I’m doing a thing with some people to do 31 horror story concepts within October…
SPOOKTOBER DAY #11 — Cyber’d Punkes
TITLE: Laserboys
PREMISE: Do you remember the plot of Max Headroom? I sort of barely remember it. There was some kind of special new TV broadcast that was very stimulating to viewers but occasionally made their heads explode. When a reporter is about to find out he hits a “maximum headroom” sign on his motorcycle. Yadda yadda, his brain is uploaded and turns cartoon, he wakes up and hijinks ensue. Anyway, cyberpunk. It’s punk, but also cyber.
I think… Laserboys. Laserboys ride around on cool motorcycles like that guy in Akira, do cyber drugs, and get into dust-ups with rival gang the SeedyRoms, and also the cops. Everything is copacetic, in a sort of nihilistic way, until Shiny Torso gets abducted for medical experiments. The gang’s lieutenant Jackson Smackson realizes he does believe in one thing in life – love. He’s gotta rescue his boy.
This is too similar to Akira so far, now that I think about it. So… The medical experiment gives Shiny a new laserplague. When the gang bails him out, he starts to get symptoms – and infect other people. His fever is hot enough to melt steel, he’s barfing up boiling photons, setting the world on fire. The Laserboys can’t help but cause destruction everywhere they go. They fight their way back into medical facility to look for a cure.
Only Jackson and Shiny get the cure, the other guys all dying in dramatic ways. By the time they get out of the facility, other laserplague victims are blowing up the city. Can true love survive the laserpocalypse?
HORROR ELEMENT: Where does the flesh end and the laser begin? All matter must become energy once more.
SPOOKTOBER DAY #12 — Cult
TITLE: The Passion of Adonis
PREMISE: A medium sexy guy with no scruples and a knack for getting his way starts a sex cult. It begins with a MLM about juice cleanses or something, but he realizes by fronting like he’s some kind of perfect specimen of humanity, he can get all his followers to sexually service him for magic points.
It’s all cool for him, until his high priestess starts making prophesies that he did not conceive – ones that involve him making some kind of supreme sacrifice. It stirs up the followers so he runs with it at first, but as the hour of his crucifixion nears, he’s like… nuh.
HORROR ELEMENT: Get thee on the cross, beautiful man.
–
Blipverts! That was what made people’s heads explode.
The thing about #12 is that horror is only horrible if we care about the person who is threatened. If we don’t care, we’ll be rooting for the horrible death.
Blipverts! Love it. I saw a little trailer for it more recently on yewchoob, but the actual experience I have of watching the show is from the 80s. Kid me loved it, as I recall. I loved Matt Frewer’s screen persona, don’t know why. I thought Max Headroom was cool, but I liked reporter man too.
Bruce – There are horror genres that don’t rely on us caring about the victims. How well those genres work is personal – easy to imagine finding it completely unscary or uninteresting.
–