Becoming a dad has changed me in many ways. I take health insurance more seriously than ever before. I always get anxious when I hear my kids cough and this was before Covid was in the picture. I have to learn to live with the concept that I stand between my kids and manifold dangers. Welcome to parenthood.

Some guys used to read horror then stopped after having kids. All too soon, the fictional horrors they read about became too real and it became easy to imagine what would happen to their children. It freaks me out too but I still read horror. I don't watch as much as I used to since I don't think my kids are ready for scary movies. For me, horror has become more cathartic. Seeing kids in danger in any film genre, besides anything goofy, pulls at my heartstrings.

In both the books and their adaptations, Stephen King's Pet Sematary and It always get me. How many times have I wished that Louis Creed was able to save his son from that truck? How often have I wished that Georgie just let his sailboat go down the drain and go home? I have two boys, one of them 3 and the other 14 months old. The deaths of the boys in those stories are more real to me because they bring out my paternal side. I'm a helicopter parent. I hover around my kids, ready to protect them from. . .well, anything. It's irrational but fear isn't the most reasonable of emotions. King's ability to make me relate to his work makes him a powerful writer, not just an entertainer. His works achieve depths of tragedy that bring Shakespeare's plays to mind. King doesn't have Shakespeare's poetry but he has the Bard's pathos. To me, tragedy is a vital trademark to horror that really resonates. The horror ceases to be just entertainment and helps the reader empathize, seeing the reality of others around us. Entertainment is the primary function of fiction but in order for it to be more effective it has to get us on more than one level.

On a similar note, I read The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum last year. I avoided it for a long time because stories that focus on rape get under my skin. Then again, this book is often cited as Ketchum's best work and I wanted to see what I was missing. Ketchum wrote about the imprisonment, torture, and exploitation of Meg, a teenage girl, without pulling any punches. Ketchum was also a decent guy with a moral center and he based this book on a true story asking the question, "what would you do if you were in the narrator's position?" I decided that if I was going to read the book it would be to build empathy for Meg, not to read it for a simple thrill. As a result, the story was compelling and terrifying. It also helped me to see more clearly why this crime is so awful. By extrapolation, I could imagine Meg's pain, humiliation, and despair. I cried for her. I was enraged. I wanted to save her. Ketchum's writing was so powerful that my heart reached out to her. I think it was important to face the ugliness in that book because my wife and I want a daughter and we will have to face the possibility that she might encounter dangers like this. If anything, a story like this can keep one alert and avoid complacency. If it helps me keep my kids safe from predators I can only be more grateful.

These stories help remind me to treasure my kids and what I might need to sacrifice to protect them. It makes the stories more personal.

Written by Nicholas Montelongo

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