I’m doing a thing with some people to do 31 horror story concepts within October…
SPOOKTOBER DAY #7 — Killer Animals
TITLE: Knife Goat
PREMISE: In honor of a certain absurd piece of Silent Hill concept art that never made it into a final game and is rather hard to dig up on internets at this point, I make a story concept about a goat walking on hind legs, holding a knife. A modern small city is having modern problems. Sex scandals, murders, drug issues, whatever. Suddenly a knife goat appears and publicly murders somebody. Everything goes berserk, everybody scrambling for explanations, conflicts spill over.
But sense prevails – nobody believes in that kind of stuff these days. A theory takes hold – it was this or that person in disguise. Things get back to normal. Then knife goat appears even more publicly and kills somebody else even more inexplicably. Conflicts and fury last a bit longer this time, but still sense must be maintained. People collect their wits, blame somebody specific and do a good job convincing themselves.
Then knife goat appears again, killing multiple people on live TV in broad daylight. Chaos engulfs the city and it quickly destroys itself. Knife goat wins. I’m sure there’s some fun way to depict that triumphal moment of reflection but it escapes me at the moment.
HORROR ELEMENT: Knife goat kills.
Concept Art for Silent Hill 4
SPOOKTOBER DAY #8 — Holiday Horror
TITLE: Nach Weihnachten
PREMISE: In honor of the song “Kling, Glöckchen” which invloves Baby Jesus acting like the floaty kid outside the window in Salem’s Lot, this tale would feature das Christkind floating outside people’s windows, begging them for an invitation. The children have been told that Baby Jesus won’t give them presents if they try to catch a peek, but what should they do if he shows up and asks to be let in? It would be rude to let him suffer in the cold. But they soon discover you should never invite a supernatural being into your home, even if he’s the infant incarnation of your savior.
HORROR ELEMENT: I don’t know, maybe he’s a vampire or something. His victims have to go to Elf Practice.
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I love knife goat. It really cuts to a modern dilemma, with a clever horror twist that I haven’t seen before.
Surely knife goat is just a digital creation, right? You can’t believe anything that you see on the mainstream media, after all. The traumatized, blood-spattered survivor’s of knife goat’s rampage and the grief-stricken family members of the victims’ families have to be crisis actors.
If a certain politician can publicly attempt to lie and bully his way into overturning the popular vote, with a whole bunch of people standing and pointing and saying “he’s trying to steal the election,” and people disbelieve it while it’s happening in real time, then I absolutely think that most people would believe knife goat was just fake news, even while he was stabbing the person standing next to them. Trenchant political commentary ftw!
I did not think of that stuff, but if a knife goat story ever comes to fruition, I must steal these ideas from you. You’ll understand, I’m sure.
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Steal away! I never have an idea shortage — just a time and energy shortage.
Actually, knife goat might be a bit too on-the-nose for our current situation.
What do you mean, I can’t go into that movie theater because a so-called “goat holding a knife” is running around stabbing everyone inside? All of those bleeding people lying around probably just had bad accidents — running with scissors, maybe.
You also claim that there are certain elementary anti-goat precautions I can take — how much did they pay you to say that? The real truth is that you are a lib*snip* who hates liberty and movie theaters. This is America, so my right to go anywhere I feel like must never be taken away. Freedom!
ideariffic!
GAS, you’ve gotten me thinking about knife goat all day.
What this story has made me realize is just how much living through the last five months or so has felt like living in a horror movie. Specifically, it has felt like the part in a lot of horror movies where a bunch of people are running after someone, screaming at him “Don’t open that door! If you open that door, there is a monster outside who will come in and kill us all!” And the person looks around at all the screaming people, and then opens the door.
It used to be that those scenes would spoil the movie for me. “Nobody would be that *snip* in real life,” I would think.
Now we know that just about 43% of the inhabitants of this country are that *snip*. Contemplating that figure is more terrifying than any horror movie I’ve ever seen.
The doctor on television says “Please, people, if you look out your front window and there is a goat standing on its hind legs on your porch, holding a knife, just don’t open your door, okay? We don’t have any more room in the ER because of all the stabbing victims.”
And these people are opening their door again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again….
Sorry I *snipped* a few words from your comments, just noticed you had some in there that run up against my comment policy, which I should probably make clear somewhere near the top of my page, haha. Glad you’re still enjoying the knife goat, friend. And honestly, if you wanted to steal the concept for yourself? Just let me know.
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Keep coming with these horror concepts — I’m really enjoying them!