That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
I have a confession to make: I've never had a job. Not even a small one. No paper rounds, no work at a bar, no washing dishes, nothing. I've somehow managed to get through nineteen years of my life doing precisely fuck all in the way of paid work. It's disgusting I know, but there you go.
Nevertheless, you do get to a certain stage when you realise that your parents are starting to despair, your CV is looking worse and worse by the year, and you've already spent most of next term's student loan before even getting it. I screwed up over the summer; now I HAD to get a job during term-time, no matter how small, before I drowned in a sea of my own laziness.
So, running out of options, I logged onto the uni's Careers website, and there, in big capital letters, like an angel from the heavens, were the words “YORK MAZE NEEDS SCARY STAFF!”
It was as epic as it sounded. In the week around Halloween, over five nights, I had my first ever job: dressing up as a monster and scaring the living daylights out of people. Who said work was dull?
My work was centred around two haunted houses they had constructed on the site, “Barnageddon” and “Carnevil”. In these two brilliantly named places I was allocated a room and left to my own devices for four and a half hours to terrify whatever foolish mortals came my way.
Each night presented a different challenge. On the first, I was locked in a cage and covered in zombie facepaint. Every time someone passed they would be clawed at by this rabid dog-monkey hybrid, gnashing and shrieking in an attempt to break free. When they thought they'd got past me they would discover that the cage actually led into the compartment above the passage which they had to walk through. There is no escape.
On the second night the poor travellers would encounter me in a dark room covered with glowing dots. After wondering where they were, they would begin to notice that the dots on the wall were moving, before recoiling in horror to see a man in a black costume covered with dots jump out at them. Some would try to reach the door, only to see the nightmarish dot-man edge towards the doorway, blocking their chance to flee.
The third night placed me in a corridor in Carnevil, where the customers would believe themselves to be in a calm patch, only for a door to SLAM down on them to reveal a terrifying clown creature with a high-pitch laugh, snickering at them and trying to grab them. Many took a while to pass that one.
The fourth had the victims walking through a jungle area with a low ceiling, where their path would be interrupted by a green hand erupting from the foliage. The jungle would move towards them with hands outstretched, and once they had passed into the corridor behind they would see him in all his glory, a camouflaged monstrosity covered with leaves.
On the final night, Halloween itself, I was once again given a room with a slamming door, yet this time it was just before the exit. “Come again” I cackled at them, knowing full well that most of them wouldn't.
And it worked, for the most part.
People were scared. There's nothing quite as professionally satisfying as grown women being physically unable to pass your outstretched hands, than valiant boyfriends having to lead their girlfriends past a slavering beast, than people cowering in fear as they notice your existence. It's just the most incredible feeling. I was actually surprised at how much people bought into it, as if they genuinely believed that there was some leafy rapist in the bushes.
But would they be so scared if they knew who was under it? If they'd looked closely they'd have noticed that the crawling cage monster of the first night was wearing kneepads, and if they'd seen him afterwards wincing from the bruises inflicted on his hands and shins it would have ruined the effect. Could any of them have known that the man in the camouflage really, REALLY, needed a piss, and was slowly being driven insane by the 2 minute loop of circus music and air raid sirens played to him over and over again? And did they guess all the jealousy every monster in the maze held towards the man (sadly, never me) who got to fire a machine gun at the customers for four hours? It all made me think of the old Pixar film Monsters Inc., where under every scary hellbeast is just an everyday joe trying to earn money.
Keeping up this illusion was what made the whole thing so satisfying, especially when I had to go to great lengths to do so. On one of the nights, for instance, the slamming door broke. Thankfully, it was a miniature one rather than a full-blown slammer, and so I was able to crowbar a bit of wood under it and prop it up with my knee without shattering my leg to pieces. On another, the light broke, meaning I had to create a rudimentary system of glow-sticks so the people could actually see me.
It's this effort that goes to maintain the scaring that makes it such a kick in the teeth when it doesn't work. You're always going to get a few, aren't you? Lads who want to impress their girlfriends by waving their balls of steel around. Thirteen year-olds trying to prove they're not kids; the sarky gits, who suddenly decide they're comedians and the first joke on their agenda is to make your job as difficult as possible. I had blokes mimic whatever action I was doing, grab my clown mask and try to kiss it (complete with alcohol breath), and plainly ignore the “no touching the monsters” rule that had been hammered into their skulls about a billion times.
What summed it up most was one instance when I was the dot-man, trying to maintain my camouflage. A bloke just runs in, sticks his arm out and says, in a bored tone, to the people behind him: “There's a guy over there”. Well fuck you if you're not going to bother! Why don't you go over to chef and piss over their food? And while you're at it, tell the waiters they're a bunch of twats. They love it when you do that. It's quite crushing when people react like this, as it almost feels like you're a weak link in the chain, letting down the people who've gone to such great lengths to create the elaborate rooms and traps.
Still, you tend to forget the sarky people, and in the end it's always the good reactions that linger, and what ultimately made the job such a great experience.
It wasn't just the people who got scared, but the people who commented on how awesome or clever the effect was, the people who got their friends to take a picture with you, or even the bored dads and husbands at the back who gave a polite nod as they leave the room, almost as a silent show of gratitude for permanently scarring their wives or daughters. Things like this are what tells you that you're doing a good job as an entertainer.
Yet still, what was the most satisfying moment for me was when a woman returned to the dot-room with a headache, saying she was too terrified to go through the rest of the haunted house and couldn't deal with the flashing lights. Being the gentleman I am, I showed her the nearest fire exit.
Even in a job as an evil monster, I was able to feel like I helped someone. The slogan from Monsters Inc. was right: we scare because we care.
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