How would one write a work of horror fiction about Lawns?
I think there may have been a post saying this, but it's stuck with me: just as zombies, vampires, monsters, and serial killers embodied deep fears within culture at the time they were extremely popular, I think the iconic horror monster of the upcoming years might be the Backrooms.
No, no not like in the crappy indie games about the Backrooms, where there are monsters everywhere. I mean like in this youtube video where it is simply a quiet, empty, endless labyrinth of rooms that superficially appear to be human-made, but they have strange, arbitrary layouts and forms, and there is no sign of the essential processes of life—no food, no place to sleep, no recognizable living spaces.
The place itself is the monster. Though it appears familiar and human, it is as fundamentally hostile to human life as the surface of Mars. Though it appears like a place purposefully designed for human needs, none of the basic resources and facilities for meeting human needs are apparent. It is something much worse, much more indifferent and at the same time much more hateful, than an uncaring and unforgiving wilderness.
Imagine, then, a sidewalk bordered by uniform green lawn, running alongside wide stretches of asphalt road. Imagine the sidewalk continuing on to meet other sidewalks, branching and intersecting in strange, illogical patterns. Imagine broad stretches of uniform green under a relentless warm sun and blue sky, no birdsong, no insects.
Imagine green grass with no dandelions, no clovers, perfectly lush and homogenous, surrounded by sidewalks that separate other plots of flat green turf, all perfect, bordering curbs that drop off into roads which stretch steadily toward the horizon, surrounded by sidewalks and green grass, splitting off into other roads that travel through a similar landscape, green and crisscrossed with paths. In every direction, this is all you see.
You keep walking, steadily following the sidewalk. Sidewalks branch and meet each other strangely, sometimes diagonally crossing lush strips of lawn, sometimes pivoting to meet the street and resuming on the other side. Some stretches of road have a broad green median also covered with green grass. In some places, there are neat mounds of black mulch around the base of perfectly trimmed yew bushes. The sun is warm—very warm.
Any perceptible grade to the ground seems to lead to a storm drain, in which there is no sign of water. Water is all you can think about. How long have you been walking? Your surroundings appear the same. You finally notice a stretch of grass that appears to be freshly wet, as though recently watered, and you are nearly prepared to lick any moisture you can collect off the grass blades, but a strange thought stops you.
Why, you think, does this grass appear so spotless, uniform and green...?
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