You know, I’ve always looked to Sheffield’s industrial past and thought there must be a good supernatural horror story or two lurking there. Sheffield’s heart is a dark, dead space filled with crumbling red brick buildings blackened with grime, and smashed factory windows. And it’ll remain like that forever, no matter how much “regeneration” they engage in. It’s our history. All those souls lost to industry. And through the middle of it all, making it possible, the river Don. Without the river, there’d have been no industrialisation of Sheffield. If that river was conscious, and it could speak, it would hate all of us. Without a doubt.
I mean, I won’t write that, but that’s the angle I’ll probably take. I love your idea! It’s the resentment of the natural world, personified in a single instance between a river and a man.
If effluent, toxic chemicals and waste from manufacturing processes can hurt and kill a river, I’m sure there’s an equivalent for a man. The body horror I’m evisaging is kind of taking you literally. I mean, sticks, stones and riverbed mud in odd places would be incredibly painful, perhaps even fatal. And especially if they just kept appearing. How long would this man endure something like that before he went along to the doctor? Would he? How would he hide it? When exactly would he get past the point of entitlement (once he realised what was happening to him) and decide that it was time to appease whatever it was he’d angered? Would it have a chance in hell of working? And that’s just first thoughts. Lots of evil potential! *rubs hands together*