by LE Francis
Horror as a genre is an exploration of the grotesque, weaving story through terror-inducing beats that reframe & re-establish our connection to our innermost fears & suppositions. It is a genre of provocation, challenging us to determine if we could withstand a situation stacked with seemingly insurmountable circumstances, or to wonder if we would be stupid enough to fall into the trap to begin with. & in our rough calculations of risk & reaction, it’s easy to lose sight of our human vulnerability, of the way inner & outer landscapes often mirror each other.
When you’re sitting in your recliner, it’s easy enough to downplay the effect that terror has in decision making. & there’s perhaps nothing as singularly terrifying as realizing that you have fallen for someone. Love or attraction or whatever the hell you’d call it is easily the most insurmountable circumstance, the most obvious trap. & with that, I can’t help but see it there, tangled in the mythos of the demonic, the monstrous. & at perhaps the perfect confluence of the possession & zombie sub-genres is the Evil Dead series — specifically Evil Dead 2.
Why does the comparison work perfectly on a macro level? Easy. There is nothing more absurd than falling in love. It’s the most clownish thing that could happen to an otherwise perfectly logical person. Absurdity itself is a philosophy that argues there is no necessity for order in the universe, that the day-to-day function of life is without meaning, & that nothing needs meaning to simply be. Meaning is a human construct & so are love, attachment, romance, lust. Life is terribly non-linear & nothing quite wraps up the way you’d wish it would.
As authors, we sweat for our romances to tie up nicely, all their edges tucked into symbol & myth-building. We use every word wisely. But love is a comet coming at an almost unrecognizable clip, love is a sudden squall, love is meaningless & destructive. Still we are driven by it, we are made with it, we wake each day in hope of it. & in my experience “being hit by cupid’s arrows” is more like being choke-slammed by a particularly soulful set of brown eyes. Nobody needs that. I certainly didn’t, I was just trying to drink my fucking breve and write a poem in response to Gary Krist’s “White Cascade.” I didn’t even know who or what had happened to me in the moment, but I’d spend a couple of years reading too many corny books trying to make sense of it.
I don’t know how many times I’ve told myself I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, that I had to be misconstruing the whole damned thing; how many times I convinced myself that I could just take a shovel to the thing & bury it in the woods. But brain’s got hands & it kept coming back for more… Dead by dawn, motherfucker I wish! There’s nothing more stupid than catching feelings, especially at first sight, but there’s an absurd humor to it. It reminds you that you’re not as smart as you think you are, that nothing makes sense, that everything is made up & we only try to ascribe some sort of meaning to our lives in retrospect, to give continuity to an otherwise unrelated blear of chaos & busywork in order to feel as if our world has some sort of structure.
I’ve gotta get a grip on myself here… & perhaps the most vivid way that the possession story of Evil Dead 2 mimics the process of falling in love is the extreme loss of agency, of no longer trusting yourself & your body to do the things you know are best for you. & it gets worse, Ash’s reality melts around him, his environment is mocking him, attacking him — hell, his own hand gets a few licks in. & I can’t say how many strays I’ve caught from signs on the side of the road — why does he have to have such a common name? — how many times I got twisted up over the stupidest shit that reminded me of something. But it’s beautiful after all, a type of grief, the haunted piano playing as a mockery of the lover dances on the hill; my mind barfing out poem after poem about how the moon is only a reflection of the sun’s light as I cry to an episode of Trailer Park Boys where Private Dancer & Ricky get into a pissing match over a morning reveille played on a “bugle trunket.”
& I know this is a stupid way to be, I’ve confronted myself a thousand times. I’ve screamed in my own face. I’ve tried to proverbially chainsaw off the parts of myself that betrayed me, knowing that the only thing that would feel ever feel right in their place is a weapon I could use to swipe back at the world that taunted me. & no matter how many times I tried to sever a piece of myself to cure the affliction, I knew deep down that the best I could expect has always been my own hand giving me the bird before the walls firehosed me with blood & laughed at me. But I am not the same bitch, nor is Ash. Sure, consciousness in general has become an extreme exercise in discernment, but I’m just out here, discerning.
So at this point in the narrative, nothing makes sense (I always gotchu on this account), we are mangled & mocked & know exactly how stupid we are & how stupid it has always been to put up a fight on this account. But as with an evil refrain that turns you into a bloated, white-eyed zombie host of a Kandarian Demon, love is nothing if not an agent of change. Sometimes you have to bring yourself to dismember the corpse of who you used to be, less it comes back as Sweet Henrietta, trapped in a fruit cellar with an unquenchable thirst for fresh souls. Love is not for the weak, but take heart — this has been happening to the best of us since the beginning of time & somehow most of us find a way to survive.
Sometimes we come out of it our best selves, a shotgun-wielding badass with a chainsaw hand — gimme some sugar baby! But it takes a sense of mastery, of mind-ripping repetition. How many times will I look the things that were & shall be again in their blank, festering little eyes & say – you already told me dead by dawn & several nights have passed, fuck off already! We have survived & we are changed & dawn has a different look to it, maybe a little bloodier than we remember it & some of the blood is green, so that’s a science thing. I don’t know how to say it any other way than the world is more beautiful now that I know he’s out there in it. & unfortunately, that means I’m going to keep writing my stupid poems & making horny playlists to cry to.
The truth of it may be that I have an efficient imagination & the strong instincts of a community college English professor with enough caffeine in their bloodstream to kill an elephant & whenever I encounter anything, I can make it about anything else because that is the the way my brain works — in connections, in comparisons. & there is comfort there, these are constant reminders that I too am part of the world & function as such. So, when I watched Evil Dead 2 the last time I may have been a little too silly, sentimental, low-key irritated with myself for seeing love everywhere because of some spicy eye contact followed up by a couple of quick conversations years later & I may have talked big shit & said I’d write an essay even though I don’t really write essays. But as Ash ultimately accepts his fate and fights his way back to some semblance of normalcy to be the most bad-ass clerk to ever hit the salesfloor, I guess I’m just silly now, I’m a silly poet & a terrible essayist or whatever the hell this is — I did have an outline & an idea at one point I promise.
Anyway, this is a very silly thing to have written, sorry about that. Back to work!
LE Francis (she/her) is not a serious person & this is is only an essay about Evil Dead 2 in spirit. She tried to write a serious essay & cracked up, cried a few times, ate some ice cream, then did this instead. She is on the internets at nocturnical.com.
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