© Horrified Magazine
Some sad news I’ve heard recently is that Horrified Magazine, the ‘British horror website’, is closing down. Dedicated to media – films, television, plays, novels, short stories, comic books, etc. – involving the macabre and produced in the United Kingdom, Horrified has been a prime source of entertaining reading and valuable information during the past few years. A newly-appeared message on its main page informs readers that “From late October 2022, this website will no longer be updated with new content. Feel free to browse until such a time as the website is taken down.”
Horrified contains a short-story section, in which I’ve had two items published under the pseudonym Jim Mountfield, the name I put on my scary fiction. Both of these should still be accessible until the plug is finally pulled on the site. Therefore, this is your last chance (at least for a while) to read the following…
© Horrified Magazine
Published in 2020, Don’t Hook Now is a story set in the near-future where advances in technology, especially in the field of virtual reality, make it possible for people to take part in scenes from movies – the technology simulates the scenes, interactively, around them. For bona fide film fans, this would be magical. Imagine being on that rooftop near the end of Blade Runner (1982), beside Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) when he delivers his heart-breaking ‘tears in rain’ monologue, or being at the airport for the climax of Casablanca (1942), when Rick (Humphrey Bogart) says goodbye to Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). However, human nature being what it is, I suspect such wondrous technology would end up being used for trivial, if not sordid, purposes. Thus, Don’t Hook Now features an app that allows people to take part in simulations of sex scenes from certain movies, and is used by lowlifes, sociopaths and perverts in pursuit of their thrills.
Don’t Hook Now’s subject matter was such that Horrified decided to give it a trigger warning and recommend it only for ‘mature audiences’. In my opinion, though, the main reason for recommending it to mature readers was because only people of a certain age would be familiar with the masterly 1970s British horror movie that gives the story its grim twist later on.
© Horrified Magazine
From 2021, meanwhile, is Where the Little Boy Drowned, which belongs to a sub-genre I like to think of as ‘constant jeopardy’. This is where the main character or characters spend the whole story, or most of it, trapped in a dangerous situation where the odds are stacked against them getting out of it alive. I won’t give too much away about Where the Little Boy Drowned, other than to say that its plot includes include a length of rope and a flooded river. There’s also a supernatural element to it, with a faint nod to Japanese horror films – J-Horror – and particularly to Takashi Shimizu’s 2002 chiller Ju-On: The Grudge.
So, for a little while longer, Don’t Hook Now can be accessed here, and Where the Little Boy Drowned here.
And thank you to the staff at Horrified for all their hard work these last few years.