Week 1 Storytelling: The Holiday Nightmare

Bill Johnston

“Holiday Home” Map Story

            Jerry and his friends could not wait for finals to end as they had finally planned the ski trip of their dreams for their senior year. They were traveling to an old cabin in the mountains of Alaska for two whole weeks. This trip was going to be one of those stories they would tell their kids when they got older and talked about “The Good Ole Days”, or at least that is what they thought. However, once they arrived at the cabin they soon realized their holiday home was not at all what they had expected and was in the middle of a deserted mountain with only the bare essentials inside. Jerry’s best friend Ford decided that he would go out and search the surrounding area for any other homes or visitors that were also skiing the mountain over the holidays. The first thing he noticed was relatively close to their cabin, in the distance it looked like an old Native American teepee, however, it was actually a very small replica of the Egyptian Temples. Engraved above the front doors read “Temple of Doom”. All of the sudden he began to hear the echo of screaming from inside the temple, naturally this freaked Ford out and he went running back to the cabin informing the guys they needed to leave immediately. The third man on the trip, Blake, did not believe any of this. He decided he would go and find the nearest people so they could have people over to the cabin that night for a kickoff party to their trip. Blake went stumbling pretty far down some old trails and came upon a mansion up in the mountains. From the outside it appeared to be an old castle of some sort. Blake knocked at the front door but it appeared to him that it was abandoned. He decided to go exploring on his own and soon realized the castle was haunted. As he made his way through the castle doors were slamming behind him while items began falling from the ceiling and off of the walls. Screaming and running through the castle he eventually made it out alive and ran all the way back to the cabin. Jerry, in disbelief, listened to his friends recite these ridiculous tails. He figured his friends were playing a sick joke on him so he went to prove them wrong. He could hear a man’s voice off in the distance so he followed it. He found a nice man with an axe chopping down trees. He assumed the man was chopping firewood and they began talking. Jerry was telling the man about the trip and his friend’s ridiculous stories. The man chuckled and asked for some help carrying the firewood back to his house up the trail. Jerry gladly helped the man. When they got back to the house jerry noticed the axe was stained with blood and the house was actually a slaughterhouse full of chains and other axes. Jerry turned to run away when the man grabbed him from behind. The man tied him down to a table and then grabbed the axe. He swung the axe high in the air, as Jerry lay there helpless. The axe was beginning to come crashing down on Jerry when their flight landed in Alaska and shook him awake. Now Jerry was ready to have the best holiday season of his life.

Author's note: I honestly just kind of made this entire thing up while sitting on my couch and started typing. Most of my motivation came directly from the map because I thought it just naturally setup for a terrifying environment. However, the idea of making the entire story a dream is just something that i have always like in movies or in novels. I am a big fan of movies that throw a big twist in at the end to say the entire plot was fake or made up for some reason.This is a tool that is very thought provoking in storytelling because it allows the author to be extremely out of the box with his or her creativity. Along with the creativity it really makes the reader think about what the author was intending to do with such a big plot twist. Then you have the question, was the entire reading of the story just a big waste of time since it was all a dream or since the entire plot was made up, or is it that more interesting? A huge influence on this story was the plot of my favorite movie, "The usual Suspects". It is an outstanding film that I would go into detail about but will not in fear of giving away anything too specific. Referenced Tom Gauld's Holiday Home for: Axeman, Haunted Castle, Slaughterhouse, and Temple of Doom. 

Old Log Cabin 

Source: Wikipedia Commons