Because of my time on a reality show, I get to travel around the country appearing at comic cons and doing panels. It’s fantastic. I actually get paid for this stuff. At one of the convention panels, a young man, 13-ish, asked me if I had ever been frightened by my work. I laughed at first. My thoughts went to my early pieces I destroyed so there would be no visible proof of how bad I was. But then I realized he was talking about scare as in horror film scared and not necessarily being outed for some gruesome critters from my past.
Having got with the program, I remembered one really embarrassing moment in the shop—the freak-out. And yes, my creations played a role.
It was several years ago, I was working on a zombie project. I had cast a number of latex bodies and hung them around the shop. If you were to walk into the shop then, it would look like an art exhibit—George Romero at the Gallows. There had to be at least six zombies hanging by some long cord, and others on the tables. A definite sight.
I’d hung them up to make it easier for me to paint them. It was oddly happy-go-lucky in the shop that day. Surrounded by the undead, painting away, with my boy Huey Lewis on the radio. I was good to go.
I remember working on the details of a zombie’s rib cage when suddenly, Jacob’s Ladder, went off the air and was replaced by an ear-piercing emergency tone. It startled me at first—I mean, it’s intended to do that. It really ripped me out of the serene vibe I had going in the shop.
I remember taking in my settings at that moment. I’m surrounded by zombies when an emergency tone comes across on the radio. I laughed a bit. The cliched scene wasn’t lost on me. I shrugged it off, as one does, and went back to painting.
When the emergency tone did die off, there was no announcement. No, “This has been a test of the blah, blah, blah…” Just silence—odd.
Then, BOOM! I heard a shotgun blast outside the shop’s man-door. And everything went black. The power was out.
The tone was eerie all by itself. But that shotgun blast…that got my adrenaline going. The sudden darkness kind of amplified the situation. I mean, all at once like that. What the hell, man?
I got up, trying not to break my neck. Had to feel my way around the shop toward the showroom where I keep a mini flashlight hanging below a sign that we called “The Murder Sign.” With all that happening in a short space of time, I was pretty triggered. I’m not proud of myself, but on my way to the showroom I felt something brush my shoulder and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
I just think that was the final straw. My nerves just couldn’t put up with any more and I lost it.
I should’ve known I was surrounded by zombies—I put them there after all. So, I guess I should’ve been expecting to bump into one, but I didn’t. And to be honest, this zombie got pretty handsy with me. He was of a certain generation where that sort of thing was… No?
Again, I’m not proud of this, but I freaked out and went psycho ninja on this dead guy—thing—prop.
I took this thing to task. If I do say so myself, it was action-hero level. All the other zombies…they just stayed right where they were. They saw what I was capable of…let me tell you.
I finally settled down. I took a breath and laughed it off. It’s still dark. No light at all. I moved toward the showroom and grabbed the flashlight. I turned it on. I turned back toward the shop floor.
Now, I’d just had an altercation with a latex zombie, so I guess I should have expected it to be moving. That was another failure on my part. I see that clearly now. But again, I was in sensory overload. The zombie was swinging from the cord. I guess I caught sight of it on the return flight, because that sum-bitch looked like it was coming right for me. AGAIN!
There might have been some screams.
Disgusted, embarrassed, and pissed off, I said to hell with the work and I stomped out of the studio.
When I got back to the shop the next morning, there was a guy from the power company using a large pole to put a fuse in the transformer. The pole was pretty close to that man-door. Turns out the shotgun blast I heard was a squirrel meeting his end.
According to the guy from the power company, squirrels like to run along the power line and on occasion they get too close to the big fuse things near the transformers. When they touch them, the fuse explodes. It often sounds like a shotgun blast. The exploding fuse and dead squirrel were what caused the power to go out, and not some apocalypse the radio was trying to warn me about.
Oh sure, but where the hell was that explanation last night during the zombie attack?
I never did find out why the emergency broadcast came on the air. Since I never heard anything about an apocalypse, I assume it was just a test. Or was it? It was 2017, so an apocalypse didn’t sound all that far-fetched.
So, to answer that young man’s question—yes. My work has scared me at times under the right conditions. And I’d like to thank him for forcing me to relive that trauma.
Does your work frighten you? Share your experiences in the comments. They don’t have to be art-fear related. No squirrels were harmed in the writing of this blog post.