Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 291: "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died - An Ed Wood Jr. Inspired Horror Short Story" (2002)

Kailleaugh Andersson took Ed Wood to a strange place: Scotland.

There's a whole universe out there of Ed Wood-inspired fanart: comics, music, film, plays, etc. And I've reviewed a great deal of that material in this series. But not all of this stuff reaches me on its own. Far from it. Occasionally, readers of this column will hip me to some bit of obscure Woodiana that I might not otherwise have heard of. Recently, for example, the redoubtable Bob Blackburn told me about a short story called "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died" by Scottish author Kailleaugh Andersson that is available on Amazon for the Kindle. The story's two-star rating wasn't promising, but the $0.99 price tag was, so I took the leap of faith.

I could not find out much background information on either the story or its author. Kailleaugh Andersson once maintained a personal website, but this has not been updated in years. His Amazon biography describes him as a prolific horror author whose stories have been published (by the hundreds!) since the 1980s, sometimes in anthologies, other times in magazines or webzines. His wife, Alex Severin, has a number of books available on Amazon and still seems to be active. Maybe Kailleaugh is, too. But is his Ed Wood-inspired story worth your time and your 99 cents? Let's find out!

The story: "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died - An Ed Wood Jr. Inspired Horror Short Story" by Kailleaugh Anderson. Copyright 2002. Published by SKS Press, USA in 2011.

Synopsis: Aberdeen, Scotland. Two ambulance men, Leonard and Colin, are summoned to collect a dead body from a run-down boarding house in an area of the city called Tillydrone. Leonard is a 20-year veteran of the profession and is quite used to this sort of thing, but he worries that Colin, a rookie, will crack under the strain. When they arrive, they find that the room is in a terrible state of disarray, with empty Imperial bottles strewn everywhere and strange writing on the wall. To make matters worse, the dead man has a horrified look frozen on his face.

Leonard takes umbrage at the disrespectful attitude of the manager, and the two exchange some harsh words. Meanwhile, Colin desperately wants to know what the dead man saw in his final moments. Digging through the decedent's few possessions, they piece together that he was some kind of horror writer named Dick Trent. He has manuscripts titled The Dead Never Die and I Woke Up Early the Day I Died. Was he famous? They've never heard of him. Leonard briefly leaves the room to get a stretcher. When he returns, he makes a horrifying discovery, proving that Colin has gone "totally insane" from the job.

Excerpt:

Even though the man was dead, Colin felt as if he was being watched by those horror-stricken eyes. Finally, he turned away from the corpse and focused his attention on the mad ravings scrawled all over the walls. The words were gibberish - the paranoid rantings of a drunken lunatic. Even as he focused his attention on the walls, the dead man's stare seemed to follow him. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end; he could still see those dead eyes, burned into his own retinas like an old photograph with washed out colors, just like the shades and tones of the room.

Reflections: One of the most haunting and indelible passages in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) occurs in the book's final chapter ("He Stared Into a Starless Space") when Ed Wood's widow, Kathy, describes her husband's untimely death at age 54 in December 1978:

Kathy Wood describes her husband's death.

In "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died," Kailleaugh Andersson takes that anecdote and fashions an eerie, gory short story out of it. While Andersson does not write in the style of Ed Wood and makes no attempt to mimic the cadence of Ed's many novels and short stories, "I Woke Up Early" does contain numerous references to Eddie's life and career, including some fairly deep cuts. I was especially impressed by the mention of The Dead Never Die, an abandoned project from 1957. And the author adds little decorative flourishes along the way, like having the manager watch a black-and-white science-fiction movie on television.

Low-cost housing in Tillydrone.

The oddest and most memorable aspect of this story, by far, is the fact that it is set in Scotland and is extremely Scottish. Everyone in this story talks like Shrek. Or Groundskeeper Willie. Or Scotty from Star Trek. Pick your pop culture Scotsman. What Dick Trent is doing in Aberdeen, I have no idea. Is he meant to be Scottish, too? Obviously, since he's dead, he doesn't get a chance to speak. The manager says that Trent has been there only three days and is already two days behind in payment. (He checked in on a Wednesday, appropriately enough.) Perhaps he's a tourist or has come there for professional reasons. We'll never know.

