The Gory Details (Gross)

Gory Details #2: Ooo That Smell

Gory details is a monthly article dedicated to helping horror writers improve their writing by looking at some of the "real" places and things that often find their way into horror stories. This edition is about fire.

To sum up our story so far: Four attractive teenagers, go to spend the night at "Fire Trap Mansion." Dawn and Gary are "discussing philosophy" in the bedroom upstairs and Evelyn has headed off to the downstairs bath when Doug sets himself and the rest of the kitchen on fire. As we know from part one, the house is going to go down in less than an hour, but what about our friends? In short, they're toast. Let's begin with Doug.

Doug set his arm on fire, then flailed around the kitchen for a while. By the time he makes his exit, via the window, his polyester shirt has melted onto his to torso and his hair is gone. He's got burns. Lots of burns. Let's define them.

First Degree: An ow-ee.

Second Degree: Significant cell damage, blistering, underlying tissues intact.

Third Degree: Cooked...basically. The key issue here is that the burn may be "a full thickness burn" meaning the skin is burned clear through to the underlying tissue. This means there's nothing to regrow. Nasty scar.

Fourth Degree: There is no fourth degree but do you know when your having a cookout and you forget a steak on the grill and when you go back for it three hours later there's only some blue smoke and a hard, hockey puck looking thing? Don't eat that.

Doug's got second and third degree burns. At the hospital, he will be put directly into ICU. He is in serious danger of infection. He will also be put on an IV because people with large area wounds lose lots of tissue fluid, blood and other drippy things. That's right, severe burns ooze and drip. His room will also be heated because his body will lose track of its own temperature. No skin = No thermostat.

After the morphine and antibiotics, they'll do the foulest thing known to medical science. They'll take a scrub brush and scrub away the dead tissue and bits of polyester. It's really damn painful and they do it dozens of times. It's called debridement. You can look up Richard Pryor's comments on the subject. He got to "feel the joy" after setting himself on fire while freebasing cocaine.

Doug'll be badly scarred. Large area burns tend to scar with a kind of "ropy" texture, flat, glossy plains crossed by bands of scars. Doug may have lost his ears and the soft bits at the end of his nose.

Evelyn got off easier. She opened the bath room door and experienced back draft. Hot, oxygen poor air, rushed into the room, pulling burning material with it. She stumbled back and, what a coincidence, fell out a window. She's not badly burned, with two exceptions.

First, she gasped when the hot air hit her and got first degree burns in her mouth and bronchial tubes. Her bronchial tubes may spasm, suffocating her. Or they may get painfully infected in the days to come.

Second, she got caught with her eyes open. A burn to the surface of the eye is brutally painful. Since it's a light burn, the eyes didn't rupture. (see Dawn below.) Damage to the cornea may cause blindness. This may resolve on its own or she may require a corneal transplant. Either way, she's likely to be photosensitive for life.

Dawn and Gary are interrupted by the smell of smoke. The fire has been burning for about five minutes and the lovely couple find the stairwell billowing with thick, black smoke. They low crawl to the bottom of the stair and find themselves in pitch black and high heat.

Eventually Gary finds the door and hauls himself out to the yard. His troubles aren't over. He's got a severe case of smoke inhalation. The junk in his lungs will keep his alveoli from picking up oxygen. More dangerously, his bronchial tubes are likely to spasm. He'll probably need a ventilator to force air in for at least a little while. More subtly, he's also breathed every toxin and plastic byproduct in the kitchen. He may have toxic or allergic reactions to anything.

Now Dawn. Poor Dawn. Such a nice kid. Dawn panicked when they got into the living room and stood up to run. Bad mistake. The temperature at the top of a burning room may be several hundred degrees hotter than on the floor. In other words. Dawn's hair burst into flames and her face blistered up as soon as she stood up. She writhed on the floor for a few minutes then died as the fire swept over her. Now, follow the Gore Monger through a burning corpse. (Oh yeah.)

At First, it's much like a brautwurst. The skin gets tight as cells break down and the water in them expands. Blister form and pop. As the skin begins to cook and harden, it splits open and the underlying fat, liquified by the heat, drips out. A healthy female can be from 8% to 12% fat. That's about 13 pounds on a hundred and third pound girl. Imagine thirteen pound of Crisco dripping into your barbeque pit. Now that's a grease fire. Her eyeballs may also pop as they heat up. Next, bones, organs and muscles start to show. Meat; cooks then burns, big deal. Bones; burst, big fun. Bones have blood serving their marrow. As this blood boils the bone will burst. Organs; cook then burn, big deal, except the brain. It's trying to boil and expand, but it's in this hard shell. Where's it to go? If the spinal column hasn't burned through, there's really only one place; through the sinus' and out the nose, mouth or ears. (Teenage girl brains dripping out her nose. The Gore Monger's in a happy place.)

Usually some bone and the enamel from teeth will survive a house fire, but if the fire is hot enough, there may be nothing left of Dawn by dawn.

And you thought fires were for making s'mores. Now get out there and write.

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