By Tim Sanders

There’s nothing like a supportive spouse to help a writer reach his or her full potential. Take Mary Shelley, for example. She would have had a tough time creating "Frankenstein" if her husband, Percy Bysshe (pronounced "Bob") Shelley, hadn’t encouraged her by rubbing their house cat, Lord Byron, against the carpeting until sparks flew, and then screaming "ALIVE, ALIVE!" as the poor creature bounded, crackling and popping, across the living room floor and launched itself through an open window.

Last week several TV stations aired monster movies to celebrate the Halloween season. I thought I’d like to try scripting my own monster movie. I was inspired by the classic 1990 film "Arachnophobia," in which a very large killer spider (played convincingly by Danny DeVito) hitches a ride from Venezuela to the United States in a coffin and produces offspring which wipe out half the population of a small California town in their efforts to kill Jeff Daniels before he can make "Dumb and Dumber." Another epic, 1965's "Frankenstein vs. Baragon," which stars Nick Adams and a flock of Japanese actors, depicts the battle between a thirty-foot tall but rather anemic Japanese "Furankenshutain" monster and a huge subterranean lizard with an iridescent green horn in the middle of his forehead to facilitate underground vision.

"Hey," I told myself, "I could write one of those."

So I was hard at work, sketching out a few rough drafts, when my wife walked in.
"Writing your column?" she inquired.

"No, I’m scripting a monster movie."

She picked up one of the pages I’d printed off and surveyed it skeptically. "What in the world is this?" she asked.

"It’s only a draft," I said. "I plan to make a psychological thriller out of it."

She read a few lines: "Celeste withdrew in horror. ‘Your golf beanie, Rodney, it’s ... it’s throbbing and pulsing, throbbing and pulsing!’

‘But I’m not wearing my golf beanie,’ Rodney said. Then he ran to the mirror and–‘AAAAIIIIEEEE!’"

"Golf beanie? What kind of foolishness is that?" Marilyn asked.

"Beanies, caps, whatever they call ‘em. It’s just a few lines of dialogue that were tumbling around in my head. I had this great idea for a movie about huge, mutant bloodsucking parasites which invade a small Southern town. These things grow to thousands of times their normal size due to half-empty anabolic steroid vials which the Little League baseball coach has discarded into a nearby river. When these parasites drop from a tree limb onto their host’s head, they suck it flat within minutes. I’m going to call it ‘The Gigan-ticks.’"

She shook her head, tossed the page aside, and picked up another. "SLUGFEST?" she said. "What’s that?"

"It’s only a working title," I replied. "It’s about a battalion of great grey garden slugs the size of Volkswagens which terrorize a small Midwestern town."
"Let me guess," she said. "Steroids again?"

"No, this time it’s all due to a nuclear waste dump which just happens to be located near a swarming nest of baby slugs."

"Nest of baby slugs?"

"Nests, cocoons, larvae, eggs, seed pods, nurseries, whatever slugs have. Like I said, these are only ideas. I haven’t worked out all the details yet."

"And this, down here at the bottom, is some of your dialogue?"

"Yeah. And it’s not bad, if I do say so myself."

She read: "‘Look, Jim, they’ve hit the shopping center. There’s a sixty-foot wide trail of slime, and–OMIGOSH, IT’S TIFFANY ... she’s ... she’s all gooky!’ You can’t be serious?"

I had to admit it didn’t sound quite so good when she read it aloud. "Try the next line," I suggested. "My hero will say that right before the dramatic ending."

She read again: "‘We’ve only got one chance against these slimy bastards, Sheriff Nichols. We’ve got to reach the county salt trucks!’"

"You really ought to concentrate on your column," she said. "This stuff stinks."

"Look, when I get my screenplay sold to a major Hollywood studio and the money comes pouring in, then you’ll be singing a different tune. I have other ideas too, you know. I am a multifaceted artist."

She peered over my shoulder at the computer monitor. "‘Cadadathump, cadadathump, cadadathump, cadadathump, cadadathump, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, cadadathump, cadadathump, cadadathump, cadadathump, cadadathump, etc.’ What in the world is that?"

"It’s sound effects for something I’m working on. The whole concept is based on the Moby Dick story, where this great white centipede trips and clomps across the country looking for the gardener who amputated twenty-nine of his legs in a freak pruning accident. I don’t know whether to call it ‘The Centipede from Hell,’ or to go with ‘Footloose.’"

She just sighed. "You mean ‘Feetloose,’ don’t you, Mr. Melville?"

She was equally unimpressed by my proposal for "Attack of the Killer Sea Monkeys," the story of a headstrong boy who gets more than he bargains for when he soaks his mail order sea monkeys in Smirnoff Vodka rather than water, as per the instructions.

I didn’t even tell her about my "Geriatric Pork" idea. It’s about two tremendously large, prehistoric United States senators with green scales, red eyes, fire-breathing snouts, and fifty-foot tails emerging from under their Depends. These antediluvian titans clash in an epic battle on Capitol Hill over a hurricane relief bill containing riders with additional funding for bovine helmets to reduce stampede injuries, goat cheese production studies, and inland suspension bridges for cities without lakes or rivers, but absolutely nothing for inner city remedial water ballet classes, research into the causes and early diagnosis of reptile anxiety, or the Robert Carlyle Byrd Glycerine Suppository Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia.

"Some day, there will be a monster movie out there with my name in the credits," I told her. "Then you’ll be sorry."

"A lot of people will," she said.

The more I think about it, the less I like that response.