Victory, The Unfamiliar Taste: A Review Post

Judge feedback as we scrape by into the final round

“The Scream” by Edvard Munch, Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

We’re Moving On To The Finals!

We’ve managed to make to the third, and final, round of the NYC Midnight Scary Story Contest! Our story, “The Tree of Life”, managed to resonate with the judges and earn 3rd place for this round.

I’ll be honest and say that I was surprised! I worried we had gone too high-concept to properly spook anyone. Thankfully, the judges disagreed!

Words From The Judges

If you weren’t here for our last review post, the contest stipulates that three judges, labeled by numbers, decide the placement of stories in each group. And this time they were generous in giving a heap of critique!

What The Judges Liked

2480

The doctor's motivation in this story is so clear. We know both why he's gone off the rails and why he's asked his daughter to come back to the mansion.

2531

Overall, this is an excellent short story. The opening line functions as an excellent hook and the pay-off for this mystery (why would a building howl?) is genuinely horrifying. There's a great sense of Cronenbergian body-horror and the writer lingers on its description of this "tree of life." The writer has faith in the image's ability to horrify through description alone and so the prose doesn't tell the reader what to feel. The story is all the more terrifying for it.

2535

The imagery created for your scare element was genuinely harrowing, and landed with impact. You managed to combine both physical body horror and a layer of emotional distress, creating an effect that lingers on readers and adds depth to your characters. Finally, even as your magnate character is clearly obsessed with his new pursuit, there's a basis to this development, both in his technical capabilities to create this horror (being a successful doctor) and in the internal logic of his motivation. This creates a really compelling focal point for readers, since we're drawn to his perception of reality and can believe his arc, no matter how strange it may be.

What The Judges Feel Needs Work

2480

I'm curious how you might use Abigail's character and knowledge of the house to build in more specific details to make this story come alive and feel real. For example, since this seems to be her childhood home, I'm curious if she can tell us which room the tree is in instead of " a room." Similarly, when she arrives at the house and it's creaking and howling, I was a little confused if this was the house making this noise or something she was hearing from inside. I wondered, if this was her house growing up, could she make some comparison. "The house never made these kinds of noises before" or maybe the opposite, "The house always made strange sounds, but then again it was old." Something to clue us into her relationship and experience with the house then vs now. Word count is tight, and while I think the backstory and motivation is strong, I do think you can trim some of the exposition in the beginning. In a longer story, I love all the detail added here, but in a story as short as this, you might be able to trim things a bit. For example, the opening line might be shortened to something like "The house howled." Similarly, in the next paragraph you might trim and combine a bit. "Then Mother died and he became obsessed, eschewed practical research..." These are just suggestions and examples, but I think there are multiple ways you might both trim exposition and allow us some more personalized details from Abigail that lend credibility to the world.

2531

Overall, this is an excellent short story. One small note may simply be that, after the opening hook, there isn't a lot of attempt to disguise the direct exposition (an acclaimed neurosurgeon, since mother died etc). There's an argument to be made that the story would be just as effective without it (we can infer that the mother has died when we see her in the tree, easily infer that he's mad, and infer that he's obviously a brilliant scientist). In this iteration it would go from "I'd never heard a building howl" to "My hands hesitate." But if this is a bridge too far then simply cutting down on some of this direct exposition could make the opening a little smoother.

2535

While the initial paragraphs provide necessary context to the final scenes, a significant portion of the piece is given to exposition, which may take readers out of the story. For a more immersive effect, it might be worth tying that exposition with a physical experience in the story (for example, the daughter is reminiscing while walking through the house and interacting with it) or in dialogue, so that the reader stays within the character's perspectives, rather than being an observer looking in. Also, the impact you've already achieved with the scare might be heightened by creating a build up of tension, particularly between seeing the tree and realizing the late mother is part of it; this could be achieved by adding subtle clues to it, or letting the doctor expound on his theories to show how deranged he's truly become.

A Vicious Hacking

The judges were eminently fair this round. Some good points were made about the way we handled exposition, and I think Judge 2535 is right that the ending is a tad rushed.

I am also pleased to see that they found the imagery satisfying, and generally the fact that something as abstract as a brain tree managed to do well means there’s a lot of breathing room in the horror genre. But some of their feedback, especially around emotional cohesiveness of the doctor’s turn to madness, I can’t take much credit for.

The first version of this story was more invested in physical threat. The characters were a bit flatter, partially because I can’t help but write parodies of classic stories when presented with the chance. Frankenstein in particular was a favorite book in my childhood, and the many parodies over the years give a clear image of the “madman” that I enjoy writing over and over again.

