[UA] an idea for UA junior

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Solis <omnimancer at yahoo.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:15 AM
Subject: [UA] an idea for UA junior


> I was thinking that with all the scary things lurking
> about in children's closets and such, perhaps a
> child's fear of being eaten by creepy-crawlies is not
> unfounded. What if there really were things out there
> that ate children? Why wouldn't parents notice? I
> think it would be because, like a lycanthrope
> changing, the universe would work retroactively to
> assume that the eaten child *never* existed. The only
> people that would notice the absence of the child
> would be their friends or something. I dunno, it was
> just an idea. Thoughts?

I started working on a modern horror comic which took this as the central
premise.  The Urban Legends we tell are indeed real, as are their victims.
Most of the time, the universe snaps, releasing the child from ever
existing, but the emotions experienced by the parent never really fade.
Thus, all the 'walking wounded,' who go through life horribly depressed.
Those with so-called social phobia have good reason to fear intimacy.  The
erasure isn't complete, because memories persist among those who knew the
child / person peripherally.  Thus, all we are left with are horribly
gruesome stories that actually happened to a 'friend of a friend.'

>
> Gobi
>
> Still hears things under his bed

I'll never forget watching SNL when I was seven or eight, and seeing the one
with Gilda Radner playing the little girl who keeps seeing monsters in her
room (which turn out to be friends of the father, a repairman who'd left his
toolbox, and a family of gypsies that were allowed to crash under her bed).
Finally, the father admonishes her to not make another sound.  As she waits,
cowering under the covers, the door opens, revealing a huge hulking masked
brute, carrying some instrument of carnage.  As a kid, it was a total
justification for all my fears, no matter how irrational.  I couldn't go
near a closet at night for months!



_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua