I Hear Voices by Jess Witkins

Welcome to another Life List Club guest posts! Today’s wonderful guest is Jess Witkins. Lock the doors and windows, grab your popcorn, and settle in for a chilling good time…

I Hear Voices

For those of you that are fans of Sonia’s Fear Friday Features, I know it’s one of my favorite posts, don’t panic, we’ll still be spending our time talking about scary things. What I love about Sonia’s posts is her focus on the characters and dialogue of top horror films. Admit it, we all have a favorite, specific creeper that makes us bug-eyed in the dark and twitchy at any noise. A lot of horror films have monsters: vampires, werewolves, aliens, demons, fast moving children with red eyes or the ability to crawl through your tv screen. shudder However, one of my all time favorite, always gives me chills bad guys isn’t a monster, it’s a normal woman. The housekeeper in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.

Her name is Mrs. Danvers. She is tall, dark and never smiles. She has the uncanny ability to always be right behind you when you thought you were alone. She’s the kind of help that makes you think you’re getting sound advice, only to have it all blow up in your face and make all your new friends hate you. For those of you who’ve never seen Rebecca, you must! It’s creepy as hell, I mean the best kind of thriller because what Mrs. Danvers does is slowly play with your mind and make you doubt who you thought you were as a person.

The story revolves around Mrs. de Winter; at start, she is a pretty, naïve female companion to the rich and snotty Edythe Van Hopper. One day she meets the handsome and wealthy Maxim de Winter. A few tennis games and car rides later, the couple is married. But when Mrs. de Winter moves into her new mansion, she finds herself at odds with the memory of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca. Enter Mrs. Danvers, requested by Maxim to help his new wife settle in. But the conflict is that Mrs. Danvers loved Maxim’s first wife and doesn’t believe her death was an accident. She will go to any lengths to separate Maxim and his new missus. She outrightly lies to her about a woman’s portrait in the house and assists her in making an identical dress as a surprise for the masquerade party Maxim hosts to introduce her to all his friends. The dress and the portrait are Rebecca’s. I think it’s safe to say the party’s over!

My favorite scene in the film is when Mrs. de Winter is looking out the window at the streetlights; she’s crying. Her marriage is at odds, she can’t seem to do anything as well as Rebecca could do it. And suddenly, like the ghost of Christmas future, there’s Mrs. Danvers forcing her gaze to the street below.

“Why don’t you? It’s easy.”

Oh it just gives me chills! That terrible, terrible woman! The reason I love to hate Mrs. Danvers is because her persona embodies every wicked, demeaning thought I’ve ever told myself as an excuse of why I can’t accomplish something. When I started writing six months ago, I thought I’d never have anything to say people would care about. I thought everyone else’s words were better than mine. I thought it took me too long to write. I had lost the writer I once was.

It would’ve been easy, just like Mrs. Danvers said. To give in to that urge to just quit. But the thing is, deep down we know what it is we love, what our dreams are. And my dream is to be a writer. There have been setbacks along the way, nothing worth accomplishing is ever easy. But I’ve acknowledged that my biggest threat is the Mrs. Danvers inside my head. If I let her get to me, I’ll never write another page, and then I’m not being me, I’m just a shell of someone else that looks like a girl who once wore party dresses.

All of us have Mrs. Danvers inside us. The question is, what is she preventing you from accomplishing? And what will be the first step you take to show her you’re in control of your destiny? My Life List goals encourage me to write everyday, even if it’s only ten words, to learn about the craft of writing, and to track my progress toward this dream, so even if it’s not always at the pace I want it to be, I can see I am moving forward.

What movie villain personifies your inner critic? What would happen if you let them win? What would happen…if you didn’t?

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Jess Witkins claims the title Perseverance Expert.  She grew up in a small Wisconsin town as the much younger youngest sibling of four, she’s witnessed the paranormal, jumped out of a plane, worked in retail, traveled to exotic locations like Italy, Ireland, and Shipshewana, Indiana, and she’s eaten bologna and lived to tell about it!  She deals with it all and writes about it!  Come along on her midwest adventures; Witkins promises to keep it honest and entertaining.  Go ahead, SUBSCRIBE, you know you want to.

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For more Life List Club guest post fun, visit the members’ blogs:

• Anne-Mhairi Simpson
• Carrie Mumford
• Catie Rhodes
• Diana Ligaya
• Emily L. Moir
• Gene Lempp
• Jennie Bennet
• Jess Witkins
• Lyn Midnight (Violeta Nedkova) <— I’m guest posting over here!
• Marcia Richards
• Pam Hawley