In stories, someone who carries out an act of bravery, without any obvious personal reason to do so can create an important connection with the reader. The hero of a story either becomes the person you want to be or the person you want to be with. Either way, it creates a wonderful fantasy that can captivate a reader. In short, it builds “sick street cred.” Your hero can take your reader through the rest of the story, and the reader is happy to follow because they just love the hero so much.
What if we try a scenario like this.
I am a little lost. I am supposed to meet Sandra at some farm. We are going to go on the haunted wagon ride and buy some pumpkin pies. I doubt that I can get her to go in the haunted house. She may be 29, but she is terrified of the dark and people who threaten her with chain saws. Why do I always get lost? Why did I take Sandra’s ridiculously bad directions to some farm in the middle of nowhere? I see a farm ahead; it is the first sign of civilization that I have seen in 20 minutes. This place is very secluded, and it doesn’t seem to have any of the signs of a haunted ride or tons of city people parking their cars in an empty corn field. I’ll stop and ring the door bell. I hope someone is home. Nobody is answering the door, but I hear screams coming from the barn. Maybe I am at the right place. Perhaps I came into the farm at the wrong entrance. I’ll just go to the barn and ask where I can pay admission.
In the barn, I see a woman strapped to the wall with a dirty old rag in her mouth, fastened in with duct tape. Her eyes don’t have that sexy thrill of Halloween in them. I see genuine fear. She is missing a clump of hair from her head. This is real. Further in the barn, there is a man with some sort of circular saw standing over a woman who is laying on a table. She too looks bruised and beaten. This barn of horrors is missing the fun and sex appeal of Halloween. It is isn’t even scary. It is just crazy and disturbing. Instead of being the kind of place that makes you lock your doors at night, it’s the kind of place that makes you wish you didn’t live in a world like this. This just isn’t Halloween. It’s real. It’s real.
The man sees me and shuts off his saw. He walks over to me, pulling a butcher’s knife out of his belt. He is a bit smaller than I am, and he is not in very good shape, but I’m not trained in any sort of hand to hand combat, and this guy is about to carve me up like a piece of meat. Think fast.
“I love your haunted house. Where is the main entrance anyway? I haven’t paid my admission yet.”
“Haunted house?”
“Yes this is the haunted house on route 32, right?”
The woman on the table was screaming, getting louder and louder.
The man looks at me; he knows that I know.
“You come to my farm, off route 34, askin bout some tourist place on 32. Nobody gets that lost. Who sent you?”
I got that lost. Think fast, faster.
“OK, you got me. I saw you one time outside your farm. I saw the look in your eyes. With that one look. I could tell who you were. We can always tell our own kind. I followed you back to the farm but never came to visit. This is my first visit, and I’m so happy I was right. Please let me help you. Let me cut her, just a bit.”
“Who the hell are you?”
He runs at me with the knife, holding it to my neck. I can’t show him that I’m nervous. I can’t show my fear.
“I am you. I am just like you. Don’t you see? God brought us together. He brought us together to cleanse the Earth. We can do this. We can do this together.”
“No God sent you here.”
“Look into my eyes. You can see that we are the same. Look deeper. You will see. We can always tell our own kind. Look even deeper. Do you see now? Do you see that God wants us together?”
The woman strapped to the wall isn’t buying it. Her eyes have lost the horrible sense of terror. It has been replaced with hope. She sees my big, innocent, blue eyes. They couldn’t possibly look anymore innocent than they do. The man pulls the knife back and jabs it towards my throat. I’m getting ready for the collapse, but there is nothing. I feel nothing. I look down and see that he has jabbed the handle into my throat. He must have flipped the knife around before thrusting it forward.
“I see,” he says.
I take the knife from him.
He continues: “finish her like the pig she is.”
“I will. I will.”
I walk towards her with the knife. I look at her in the eyes and say: “someone has to die.”
Holding the knife high above her body I stand there and wait. The man comes close to me, puts his hand on my shoulder, like a father might do to a son.
“It’s her time. Go ahead. I’ve prepared her for you.”
I sweep the knife towards him. Stabbing him as hard as I can. I just aim for his body, hoping I don’t miss.
“No. It’s your time.”
He tries to pull the knife out, but he just collapses to the ground. I untie the woman on the table, but she doesn’t move. She just lies there shivering with the man’s blood sprayed across her body. Her eyes are soulless and dead. The woman on the wall has a relieved look on her face. Her humanity still exists, but like the woman on the table, I feel as though mine is lost. I am untieing the woman on the wall, taking the gag from her mouth. She hugs me and looks at my eyes, but I have trouble looking back at her’s.
“You are a my hero.”
“I just killed a man.”
Our character here is identifiable. A bit of an every-person that turned into an hero. This is the type of scenario that gets me interested and makes me want to read more.
How about you?