So all credit goes to George for really reeling this one in! At least half the story was rewritten by his hand, and he incorporated feedback from various family and friends to bring this piece together. In his own words, the talent here was bringing in an emotional element while identifying the essential aspects of horror present in the original story.

So now we present the original, deeply campy, Tree of Life for your amusement.

Yggdrasil

I’d never heard a building howl before.

My hands hover over the knocker, hesitating, when suddenly the old oak doors burst into a fit of shaking, the long beams supporting that old mansion bending and creaking as the whole structure moans. I leap back instinctively, almost twisting my ankle on cracked stairs.

An earthquake? The untamed birch trees slowly invading the grounds lie utterly undisturbed. Perhaps it is just my heart that’s shaking.

Something is very wrong. What would an infamous medical magnate be doing here? My father should be touring the highest quality hospitals and research facilities, not some backwoods relic of a mansion on the verge of falling apart.

He said he changed, but I’m so sure it’s for the better. Three years we hadn’t spoken, since I’d found out where he was getting his test subjects. When he showed up again at my door, I was sure it would be to scold me for failing to find a husband, or remind me of his influence on my own career in medicine.

But the old man had gotten lonely. How convenient that only after making his fortune he realized that what he really wanted was connection. I almost shut the door on him, but the look in his eyes was unfamiliar. Manic. And for all my rage and disappointment, he was still my father.

And he said he’d changed. He said he had something to show me.

Cautiously, I knock. An impatient moment passes, and the door creaks open to reveal a woman.

At first I assume she’s father’s newest strumpet, but then I see her lab coat. Fresh crimson blotches over the brown of older stains. In places, the layers caked enough to turn black. I can’t suppress a shudder, but it’s not the coat.

It’s the eyes. Her manic pupils jittering, trying to escape the confines of her eyelids, just like father’s.

She exclaims, “Ms. Applebaum! We’ve been expecting you!” The mansion howls again, fresh cracks yawning as it shivers for a few seconds. “Your father is especially excited to see you.”

I extend a hand, hoping she doesn’t notice the tremor. “A pleasure, Ms?”

“Dr. Lind!” She ushers me forth. “Apologies for the secrecy. Our project simply demands it, as most revolutions do.”

There is a rhythmic breeze in the hallway. A breathing.

She continues, “Your father and I share a fascination with connection. In the newest biological theories, all life is revealed to share a single origin, and therefore a single purpose. In electric matter the universe knows itself! But that knowledge is split among so many different perspectives.”

The last door. And another howl. A howl is different inside the maw. The walls are rattling, and beyond the threshold of the door I hear a cacophony, like all the voices in the woods screaming.

She is unperturbed. She opens the door. “Behold!”

My brain scrambles to understand what I am seeing. Hundreds of animal faces droop from flesh branches, the backs of their skulls sawed open to expose the pinkish-grey brain-flesh. Greymatter stretches from each, tangling and stitching together to form a spongy, drooping willow tree, all in twirling place, as if to showcase every gaping face.

I retch. “What is this?”

“Knowledge.” She extends her arms, exalting. “Every perspective, every connection. Little insect, swimming fish, clever monkey, all one thinking machine.”

My eyes are caught between a hundred spinning faces. “How is it moving?! And why?”

“Ah, the majority of its body is actually below us. As for why, well exercise is always important for living things.”

The twirling stops. I see a familiar face.

I rush forward. “Father!”

It’s jaw trembles, chewing its words, “Ab-i-gaiiil”

The building is shaking. Lind pushes me aside. “It awakens!” She grasp’s father’s cheeks as she falls to her knees.

The floorboards creak and rise as dust hails from the ceilings. I am paralyzed even as my legs beg me to run.

She weeps. “Glorious Yiggdrasil!”

The floor opens beneath me, and a horrific, beating root is revealed as I scramble to avoid being falling in with the angling planks.

Lind is unphased. “Tell me, what is life’s meaning?”

The tree responded.

“PAIN.”

The mansion crumbles as the Tree of Life arises.

Last Thoughts

See, now isn’t that much goofier?

I had to be fought a little on this, but in retrospect, my friends were right: the physical threat of the tree is not as scary as the existential threat of being put in the tree.

The campy mad scientist was another character I was loathe to part with. My first love, after all, was comedy. But it is in cases like this that word limits actually promote better story telling, as this character was simply too difficult to salvage with 306 words to cut.

It’s truly a completely different story, and one of really three stories we ultimately scrapped in the process of developing “The Tree of Life”. And as the final round looms upon us, I shudder to think how many more works must be sacrificed upon the altar of edits.

The Horror!