Meet Jim Ringel the newest victim of the
Bwahahaha Halloween Interview
and fellow CQP author.
Be afraid, be very afraid!
You're the last person to die in your favorite horror movie, what's the name of the movie and how do you die?
My favorite horror movie of all time – Nicholas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW. Imagine it. You live in an English manor with a pond on the property. You’re married to Julie Christie, and you have a beautiful four year old daughter. Until one rainy day, your daughter drowns in the pond. She’s dressed in her favorite red cape, which weighs her down and pulls her to her death. You frantically wade in after her, but it’s too late. She’s dead. Julie blames you. She grows cold toward you, and delusional, insisting the girl can’t be dead, asking how could you let her die?
To help your family heal, you move them to Venice, where the city is plagued by a series of murders, and where you are haunted by glimpses of a young girl, in a red cape, running from you in the night. About an hour and a half into the movie, you follow that Little Red Riding Hood girl. You do not believe your daughter is still alive, but Julie insists she is, and that you’re not looking for her hard enough. So you follow that girl into a dark church, which is abandoned and undergoing renovation.
There you corner the girl in an upstairs choir loft. She laughs, and when she does she sounds just like your daughter. You ask why she ran, and she turns to face you. She runs toward you. Only now you realize, she’s not your daughter. She’s no little girl at all. She’s a witch, and she carries a long blade, and she slices your neck as you kneel down, imploring her to come back to the land of the living, while all this time she’s been luring you to the land of the murdered, and the dead. That’s my favorite horror movie, although I have a few others.
In a remake of one of Friday the 13th movies – you play Jason – what would be your method of execution for all your victims?
In the dark of the night, I would visit my victims in their homes. Ringing their doorbells, I’d wait on their porches until they invited me in. I’d sit at their kitchen tables. I’d take my hat off, but not my coat, I’d keep my coat on just the way it was.
I’d open my brief case, and I’d pull out brochures, and paperwork, and I’d go into a lengthy presentation on the necessity for insurance. I’d spend all night, into the wee hours of the morning, selling them – whole life, property & casualty, health, auto, flood. And before it ended, I’d pitch them on burial insurance too. There’d be paperwork to fill out, and fine print. Little squinty fine print. And lots and lots of riders. Endless amounts of riders.
In a remake of Halloween, you are one of the victims – describe the scene and your grisly death.
So I’m down at the asylum, and I figure, “Well, it’s got to be safe here, because it’s Halloween, and that means Mike Myers escaped again.” So I decide to celebrate and make myself a sandwich. I notice the cafeteria has my favorite white bread, and there’s slimy pink baloney in the fridge. Except on the package it’s spelled Bologna, like the way that character actor, Joe Bologna, spelled his name in the credits of these forgettable movies he was in during the seventies, and the eighties, and the nineties (he never went away, he was in everything), until he eventually wound up doing voice work for animated features in the 2000’s.
I pile that bologna on thick, just like Joe Bologna used to do when performing one of his roles, and I slather Joe with mayo. And then I eat. By the time I’m half way into the sandwich, only then do I realize that the mayo’s gone bad. My stomach gurgles. I double over. I can’t breathe. An ambulance comes and takes to me the local hospital, where all the doctors are dressed like nurses, and all the nurses are dressed like they’re dead, because, you know, it’s Halloween, and even doctors and nurses got to let of a little steam. The guy at the admission desk tells me my insurance only lets me check into a semi-private room, which I have to share with a guy named Myers. I’m nervous now. I ask if I can have a sandwich. A guy in a mask tells me I’m not going to need one. I’m feeling too sick to ask why not.
In a remake of the 1974 movie Young Frankenstein – which character would you play and why.
I’d play the blind hermit who the Frankenstein monster meets after escaping the castle, because I never saw Young Frankenstein, so being a blind guy seems most appropriate.
In the Walking Dead, you and another character have survived the zombies, so far. You're on the move, but the individual with you is a wimpy scaredy cat, but oh so hot, still they keep drawing attention to you and your position and it's almost certain they will get you killed. What do you do - leave them for the zombies and save yourself? Or take pity on them, because their hotness makes up for their stupidity, and teach them not to be a wimp? Or do you have another solution.