My guess is that Kailleaugh Andersson read Nightmare of Ecstasy and tried to imagine the events described in that book happening in his own native land. If Ed Wood were Scottish, where would he live? Tillydrone, apparently. Online appraisals of Tillydrone vary. Some say it's one of the more dangerous and economically blighted parts of Aberdeen; others say that it has improved over the years and is not as bad as its reputation suggests. On the other hand, "I Woke Up Early" might be set in 1978 rather than in the 2000s.

I promised to tell you whether I thought this story was worth your time and money. Look, I don't want to lead you astray here. At 99 cents, "I Woke Up Early" is overpriced... but not by much. This is a 2,500-word story. It's nicely evocative and ends on an appropriately gruesome note. But even if you're a slow reader, it's not going to give you more than about 15 minutes of entertainment. This review is already closing in on a thousand words, and I'm giving it to you for free. 

Ideally, "I Woke Up Early" should have appeared in an anthology of Ed Wood-inspired stories. It would have made for a jim-dandy entry in Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (2024). On its own, it might make a nice distraction some rainy day. But wouldn't it have been more interesting if Leonard, the hardened veteran, had been the one to crack up instead of the rookie? See, that's what you call a plot twist.

A waste of $0.99.

While we're on the topic of Ed Wood-related works for the Kindle, I must mention the worst 99 cents I have ever spent on that platform. Out of morbid curiosity, I purchased something called Star Trek Twin Peaks Wallace Gromit Ed Wood Scissorhands Phantom (2015) by an Alabama-based author named Jim Fenn. The extremely generic cover art should have scared me away, but it didn't. Jim's Amazon profile is actually readable and comprehensible and shows a picture of a smiling, affable-looking human being. This is remarkable because Jim's "book" is just a string of near-gibberish that seems to have been spat out by a malfunctioning machine. If you're a real masochist, you can buy a physical copy of this thing.

Allegedly, Star Trek Twin Peaks Wallace Gromit Ed Wood Scissorhands Phantom is a collection of Mr. Fenn's parodies of such familiar pop culture properties as Star Trek, Tim Burton movies, and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. I say "allegedly" because the author's typical approach is simply to paraphrase and summarize the original works in a clumsy, careless fashion while giving the characters punning names that wouldn't have passed muster at Mad or even Cracked, Crazy, or Sick. Now and then, he will make barely coherent asides about the actors and directors who made the original shows and movies. And it's all formatted like experimental poetry.

I spent 99 cents on this thing because it claims to include a parody of Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994). For the record, that parody is entitled "Head? Wood." It is merely a mangled plot summary of the original film with no satirical insights whatsoever. Here, free of charge, I'll give you a sample:

Hollywood, the black and white years; Head Wood is a hopeful young playwright.  To get a job directing the film, I Changed My Sex, he claims to be a cross dresser. 

"Sorry kid, experienced only."

Walking back he sees a man in a coffin. 

The man sits up, "Way too constrictive.  I can’t even fold my arms." 

"I never had any complaints before." 

He storms out. 

Head Wood says to him, "I'm a huge fan, Mr. Lugosi." 

The big star says he hasn't worked in four years.

 "Now it's all giant bugs.  Where's the blood?  Where's the mystery?  Blood is life.  Giant insects, what is that?  Nothing!" 

Head Wood gives Mr. Lugosi a ride home.  Bela tries to hypnotize Vampira through the TV. 

Head Wood goes back to the producer, "I can get you Bela Lugosi for a mere thousand dollars."

Laughing yet? Honestly, I'm not sure what Jim Fenn's deal is. I don't even know if he's a real, flesh-and-blood author or not. This whole thing feels like a weirdly-conceived scam designed to prey upon unsuspecting shoppers who search for particular terms (like "Ed Wood") on Amazon. Hey, he got 99 cents out of me, so it must be working. Salud, Mr. Fenn.

P.S. "Head? Wood" is so unforgivably lame and lazy that I am tempted to rewrite it.