Published: May 28, 2009 04:26 pm      

A new way to flush your fears

A lot of things scare me. I’m kind of a jumpy person. Cats give me the creeps. Hair and dust balls make me shiver. The fact that I’ve had the Brandy Bunch song “Sunshine Day” playing in my head non-stop for nearly a month scares the bejesus out of me.

As a kid with an overactive imagination, I was afraid of everything. Lying in my bed at night, I imagined every sound was a heinous creature coming to capture me and carry me off to a dark realm filled with ghosts, and vampires, and the Brady Bunch singing “Sunshine Day.”

Modern society offers a plethora of things to make your hair stand on end. One has only to watch the news for a few moments every morning to see just how scary life can be. Just this morning I heard a news story about the Pope joining Facebook. Next up was a story about a new reality show based on Twitter. “What’s the world coming to?” I wondered aloud. I was still shaking when the eerie, well-coifed anchor with the blood-red smile read her next news story.

The dateline was Japan and the story was about a new terrifying tale by horror novelist Koji Suzuki, famed author of the book The Ring that was made into a popular American horror movie. The new book will be titled The Drop and is the startling story of an evil spirit that inhabits a toilet bowl.

Here’s the really disturbing part: Just in case the novel scares a little more than the bejesus out of readers, the novel will be written entirely on toilet paper. That’s right, Mr. Suzuki’s publisher, Hayashi Paper Corp., has agreed to print the entire horror novel, nine chapters in all, on toilet paper.

Just as a matter of note, Mr. Suzuki also has two other novels in addition to The Ring and The Drop. They are called Spiral and Dark Water. Any one else see a disturbing pattern emerging here?

According to the author, The Drop, which takes place in a dirty public restroom, can be easily read in one sitting and takes up only about three feet of paper. Each roll costs about $2 and has the story printed on it several times. According to the publisher, the book is an ideal way to produce a “horror experience in the toilet.” As if that is something we’ve all been trying to achieve. I don’t know about you, but I have one of those every time I venture into a public bathroom anyway.

Apparently, the Japanese are traditionally afraid of bathrooms. Many Japanese legends tell of the spirits that dwell in dirty bathrooms and of hairy hands that pull naughty children down the drain. It’s really not a surprise then that a Japanese horror novel would be set in a bathroom.

But I’ve got to say, if I was going to suggest that someone use reading material as toilet paper, I would not go for a horror novel. Rather, I would suggest something a little less harsh, a lot more frightening, and a little more deserving, such as Oprah’s magazine.

Or better yet, how about the song lyrics for “Sunshine Day” by the Brady Bunch?

— Rebecca Todd is a freelance writer from Clayton. Contact her at btodd@tds.net.