Stupidity quickly cools the “hot” in any woman. She’s bait. Send her left; I’ll go right. Let her give herself away to the zombies, not me. Once they got her though, I’d circle back to see if her “zombiazation” has made her any hotter than before, and perhaps less annoying.
You're headed to a Masquerade party as your favorite horror character and at midnight, you are transformed into your character until sunrise. Who is this character and how many victims would you claim by sunrise?
I’m dressed as Senator Ted Cruz. I wear a huge Ted Cruz head, only not as big as Senator Cruz’s actual head because that would make it hard to maintain balance. At midnight I turn into Ted Cruz. I snicker endlessly at the misfortunes of others. I recite lines that I memorized back in high school debate class. I have a self-delusional concept of my own importance because people tell me I am the smartest politician in all of Texas. In the morning, when I’ve been transformed back into my original self, I hear an empty wind blowing through the vast wasteland of ruin which surrounds me, which before I arrived they used to call America.
Share with us your scariest ghost story – or nightmare – or tell us what scares you the most and why.
Years before finishing my first novel, and perhaps it was even years before I started writing at all, I had a dream that I was giving birth. And that seems odd, because I’m a guy, and guys don’t give birth all that frequently. I remember how cramped I felt – dare I say, constipated – and that it took a long time, although it was dream time, so not really too long.
And when I’d finished, I looked down over my belly through my spread-apart knees, and a nurse with a horrid expression leaned into view saying, “Look it. Look at what you did.” And there, on the hospital floor, ripping down intravenous bottles, breaking hospital lights, smashing things to the floor, and clawing at nurses uniforms and doctors’ faces, there was a newly-born wild man, covered in hair, moving about the room like a drunk chimpanzee, doing mischief. And I remember next in the dream, I found myself walking from one devastated town to another, each looking like it had been torn apart by catastrophe, and I’d say to anyone who would listen, “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was going to happen. He’s just a little wild man, that’s all.”
Share with us your favorite Halloween experience, costume, and candy.
Halloween night. The doorbell rings. It’s close to zero degrees, but that’s a typical Halloween here in Colorado. I answer the door with a bowlful of candy. There’s one lone kid standing there. He doesn’t say “Trick or Treat”. He doesn’t say anything. He’s dressed like a fat, little ghost, wearing a Stetson and big over-sized sunglasses. I ask if he’s cold, but he just stands there, frozen. He’s not right in front of the door. He keeps his distance, maybe five feet back. He holds open his bag. He’s been holding it like that since first opened the door. I ask if he wants candy, but he doesn’t say anything. I step out of the house to bring him his choices, to let him choose whether he wants a Babe Ruth or a Snickers. I’m wearing only my orange Broncos jersey and sweatpants, and instantly they’re cold against my skin. I have goose bumps. Then the frigid Halloween wind whips up, and it slams the door shut behind me. I’m locked out, but the kid doesn’t move. He just stands there with his bag open. From the bushes, I can hear children laughing.
Wolf by Jim Ringel
Curiosity Quill Press
November 2013
Blurb:
Johnny Wolfe carries his dog Sindra in a vial that he keeps in his pocket. He carries her out of loyalty. He carries her out of guilt. He carries her because there are no more dogs in this world. And he carries her to connect to her feral nature, so that he might take her inside himself and feel her animal wildness.
Johnny’s life is in shambles. His sales career at Bulldog Enterprises is on the blink. On his way to work one day, he witnesses a colleague being killed by a dog. But with dogs now extinct, how is this possible? Can he believe what’s he’s seeing? Going through his colleague’s dead body, Johnny discovers the man is carrying a rather sizeable sales order. Needing a sale, and figuring “he’s dead, I’m not”, Johnny decides to place the order as his own.
Except he can’t figure out what product the colleague was selling. And as he gets closer to understanding the product, Johnny realizes it has more and more to do with why the dogs are returning, and why they’re so angry, and why their anger is so focused on him.
Jim Ringel Bio
By day, Jim Ringel does sales. By night, he writes spooky bits of horror. Pick your poison. His first novel, WOLF, comes out from Curiosity Quills Press in November, 2013.
You can find Jim on his blog
Spooky Writer &Health Care Advisor: Pick your Poison
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