Tropes

“Blood dripped from the ceiling down the walls...” The editor scratched his pen across the neatly typed words. “Who writes this drivel?” He sat upright in his wood and leather office chair behind a large oak desk as he leafed through the pages of the latest horror script. “Just once,” he muttered. “Just once I like to read a horror movie script that doesn’t involve blood and severed limbs. No eyes popped from their sockets. No hatchets embedded in walls. Just a nice story that scares the bejeezus out of people.”

He spent hours reading script after script, page after page of nothing but slaughter and blood letting by some vengeful spirit or other. Occasionally he would pause to stare at the clean white walls of his office and rub his temples. “Oh, look, more shambling zombies.” Several pages later, “aww, c’mon, everyone knows you have to double tap to make sure they are dead.”

The supply of scripts seemed endless as he worked through the night. By morning he had moved on to vampires. “I hate these modern vampires. At least a stake through the heart still kills them. Too bad bullets don’t. And what’s with the werewolves these days? They don’t seem to pay any attention to the phases of the moon. Huh. Modern writers and their new-fangled ideas about monsters.”

Outside, the sun shone brightly. A gentle breeze kept the temperature comfortable. But the editor remained inside. There were scripts to read, an endless supply of scripts full of tropes.