The Survivors Club

Every writer has his dream book, the one he’d love to write but they know they probably never will.
Or, as Clive Barker once told me, “There are poems that poets write, and there are the ones they talk about in pubs.”
For me, it’s The Survivors Club — the one that I’m destined to talk about in pubs.
I only tell you this because I trust you. It’s late, getting close to last call. What’s a little confidential shop talk between friends?
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’m never going to write The Survivors Club because I know in my heart that, barring some miracle of talent enhancement, I’ll probably never be able to pull it off. Not to mention the legal practicalities of…well, you’ll see.
Boiled down to its essence, the story is this. Regular guy meets a nice girl in New York City. Asks her out. They start dating, Things are going great. And after a year or so, he decides to take the plunge and asks her to marry him. She’s head-over-heels for the guy and says yes.
There’s just one silly little thing, it’s really not a big deal at all, but she asks if she can introduce him to her friends.
Our guy says that he’s already met her friends. They’ve been dating for a year now, after all. No, the girl says, these are her other friends — her very closest friends, five other women that she meets every month for drinks. She hasn’t mentioned them to him before because, well, it’s a sensitive issue. And up till now she’s wanted to respect their privacy.
So he goes to meet her friends. And they are:
Laurie Strode. Nancy Thompson. Sally Hardesty. Kristy Cotton. And Alice Anderson.
The sole survivors from the original Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hellraiser and Friday the 13th.
The survivors club.
Going around the table, our guy recognizes the names. Of course he does. These women are pop culture heroines. Survivors of urban legends. Goddess of the summer camp slaughter, the road trip from hell, the babysitting nightmare gone horrifically wrong. Up till now he always thought that they were just characters in movies.

Only now he knows that the movies themselves were real. And the legendary monsters that these women somehow managed to outwit — Freddy, Michael, Pinhead, Leatherface, Jason — actually existed. They have the scars — emotional and physical — to prove it.
Which brings our regular guy back to his own fiancee.
Which is when she tells him about the Hook.
A deranged fireman, hideously disfigured after an high school arsonist’s prank, who made it his business to hunt down and murder all those involved in his mutilation. When she was a teenager in upstate New York, she managed to outwit the Hook, surviving the indescribable nightmare of vengeance that he wreaked throughout her town.
And she came here to the city.
Found others of her ilk.
Found solace.
Or so she thought.
See, part of the deal that these six women made to rid themselves of their demons was a pact. To remain single for the rest of their natural lives. To stay unattached to anyone, relying only on themselves and their battle-hardened ranks. So that they would never have to put another innocent life at risk.
And never lose someone they cared about again.
Until now.
Which is when we find out that, as part of this infernal deal, by breaking the circle of survivors, our main character inherits the worst and most deadly traits of all the killers that these women have supposedly survived.
Like I said…
Unwritable.
But lots of fun to talk about at the pub.
So bottoms up.
This one’s on me.

Joe Schreiber is the author of Chasing the Dead, Eat the Dark, and No Doors, No Windows. He was born in Michigan but spent his formative years in Alaska, Wyoming, and Northern California. He lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife, two young children, and several original Star Wars action figures. You can read even more of Joe on his blog, The Scary Parent.