Horror is where a boy never grows up and the world just gets stranger, more complex and never seems to know it. The stories are a boy at 9 twirling into his last/best Christmas, an aging man who has held onto a teenage monster icon as the only friend and November ritual, along with over 30 more, including revelations of a knife fight with my best friend, in 8th grade; a father's coming to terms with his butterfly son's heritage; a boy's ultimate sacrifice in the town in the cellar, for his mother's salvation; a boy's love of Leatherface and a family's surprise; a most human monster conjured from innocence and sublime beauty. A collection I wish I had read when I was, say, in my 15th summer, on my front porch swing, Coke near me, and winter inside the words transforming me.
The Teenage Frankenstein has haunted me starting at age 9 when I first saw the poster at my hometown theater. and the lobby cards and stills in Famous Monsters of Filmland. I would not watch horror movies, though The Twilight Zone, which scared me, was different, it spoke to me such wonders, starting with Rod Serling's beautiful dialoge that often left me weeping. When The Teenage Frankenstein and The Teenage Werewolf played The Capitol in my town, I made sure to walk to school out of my way past those posters and then on my way home again.
I had nightmares of The Teenage Frankenstein, which got into my viscera more, breaking in my front door, so I mapped out my route of escape from my room, past sharp corners, a huge easy chair, through heavy curtains, to the back door which always stuck, down the rickety wood steps to my tiny back yard witth cement pads for stepping---i would have been dead in five seconds.
In time I learned to love horror movies and books and TV shows, but always The Teenage Frankenstein never left, so each Halloween when I watch his movie and many others, I consider him an old friend who still scares me like always. I had never read a story about him, and thought it was time someone did. And that is what follows.
"Body of a boy, face of a monster,soul of an unearthly thing"
Dedicated with love to Whit Bissell.
