Russ seemed like a dream come true
for a while, especially for my mother, but for me as well. He was a long-haired rocker, ten years younger than my mother (my wife can attest to the virtues of that particular arrangement, I assure you), his family was cool as hell and above all, he was there. They got married in a mass ceremony hosted by the local hard rock station and he worked occasionally as a roadie for an Eastern US/Canada party band called Nik and the Nice Guys. I had a lot of complaints about that time of my life, but looking back it made me who I am, set me up to laugh at struggles that drive others to their knees and generally speaking, I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. The first couple years of it, at any rate.Eventually, Russ started in with the domestic violence against my mother, just like all the others. If this was a Lincoln Crisler story, the female protag would be giving off some sort of pheromone that drove men to commit violence against her. I don’t know how many times I had to call the police, or how many times one of my mom’s friends would come over and run him off. Eventually, he moved into his own apartment on the far side of the same building and my mom filed for divorce. When we moved across town after that, we never saw Russ again except for a couple times walking around downtown Rochester, from the far side of the street. Overall, this serves as a nice, long answer to that question many of my colleagues and I face: Why do you write horror?
How the Hell could I not?
