Sometimes I Scare Myself

I was going through some old files on my hard drive tonight and...no, that isn't code for looking at porn. Anyway, i ran across something that made me laugh, so I decided to post it here. By way of context, a couple of years ago, I took a class in how to write horror fiction. One of the assignments was to write 10 opening lines/paragraphs for short stories. These were mine:

Ryan Mashburn
Horror Writing
Assignment 1: 10 Opening Lines
1. It’s not exactly like flipping a switch, you know, ending the world, but it is pretty easy.

2. “God damn it,” Claire mumbled, kicking the bloody carcass away from her, “Why do they always have to look so human?”

3. Have you ever seen the inside of your own body, without the help of an x-ray?

4. My eyes hurt, the way old scars do when it gets humid.

5. It’s raining outside, the kind of rain that makes you want to put on a straw cowboy hat, steal a Camaro and cross the border at sundown, looking for a beach where you can drink cheap tequila and pretend that nothing’s wrong.

6. The room smells like old blood and rotten leather.

7. You’re feeling it aren’t you? That little pang of excitement, the subtle aftertaste of fear. You think you can handle it. Take the chains off and find out.

8. I can honestly say I never believed him, never thought he was anything but a daffy old coot, until I saw him there, splayed out on the floor like a frontiersman’s bearskin rug.

9. When I was young, I would look up at the stars in wonder, dreaming about flying between them, about weightlessness and light speed; now I just wish the sun would never set.

10. I never would’ve pegged Bobby Smiles for a prophet, but the little fucker was right, he didn’t live through the day.