadook mirrored–Amelia holds a steak knife and the Babadook has knifelike fingers, for instance. Eventually, the real image and the fantastical one combine, and both transcend their original meaning: they represent a mother’s wish to kill her son.

The ending, to me, is the most intriguing part of the whole film. Amelia confronts the Babadook, and in doing so, she confronts the anger she feels toward her son and the depression she feels regarding her husband’s death. But, interestingly enough, that doesn’t actually kill the creature. The Babadook lives in the basement, chained up and weakened, but still alive. Amelia goes down to feed it, and the film ends.

What does this mean? Well, it’s certainly not the sort of happy ending we might expect. If we look back to classic works of horror, we see the recurring use of the subterranean to represent the subconscious (Lovecraft and Poe use this form of symbolism a fair bit). When you see people going down into the earth, it’s as if they’re traveling to a suppressed, secret part of the psyche.

Amelia’s basement serves the same role–she hides her negative emotions down in her subconscious mind, where they can’t hurt her or her son any more. For a while, at least…

You don’t need violence and blood to be frightening, and I think The Babadook proves that beyond a doubt. In this age of senseless violence and gratuitous gore, I was very happy to find a film that focuses on psychology rather than shock value. Writer/director Jennifer Kent uses fantasy to frighten us in a way that reality never could.

So if you decide to watch, I suggest doing it on a weekend. You probably won’t be getting any sleep.

Like creepy stories? You might enjoy horror story “Sightings.” It’s about a reporter tracking an angelic creature that brings with it a mysterious plague.

Tag: h.p. lovecraft

Why You Should Be Reading Flash Fiction

The Babadook and the Power of Fantasy

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